Rafting the Yellowstone River

Carole had booked a rafting trip down the Yellowstone River for us for one day. We chose the longer trip that included a riverside buffet lunch along the way. The weather was, as with our whole trip, perfect. The skies were mainly clear and the area where we were rafting was at a relatively low elevation, so the temperatures got up into the very low 80s. The water temperature was also a very bearable 65, so that wasn't a problem. We were used to water about that same temperature when we go snorkeling and canoeing in the springs of Florida.

We chose the Flying Pig outfit to host our trip. They were one of several in Gardiner Montana, and we liked their trip description the best. We got up early and headed into Gardiner and soon found the outfitters and got changed into T-shirts and swim trunks for the journey. We went through a simple instruction bit and then we all climbed down the steep set of stairs in the riverbank down to our rafts.

We were on our way!


Looking down on the Yellowstone River from Gardiner. We were pretty high above the banks and had to climb way down there to get to the rafts.

Carole and Andy and our river guide, Anna, who is from Australia.

An osprey that we encountered just as the float trip began.

I snapped this one to show one of the other rafts and the typical scenery all along the 18-mile trip.

Anna let Andy take the oars for a bit. He looks like a natural!

Looking ahead toward the mountains. The river was getting slowly pinched in by the canyon.

This is LaDuke Springs, a hot spring that flows down into the Yellowstone River. The water here was really hot! Scalding!

Andy and me standing in front of the terraces at LaDuke Hot Spring for a portrait.

Dome Mountain rises ahead of us on the river.

The skies in Montana are a brilliant, clear blue.

I took this composite shot at the point where we stopped to eat lunch.

We came across this huge raft of ducks just as we were preparing to disembark for lunch.

The place where we climbed up the bank to eat. We had buffet style lunch--sandwiches, drinks, salad, and beans, cookies, etc. It was very filling!

Our guide, Anna, Carole and Andy.

Anna took this of the crew on her raft (with my camera).

The canyon gets really narrow at this point.

I looked back to take a photo of the other raft coming down a series of rapids we'd just gone through.

This was the most fun I had. Toward the end of the trip I hopped out and rode some mild rapids just floating along in my life vest. I was smiling, but riding the river that way was very tiring!

Soon after this we came to the take out point and went ashore. The bus from the Flying Pig was there to pick us up and take us back into Gardner. We had a great time! Carole always books this kind of side-trip for us on our vacations, and we always have a blast!

I Bag Mount Washburn

I wanted to bag another 10,000-foot peak, so I tried to pick one that was pretty easy. Everyone hikes Mount Washburn, I'd heard. A lot of people tried to warn me away from it because it has an actual road going to the top and a live-in fire tower on the summit (one of the last such fire towers around) and it can get pretty crowded.

But I didn't let those things bug me. I'm new to the whole western mountain hiking scene so even if it wasn't the best and most isolated peak, it would still be impressive to me. So I went for bagging this one, realizing that I might not get another chance to hike a third summit on the trip. Carole and Andy wanted to do some other hikes in the valleys and a raft trip--I had to pick a mountain and go for it. Mount Washburn ended up being my choice.

Following is a brief photo album of my hike to the top of Washburn. It's not the biggest peak in the park, and the things other people had said about it were certainly true. But it was just my second 10,000-foot peak so it was a prize to me.

I chose to have Carole drop me off at the parking area at the end of the gravel Chittendon Road. This took a lot of climbing off for me and put me within three miles of the summit. The "trail" here is actually a road that the rangers and Quest Phone company use for access to the tower and the communications equipment on the top of the mountain. Indeed, at one point along the trail I heard a familiar sound from behind and turned to see a Quest Company pickup truck rolling up the slope. I walked to the side of the road to take photos of some flowers and let it pass. Yeah, that was a bummer.

The peak off in the distance with the nub on top is the summit of Mount Washburn. It was a long way off, but the grade was easy. I kept looking along the sides of the trail for wildlife, but nothing was showing its face. I'd heard that there were lots of female Bighorn sheep, but after a few miles I'd seen nothing at all--not even a marmot.

