National Parks and Camping (advice for me + general discussion)

[slickpoppa]

Day 4:
After a much better night's sleep, I was primed to finish off the last uphill climb of the hike. After passing through some nice streams and meadows:


I hiked up Washakie Pass, which peaked at 11,600 ft. but was a much more gradual and enjoyable ascent than my climb on day 3. View from the top:


After rejoicing the fact that it was all downhill back to my car, I hiked several miles to my campsite for the night at Marm's Lake. This was by far my favorite campsite of the trip. There was a ton of open space around the lake, the views were very nice, and there were fish jumping like crazy. Here's a pic with some pretty good reflection action:


I don't know how well you can see it, but in this picture I tried to capture the ripples from the fish jumping:


You can't really see it that well in that picture, but you could easily see at least 20 fish jumping in any 5 second interval. I definitely wish I had a fishing pole with me at that point.


Day 5:
This day was pretty uninteresting as it rained pretty much all the way on my hike back to my car. I was pretty damn tired by that point, and thankfully the hike was all downhill back to the car.


Overall thoughts:

As I mentioned earlier, this was my first solo hike and it was definitely an interesting experience. I definitely wish I could have done the trip with other people. Not only would it have been nice to have people to enjoy the experience with, it would have helped a lot to have several people to divide up the chores and weight of the communal gear.

But since I pretty much had the choice of either going alone or not going at all, I'm glad I went. And going solo did have some advantages. Going 5 days with very little human contact (I talked a little bit with some people I crossed on the trail, but not much), gave me plenty of time to think through a lot of quarter life crisis type crap that had been on my mind. And although I know I wasn't doing anything too hardcore, I think being dependent on just myself for survival for 5 days was a little scary, but a very good learning experience.

Overall I'd give this hike a 7 out of 10 (but my rating scale is pretty strict). If I had gone with other people it probably would have been an 8.5. I got really lucky with the weather. Other than the last day, it sunny most of the time and never rained during the day. It did rain a little bit on two of the nights but I was already in my tent at the point and it wasn't a big deal. I'm definitely a fair weather camper, so if it had rained every day I probably would have hated the trip. Even with good rain gear and such, I don't think it's possible to keep your gear dry if it's raining while you're setting or packing up camp.

I'd like to go camping again, but 5 days would probably be my limit. I was definitely getting cravings for a burger and hot shower by the end of the trip. I have some friends back east who might be interested in doing some weekend trips, but unfortunately the scenery in the east pales in comparison to the west.

I'm heading off to Yellowstone for the next several days. I'll probably stick to day hikes and drive around a lot so I can see as much possible. I might do a short overnight backcountry hike, but it's harder to do that in Yellowstone because you have to reserve your campsite ahead of time in person and the strong grizzly bear presence means you have to take a lot more precautions. Regardless, I'll report back if I get and good pics in Yellowstone.

[Badger]

Nice TR. I'm glad you enjoyed it. 5 days is a long time to spend by yourself. I've never done a solo trip but want to sometime in the not too distant future.

[4thstreetpete]

thanks for posting, this is great. I would love to do something like this, been thinking a lot about it.

Really stupid question from a newbie, do you carry anything to protect you from bears? I'm scared to death of them.