{"id":559,"date":"2016-07-29T04:02:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T04:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=559"},"modified":"2017-05-23T14:43:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T14:43:04","slug":"jingle-bells-jingle-bells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/07\/29\/jingle-bells-jingle-bells\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, July 29 Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>As I got ready to hike this morning, for the first time, I put a bear bell on my trek pole. So now, it’s jingle, jingle as I walk along.<\/p>\n

(Note:\u00a0 Later on, once we got to know the locals who LIVE in grizz country, they laughed at our bear bells.\u00a0 “We call those ‘dinner bells,'” they said.\u00a0 “The bears hear them and are curious.\u00a0 What you want to do is every time you’re heading into bushes or thick forest, MAKE NOISE.\u00a0 Yell.\u00a0 Sing.\u00a0 Whatever.\u00a0 That way the bears know you are a hiker and will leave. And if you do see a grizz, sit down and act relaxed.”<\/p>\n

But the only large, hump-shouldered dark-furred critter I saw all day was an Angus bull, right by the trail. We spent this morning walking up the gorgeous Green River valley. I would rate it right up there with Yosemite Valley\u2014huge cliffs with impressive mountains up behind them, and the Green River as it gradually widens into 2 lakes, with happy campers and kayakers.<\/p>\n

Then we had a long and sometimes horrendously steep climb over to the Roaring Fork River valley. Now we’re heading north through meadows and forests we share with the cows.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong>Not long after we started this morning, we got to cross the Green River on a nice log bridge.\u00a0 And it is still green in color.\u00a0 We found out later that it’s because the Green is a GLACIER melt river, not just ordinary snow melt.\u00a0 We passed some backpacker camps, but nobody was up yet.\u00a0 Continuing along the river valley, we had to cross some avalanche debris fields–scary, seriously scary.\u00a0 I would never want to be around when all that mud\/rocks\/stuff came roaring down the mountain.<\/p>\n

When we stopped for breakfast, along came Tatoo Joe.\u00a0 He wanted to know about the fire situation up ahead, so I showed him all my ranger info that I got in Pinedale.\u00a0 Then he took off, and we caught up with him a short time later, having a 2nd breakfast with a bunch of Boy Scouts.\u00a0 We were invited to join them too (apparently they had plenty of food) but we needed to make miles, so kept going.\u00a0 I felt like singing “Jingle Bells” since now I have the bear bells on my trek pole, and I jingle nicely as I walk along.<\/p>\n

The Green River valley is absolutely gorgeous.\u00a0 It’s surrounded by dramatic mountains and cliffs and peaks.\u00a0 Eventually the river widens out into two lakes.\u00a0 Scenery-wise, I would put it right up there with Yosemite Valley!\u00a0 The lakes are long and large–turned out that the Boy Scouts had CANOEed in with all that food they were sharing!\u00a0 The only problem with hiking through gorgeous scenery is that you want to look at the scene instead of the trail.\u00a0 Fixit was getting way ahead of me because I kept looking at stuff.\u00a0 Then when I tried to catch up, I caught my toe on something and went down, very hard, in a faceplant.\u00a0 Fortunately, the spot I fell was just dirt–no sharp rocks or roots–otherwise it might have been pretty bad.\u00a0 But I was now absolutely filthy with red dirt all over the front of me.\u00a0 Grrrr.\u00a0 I was just starting to get up (not easy, with the wind knocked out of me and a heavy pack) when along came Tatoo Joe.\u00a0 “Are you OK?” he asked kindly.\u00a0 “What happened?”\u00a0\u00a0 I told him I tripped and did a faceplant, but was OK.<\/p>\n

I got back on my feet and then sat down for a minute till I felt a bit better.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Fixit was way down the trail.\u00a0 He finally stopped, and when I caught up to him, he said, “Where’d you go?\u00a0 You just disappeared.”\u00a0 “Yeah,” I said.\u00a0 “I was on my face in the dirt.”\u00a0 Bummer.<\/p>\n

Finally we reached the bridge where the ranger had told me they would post the “latest & greatest” about the fire.\u00a0 Yes, there was a notice there, but the date on it was older than the one I had from Pinedale.\u00a0 Tatoo Joe said he plans to hike as far as Union Pass, then turn off the trail and roadwalk around the fire.\u00a0 Sounds like a good idea to me!\u00a0 We continued on, tackling the big climb up & over the mountains, then down to the Roaring Fork.\u00a0 The climb was very steep, slow going in places.\u00a0 Down by the Roaring Fork, the trail went meadow-forest-meadow-forest, with cows everywhere.\u00a0 As we approached the “brushy zones” by creeks, I would start yelling, “Hey, grizz!\u00a0 Hikers!\u00a0 Coming through!”\u00a0 In one of those zones, suddenly a large, dark, hump-shouldered critter rose up–yikes!–but it turned out to be just an Angus bull.<\/p>\n

Because there were so many cow paths, the Garmin once again was very useful, whenever we were in doubt about which way to go.\u00a0 We finally ended the day camping in a meadow near a spring, with a whole bunch of cows.\u00a0 There is still no sign of any fire up ahead–not even a tiny bit of smoke haze.\u00a0 But I guess there is grass pollen in the air, because most of today I was sneezing a bit and dealing with itchy eyes.\u00a0 Tomorrow we will have to decide which way to go, when we reach Union Pass.\u00a0 But what magnificent country we were in today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 As I got ready to hike this morning, for the first time, I put a bear bell on my trek pole. So now, it’s jingle, jingle as I walk along. (Note:\u00a0 Later on, once we got to know the locals who LIVE in grizz country, they laughed at our bear bells.\u00a0 “We call those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}