I was getting closer to the top. The forests were giving way to meadows and I was really looking for sign of sheep.

The road switchbacks along the ridge, making for a very gentle grade and a really easy hike. The forests all along this part of the mountain were dead. I've heard the pine beetles have decimated the woods and the stories were true. Vast swaths of forest land are just standing ruin. Much like the destruction of our hemlocks here in the East.

I was almost at the summit when I took this shot. This was the trail down to the main park road far below. I would hike to the other end on this trail/road to meet Carole later in the day.

Some guys from North Carolina took this photo of me with my camera. My second 10K foot peak!

Below the fire tower on the top is a glassed-in room where you can sit to get away from inclement weather. It was just a bit cool and breezy up there the day I was on the top, but I can see where it would be good to have such shelter in snow or electric storms. This little ground squirrel came in under the door to beg for food. I didn't give him anything. Because I'd started the trip early, there weren't a lot of people on the mountain yet. This was to change drastically as I made my way down the mountain.
As I began to descend the peak I came to some spots where you can see that, while Washburn is easy to hike, it does have some very rugged sections. And off in the distance you can see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Looking back up at the fire tower and phone communications equipment.

I really liked the hike down. Lots of impressive cliffs and outcrops of stone.

Time for a self-portrait looking back at the summit area and fire tower.

Down below the scenery was great. The mountain on the other side of the road is Dunraven Mountain. I wish I'd have had the time to bag that one. It would be a simple hike from the road to the summit.

This was one of the flocks of Bighorn sheep I saw from the trail.

Unfortunately there were no males. The flock was made up of ewes and kids.

The closer I got to the end of the trail, the more people I began to see. By the time I made the parking lot there was an almost constant stream of people making the long climb to the top. This made me very happy that I'd started my hike at 8:00 am and had avoided the crowds.

One last really good view back toward the ridges of Mount Washburn as I approached the parking lot at the road.

And right at the end I was rewarded with this really fantastic view of Dunraven! What a cool mountain! Next time I go I'll have to take the short walk up from the road to the top. It looks like it has some really good views!

Pickle

As I've grown older I've lost touch with most of my old friends and relatives. What few pals I still have I keep up with via the Internet. It's a strange way to communicate, and because of this I sometimes dredge up memories that haven't seen the light of my eyes for decades. One of my online friends was writing about some of the really strange conversations he's had in strip joints and I was reminded of the poor working class world from which I came and in which we all seem to be stuck since our nation was turned over to a mental retard from 2000 through 2008.

At any rate, it was something I hadn't thought of in many, many years, and everything about the recollection of that memory is strange to me. Would it have occurred to me if I had still had friends to whom I conversed in person? Or was it something uniquely triggered by a long-distance conversation via the Internet.

I should say right here that this happened during my high school days. I attended a school in the mountains of northern Georgia in a place called Gilmer County in a village known as Ellijay. It was the basis for the setting of James Dickey's book and film DELIVERANCE. Yeah, I lived among those people for about four years, and I have to tell you that James Dickey had them righteously down.

Well, for what it's worth, here's that memory:


I once knew a guy named John Pickle. Yep, that was John's real name. His family was dirt-poor, but John was a funny kid and laughing most of the time, or making the rest of us guys laugh. He was a little younger than I was when I met him--I was 15, he was 14. So he had a year to go before he--like all poor kids in Gilmer County in them thar days--would quit school (Georgia allowed you to legally quit school on your 15th birthday, which almost everyone in the mountains did).

One day John Pickle did not show up for school. Next day, too. Day after that. Days stretched into a week, then two. Finally, he showed up. His head had been shaved and he was really, really thin. He'd lost a lot of weight. He'd never had any weight to lose, really, in the first place.

He was smiling but wasn't his old self. No laughs. No jokes. I asked him where he'd been.

"My dad shot me," he told me.

This took a moment to compute. I thought it was one of his jokes. But he wasn't laughin'.

"No way," I said.

"Yeah, he shot me."

Fuck.

"Where did he shoot you?"

