As a companion video to our upcoming backpacking trip into the Gros Ventre Wilderness, I joined Richard from the Backcountry Post forums for an early season hike into the Gros Ventre Wilderness. Nestled between the Tetons, Wind River Range, and the Absaroka Range are these set of mountains that I had never heard of a week before meeting up with Richard at the trailhead. Wild is an apt description of the hike. That included the many wildlife we saw along the way and the difficult terrain that came with the early season.
You can our full detailed report of our hikes below in the index as they are posted.
Early season in Yellowstone National Park means snow melt. Many of the creeks and rivers are swollen and most likely impassable. The trail may also become a marsh. I didn’t think of this when I originally sold the idea of backpacking here to Brenna and Bradley (pictured below),
specially the idea of hiking around Shoshone Lake and down Bechler River trail. But it became clear after a quick look on the backcountry situation report on the Yellowstone NPS webpage was that our plans would have to change for the beginning of June. So sometimes the lesson here is just going with what’s available or take the advice of a ranger. That’s how we ended up following the early season roars of the well names Hellroaring Creek and Yellowstone River for a few days. We were even joined by a local.
Note from John (website editor & author) on 2022/12: When I started to writing this report earlier in the year, the northern portion of Yellowstone National Park flooded knocking out several roads including the portions between Gardiner, MT and Cooke City, MT (NPR). While the road that’s part of the Northern Loop where the trailheads for this hike are located on has reopened, I don’t have exact information about the backcountry conditions and bridges status. Please check with the Yellowstone backcountry status report for more up to date information (NPS). So this report is most likely dated already… which is part of the reason I had stopped working on this series. But back on the saddle I go.
This is the third entry of our 2021 Wyoming trip series covering our backpacking trip up Hellroaring Creek, Yellowstone River, & Blacktail Deer Creek (3). You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.
Our final hike of the trip was into the middle of Lake Champlain on a converted railroad bed known as the Colchester Causeway. Rather than climbing up a mountain, we had a view of them from the causeway as it crosses Mallets Bay. The change of pace, or rather elevation profile, was a welcome end to our couple weeks of working remote and visiting friends. Thanks to Jared and Domino hanging out and showing us around.
This is part 5 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our causal walk on the Colchester Causeway and wrap up our trip with our budget. You can find the rest of the series in the index below.
This is the video companions of trip to Vermont to visit our friend Jared. With good friends, it is always easy to pick up where we left off and this was no exception. We revisited Mt. Mansfield and then opted for less elevation by visiting Lake Champlain via the Colchester Causeway. In between we had a campfire and cookout to complete the autumn scene.
You can find our full trip report of our hike in the index below.
For our second week on our working remote road trip, we headed across Lake Champlain into Vermont where we spent our next weekend with Jared and his new puppy Domino.
Our hiking target was to head up Mount Mansfield via the Laura Cowles and Sunset Ridge Trails. This was the second time we visited the highest point in Vermont having done so in the summer time several years ago in 2013, to give you some indication of our opinion of the hike.
Unlike our first visit however, the highlight of the hike this time around was how we got there and not so much the end or summit.
This is part 4 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our hike in Vermont up Mt. Mansfield. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.
This is the video companions of trip to the Adirondack Mountains to visit our friends Mat & Vru. They were awesome hosts taking us on a few summits in the Adirondack Mountains including Cat Mountain near Lake George, Hurricane Mountain near Lake Placid, & Owls Head Mountain near Long Lake. It was the perfect weekend to see the changing fall leaves even as we dodged the rain.
You can find our full trip report of our hike in the index below.
To conclude our weekend with with Mat, Vru, and their dog Zoey we finished our third hike in three days. While we didn’t end up backpacking on our trip like we planned, we did get some miles in after all. This final hike with them was again in the Adirondacks, but further west as we looked to avoid the crowds near Lake Placid. We would hit up another vista and check off another fire tower on the ADK Fire Tower Challenge for them (ADK.org). The foliage was peaking just right as well making the otherwise hike through a forest more stimulating.
Thanks to Vru and Mat for putting us up and hanging out for a week.
This is part 3 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our second day hike up to Owls Head Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.
The weather was ominous when we set out for our second hike in the Adirondack Mountains. At the trailhead for Hurricane Mountain, the tops of the mountains around us were obscured by the clouds. It would have been easy and understandable to call it off there, but you never know what’s in store for you sometimes. For many ahead of us, it meant hiking up to a blanket of white. For us, we came to sweeping fruity pebble like mountain sides made more mystic as they were revealed behind the lifting clouds. Sometimes the luck of the draw makes the risk worth it.
This is part 2 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our second day hike up to Hurricane Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.
In the early part of 2020, we had plans to visit our friends in upstate New York and Vermont wiped out by the pandemic. As the year went along, we learned a new way to travel during those pre-vaccine days in conjunction with our abilities to work remotely. That is to pod with our friend exclusively spending a longer period with them including work days. So we revived our earlier plans and podded with Vru and Mat in New York before visiting Jared in Vermont. The benefit of visiting in the fall was the foliage sweeping across the mountains.
Our hiking plans with Mat and Vru was originally backpacking around Marcy Dam, but changed our plans to day hikes based on the weather outlook. I thought it was a pretty good decision as we were dumped on a couple times during a couple of our hikes. The first was up to Cat Mountain in the Lake George area.
This is part 1 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our first day hike up to Cat Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.
After our 8 day off route backpacking trip into the Wind River Range, we headed back to Denver and had a full week booked for an hotel stay. Specifically, this was pre-vaccine pandemic times still and the full week was in efforts to isolate ourselves so we could see our friends Kevin, Shannon, their new born baby Wyatt, and their dog Ray. Hanging out with our friends after month of isolation at home was well worth the week of working from hotels. It was the break we needed for our mental health and socially starved souls.
This is also a new experience for us with longer hotel stays in the form of working remote, really remote. A model I would adopt more later for subsequent trips during the never ending pandemic. While our weekend with our friends consisted mostly of drinks and food, we did get out for a hike. The Walker Ranch loop just outside of Boulder was our destination with a few views and some cascading rapids.
This is part 2 of 2 of our trip out to Wyoming and Colorado. In this part, we cover our day hike in Colorado and overall budget of our trip.
Continuing from our previous hike report of Tibbet Knob, we spent the weekend camped out along Forest Road 92 in the George Washington National Forest.
After our early dinner following our short hike to Tibbet Knob, we decided to explore downstream on the Stony Creek Trail next to our campsite. As the Chinese proverb goes “飯後百步走，活到九十九” or after dinner 100 steps, live to 99. Well, a little more than 100 steps in our case but the stroll out to Woodstock Reservoir was the perfect fit for that sentiment.
This is the video companions of our 8 day off trail backpacking trip in the Wind River Range consisting of a loop of Ross Lake, Bear Basin, Grasshopper Glacier, and Dinwoody Creek from September 2020.
You can find our full trip report of our hike in the index below.
