brdgt | Hellroaring Creek (Reply)

We left off when we finally reached an area flat enough to camp on. Luckily, it was an unofficial backcountry site with a bear pole and everything.

It was a beautiful morning:

We had come down this slope the night before:

And the Hellroaring Creek was just as impressive the next morning:

Nick checked out the water situation:

Him looking up at me:

Despite the steep, rocky slope it was our best spot for water, so we filtered a bunch.

And washed a few things, including ourselves:

Then we got back to the camp to find a visitor!

He was panting, the poor thing...

We spent the day hiking parallel to the Hellroaring creek, going through wildflower filled meadows and shady wooded spots:

And a mudslide:

For lunch we stopped at an illegal backcountry site overlooking the creek:

Where Will and Jason flipped a coin for he last chicken, salsa, and cheese wrap from the day before. You find ways to entertain yourself...

I found a nice little perch to watch them skip stones:

And have our second animal spotting of the day - a Marmot! He was rather fascinated by our stone skipping:

So I decided to try it too:

After that we left the Beartooth Wilderness:

And entered back into the Park (a note, never, ever did we see signs when we entered Montana or returned to Wyoming - apparently park boundaries are more important than state ones!). The sign had seen better days...

We continued along the creek for the rest of the afternoon:

In the distance you can see the Buffalo Plateau that we hiked two days earlier:

We crossed over Hellroaring to get to our campsite for the evening, which was off of a little spur and right on Coyote Creek:

The site was beautiful - in a meadow with a shaded brook on one side and a hillside on the other, with lots of ground squirrels in between.

In fact, I'm pretty sure one of those ground squirrels took my comb!

I had had it out because I did a creekside hair "washing"

I had to change pants because I got waste water from cleaning my food bowl on my hiking pants (which means I could no longer keep them in the tent). Luckily I had brought my running pants as an underlayer - see my gear post about that!)

There were lots of butterflies:

That night we ATE ALL OF THE THINGS, so we didn't have to carry them the next, our final, day.

We were pretty darn hungry. In fact, I can't tell you how long it takes you to recover the calorie loss that happens on these trips. There is just no way you can eat enough calories to recover what you burn. Your body is building so much muscle, it's not just the cardio.