John pulled his shirt down a bit and showed me the wound. It went through his trapezius muscle not far above his collar bone. Small hole on the front of his torso, much bigger one on the far side. Pink scar tissue. The bullet had gone through without hitting bone, nor organs, but had sliced some vein or something. He told me he'd lost a lot of blood.

"It didn't hurt all that much," he said. But he'd collapsed from loss of blood and shock.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"I was running from the old man. And I was hiding behind his pulp wood truck and I thought he was gone so I popped my head up to make sure. And that's when he got me. He was trying to shoot me in the head, but he missed."

Shit.

Haven't thought about that in years.

John attended school the rest of that year, but as soon as he turned 15 he quit and went to work in one of the mills.

I don't recall him being very funny after the shooting. That might have just been me. Hard to say.

Avalanche Peak: 10,568 feet above sea level.

High on my list of things to do in Yellowstone National Park was to try to bag at least a couple of peaks that are over 10K feet above sea level. And I very much wanted to get at least one that was over 11,000 feet when we got to Grand Tetons. Although both parks are packed with peaks in that range (and over), many of them are parts of multi-day treks. Since Carole and Andy were with me and don't like to hike, I knew that I'd have to stick to day hikes to bag the peaks. So I picked out several that looked like easy to bag summits within a day.

My limitations turned out to be the road system in Yellowstone. Because of the low speed limits you can't really drive very fast (and shouldn't want to do so). Add to this the fact that there are often various traffic delays and it's even harder to get around the park. The Obama administration has sent a lot of funds to the National Parks to take care of the abuse and neglect that they suffered during the W. Moron Bush years. This meant that several of the roads in the Park were under construction and this caused detours and delays in excess of 30 minutes in getting from Point A to Point B.

The morning that I chose to hike the first peak on my list, Avalanche Peak, I didn't take into account the great distance from the lodging we were using, and the guidebook I was using had some just plain bad information in it that caused us to miss the trail head. Thus we overshot the location and drove past it needlessly and into a traffic jam caused by a road improvement project. By the time I figured out what was wrong we had to sit pass through the jam, then turn around and pass through it again. Thus, I ended up at the trail more than an hour later than I had intended. Instead of starting my hike at 9:30 am, I wasn't able to get started until a little after 11:00 am.

As I got ready to hike, Andy decided that the cut he'd gotten on the sole of his right foot the previous day was just too severe to allow him to hike. So he elected to stay at the car while I went ahead. It's supposedly really not a good idea to enter the back country alone, because of the presence of grizzly bears. Andy and I had just seen a griz shortly before we arrived at the trailhead. But the bear took off into a ravine and vanished as soon as it was aware of us. So that was a good sign that the griz really didn't want anything to do with me.

Still, looking at the warning at the beginning of the trail didn't do much for my confidence. "Don't travel alone" was the first warning there. In addition, I had just accidentally hit myself with pepper spray while checking out my bear spray! My thumb hit the button when I was checking the plastic safety on the bottle and I found my left hand covered in burning hot spray and some of it on my right eyebrow! Oh, joy. Luckily there was a creek at hand and I washed the stuff off. It's pretty potent crap and I can see how it can fend off bears. Deciding that the views and the experience would be worth the risk, I headed up, leaving Andy at the car to explore the picnic area and environs and listen to satellite radio.

The trail was, as advertised, pretty steep to begin. But nothing I hadn't experienced in the East. In fact, the trails in Yellowstone are so well maintained that they're like vast graded boulevards in contrast to the National Forest trails I'm accustomed to using. In addition, the air out west is so dry that I didn't suffer the long ordeals of sweating that I have to contend with here in the South. I hiked up that mountain relatively sweat-free!

At about 9000 feet I came out of the forest and onto the tree line. The trail flattened out and I was rewarded with a fantastic view of the bowl below the summits of Avalanche Peak! It was fantastic! I stopped there to get out my tripod and take many photos. After a short while another hiker appeared and we talked. His name was Russ Snider and he was from Colorado. He asked if he could join me and so we ended up hiking to the summit together and taking the unofficial loop trail down the peak and back to the Avalanche Peak Trail. One thing that I had originally wanted to do was bag Hoyt Peak in the same hike, but I was really low on water by that time and I was also worried about leaving Andy alone at the parking area any more. Five hours alone waiting for me was plenty, I figured. So Russ and I decided not to hike Hoyt Peak and pushed on down to the road.

It was for views like this that I went to Yellowstone! I was amazed!

The views from Avalanche were amazing. And I realized in an instant why the western hikers/backpackers/climbers who I encounter always have a jaded opinion of the mountains of the East and South. Yeah, we have some tough terrain in this neck of the woods, but what the high country of the eastern USA lacks is a true vastness and a sense of real wilderness. Our wild country is just so small and contained in comparison to that of the West.

On the summit ridge of my first 10K-foot mountain, Avalanche Peak.

After exchanging email addresses with Russ, Andy and I headed back to our cabin and Old Faithful Inn to get in some more day hiking elsewhere in the Park. But the experience of bagging my first over 10K-foot peak was under my belt! It was all that I had hoped it would be!


View from the summit of Avalanche Peak.

Becoming a Fan Favorite (The Talent of No Talent and Ass-Kissing)

OK.

I'll try to be as objective as possible in writing this bit.

As a writer I can't help but notice the career path of some other authors. And if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know my general opinion of other writers.

One thing that has baffled me is the (relative) popularity of writers who have no talent at all. Now, I will admit that "talent" is a subjective topic. It's largely a matter of opinion, but just bear with me. I've been writing for a long time and I've been critically following genre literature for decades. In the days when I wrote an opinion column about weird fiction, I was generally respected for my commentary, opinion though it was.

What I've realized is that some writers caught a certain wave at a particular point and were able to ride it for a long time, thus building up a loyal fan base. Perhaps they wrote a serial killer novel when such books were new and fresh and they were lucky enough to have their work appear on the shelves at just the right time. Or maybe they wrote a zombie novel back in the days when there was a desire for these things and not a lot of supply. They could have penned a vampire novel or a time travel romance or even a vampire-time-travel-romance or...well, whatever the flavor-of-the-year may have been when there just weren't a lot of that particular sub-genre to be had.

Then they flogged that horse to death and hopped on another mount and flogged that one.

It happens. I could name a number of such writers, but to be diplomatic I'll refrain from mentioning names.

The second part of the puzzling success of such no-talents lies with their abilities to network and to schmooze. An integral part of the networking lies in the talent to speak to other writers and editors and critics without saying anything at all to piss off any of them. Basically, this is borne out by keeping opinions completely private, or voicing only popularly held opinions. Dishonesty and boot-licking is at a premium and in display. And, of course, once the fan base is established, the author must dance like a fool or stand in one place like a vegetable to keep from saying or doing anything at all to displease that (probably) tenuous following.

It's all part of creating and keeping the "brand". This is exactly how a certain writer I sometimes encounter on the Internet referred to himself. He's a "brand". And, in a disgusting sort of way, I reckon that he is, indeed, a brand. His work is bland and vacuous, his only political statements are inanities like 'support the troops', 'I love Jesus', and such, and he never misses a chance to kiss the right ass.

Okay. I failed utterly in trying to remain objective. I couldn't do it. It's just too damned hard to remain objective when witnessing this kind of prostitution. Oh, well. I did try.

It's when watching such examples of calculated idiocy that I despair, just a bit How to do this when you hold many unpopular ideas and embrace philosophies that are at odd with the mainstream?

I guess I'll find out as the months progress. I'll do my best, but I won't kiss any ass. It just ain't in my nature.

The Day of the Big Hike

It was time to get up so that we could get an early start for the big hike to the summit of Avalanche Peak. I wanted to wake up early, get dressed, and drive to the trail head to get in a full day of walking!

Come on Andy! Get up! Wakey wakey! Rise and shine!!

Cram it, old man!

Later that day, in Lamar Valley...

Hey! You didn't take a picture of me while I was scratching my ass, did you??!!

I would never do that! And even if I did, I wouldn't post that photo of William Andrew Smith of Charlotte North Carolina on the world wide web for everyone to see, including your pals and your girlfriend.

Rescued Swallow

One of the first hot springs we visited was a really nice one called "Old Caliente". It was a classic hot spring. It boiled and bubbled and splashed and steamed and flowed down a terrace into a cold river.

Here I am standing in front of Old Caliente.

As we wandered around the place, Andy was curious if you could wade into the river below the hot spring terrace and find a spot where the boiling spring water mixed with the icy cold river water and made for some warm temperatures just right for soaking one's feet. So he pulled off his shoes and went in, finding just such a comfort zone. (This was days before we visited Boiling River.)

After a while, another tourist pointed out something in the water. "Is that a turtle?" the guy asked Andy. Since Andy was already wading around in the water, he shuffled over to see what it was. It was stuck in the water weeds well out in the river where the water was frigidly cold--about 50 degrees or so. Bending over, Andy saw that it wasn't a turtle, but the head of a little bird--a swallow--just sticking up. The little guy was about half-drowned and struggling to keep its beak above water.

So Andy picked it up, carefully cradled it in his hands and brought it ashore.

These swallows are bug-eaters. I think what happened was that it was diving, or maybe skimming along the river and just fell in. And it got stuck in the weeds. You aren't supposed to muck about with the wildlife, but we made an exception. The little fellow (or gal) was almost totally exhausted. It could barely pick up its head from having tried to keep from drowning for who knows how long before Andy found it.

We ended up putting it in the meadow beside a log so that it could recuperate (hopefully) and get itself airborne again. In retrospect, maybe we should have taken it to the car and held it in front of the heater vent for a while, but as I said you're really not supposed to mess with the wildlife in the park. We had already done enough to get ourselves in trouble, I reckon.

But I'd like to think we saved the little bird so that it could hunt bugs and live longer.


The tiny bird was totally exhausted from trying to keep its head above water in the terribly cold river. I hope it recovered. It could barely keep its eyes open while Andy was holding it.

Moon

I was playing around with the telephoto lens on the new camera trying to figure it out and experiment with the various settings. Finally, I found a way to take some decent shots of the night sky.

Yeah, now I'm looking in to buying some more powerful telephoto lenses and a more solid tripod for the camera.

The Moon, not quite full.

Working hard on the novel. Pushing to make the deadline.

Some great news! Lower birth rates!

Da Boilin' River

On the 18th of August, when we were staying at Mammoth Hot Springs, we took a little side trail early in the morning that led down the Gardner River to a spot known as "The Boiling River". This is actually a hot spring that bleeds off of the Mammoth hot springs that pours out of the earth adjacent to the Gardner. If you pick your spot just so, the scalding water from the hot spring mixes perfectly with the frigid waters of the Gardner River to give one excellent hot soaking water. While the spot is not on any official listing, it's widely known by--apparently--every tourist around, and is extremely popular. If you want to enjoy the place, I suggest doing as we did and rising early, getting a good parking spot in the lot, and hiking the half-mile graded trail to the springs.

We did just that and when we arrived there were only about eight or ten people in the Boiling River. And the water flowing into the Gardner River really is scalding hot. So you can burn yourself if you're not careful. Stay out of the stream flowing out of the spring and just feel your way along the Gardner to a point that's just right. People have formed pools along the bank that are perfect for sitting and just enjoying the muscle-massaging currents of the fast flowing, very warm water! We had a great time here and spent almost two hours just taking it easy.

If the water gets too hot for you, all you have to do is float out toward the center of the Gardner a few feet and you're suddenly in icy-cold water! I did this a couple of times. Very sobering!

This was the nice, level, graded trail to Boiling River. Easy walking!

Andy and Carole crossing a small footbridge along the trail.

Semi-arid terrain along the icy cold Gardner River.

Carole and Andy soaking in a perfect hot-spot!

This is where the Boiling River (actually spring run-off from the Mammoth Hot Springs a few miles away) runs into the Gardner River. Stay out of the channel on the left--it's scalding hot!

Me and Carole soaking in a pool that European kid behind us had constructed. I beat his kraut ass and took the pool from him. (Not really.)

Andy sitting on a huge boulder on the hike out. One of my regrets in life is that I was too busy and/or too poor to take Andy to places like this when he was a kid. Oh, well. Better late than never.