Trip Report: Yellowstone Nat. Park - Old Faithful to Lewis Lake; Day 1 of 3

Where we stopped for lunch on our first day

For about six months now my friend Geoff and I have been planning a trip to Yellowstone National Park. Originally we wanted to head back to the Tetons to experience another amazing trip as I reported on previously, but decided to hit a backcountry neither of us had experienced before. Geoff took the reins and planned a three day trip, scheduled just before we both start another semester at school.

Above is a map of the terrain we covered. We started at the Old Faithful area (tourist central), and ended up wrapping around the Shoshone Lake, and ended at the road next to Lewis Lake. In all we covered approximately 26 miles over three days. I'll be giving this trip report in three segments, one for each day on the trail.

Day 1: Mishaps and learning experiences
The first day started out simple enough. We spent the night before in a campsite inside the park in order to have an early start the next morning, and were able to get to the Ranger's office for our backcountry permit just after 8:00 a.m. Car camping the night before kind of messed with my head as we were still using our backpacks, yet enjoying the comforts (Elk steak cooked over a fire) of camping within a campground. It felt good to finally get on the trail and slowly start the 9 mile hike to our first backcountry site.

Geoff and Jordan pictured where we stopped for lunch the first day.

We ate lunch next to the river pictured at the top of this post, and enjoyed the solitude as we took our time eating and replenishing our water supply. The breeze felt great while sitting next to the water, and Geoff and I were tempted to get our fishing gear out in order to try catching something, but wanted to push forward since we still had plenty of miles to cover.

Geoff invited his brother in-law, Jordan, along with us, and I'm so glad he did. Geoff and I always have a blast, and Jordan only made it that much better. While I'm focused on keeping my pace up with both Jordan and Geoff, Jordan was actually reading and hiking at the same time! That guy cracked me up constantly as he has the type of personality where he is just naturally a funny guy.

Only about a mile into the hike I decided that I was done with my trekking poles (I've actually decided to only use them when snowshoeing from now on) as they seemed more annoying than useful. I think that I've tried to convince myself that I like them more than I do, and was happy to put them on my pack. At some point following lunch, one of the locks on my poles came loose and two of the three sections on one of my poles fell off. Since I was in back most of the hike, there is really no way of knowing when the poles came apart. This was the first mishap of the day...

By the time we got to Shoshone Lake all three of us were ready to be done for the day. We had to backtrack a little as we thought our campsite was on the opposite side of the cove, and when we did find our campsite we were a little surprised to find out that it was a good 200 yards from the actual trail itself. We were happy to see that we would be fairly secluded at our site instead of being right off of the trail (as it was in the Tetons), and appreciated that this is how backcountry sites are in Yellowstone.

We camped at 8R5 this first night after hiking past the OA's campsites.

When we got to our site I volunteered to filter enough water for all of our bottles, and was excited to use my filter again as it had been a couple of years since the last (and first) time I used it. I began pumping and pumping, thinking that it was taking longer than expected to fill up the six liter bladder I bought just for the trip. Frustrated, I screwed the filter on my Nalgene bottle so that I could see how fast it was filtering. I discovered that something serious was wrong with my filter, as it was only filtering a small trickle for every pump, and pushing the rest of the water back down the tube. After spending close to an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with it, I gave up and told Geoff that we would need to use his SteriPen until I could figure out what was wrong with my filter. Geoff whipped out his SteriPen, only to discover that the lithium batteries had failed him, and the pen was not working. Mishaps two and three...

We decided that we would just have to boil our water, even though doing so is inefficient on so many different levels.

Another section of the stream we hiked next to at various times

By the time we started to get our dinners ready the mosquitos were out on the hunt. It didn't take long before hundreds upon hundreds of mosquitos found our campsite, and were determined to make us as miserable as possible as we made dinner. Although I was smart enough to buy a bug net just before the trip, I thought that the little bottle of insect repellant (deet-free so it doesn't ruin your gear) I've had for a couple of years would do the trick. This is when I realized that deet substitutes just don't cut it. Mishap number four...

By the time we crawled into our sleeping bags I was pretty discouraged, and realized that I wasn't thinking right. Why would I get so worked up about my filter when I knew that we would be hiking fairly close to fresh water a few times each day of our trip? Why would I let a few small things mess up my head? This is when I realized a couple of important lessons: one - being with at least one other person in the backcountry will help you get a better perspective when things may go wrong (which Geoff did for me), and two - when fatigued from a long day's hike, it becomes much easier to become discouraged and to stop thinking straight.

What did I learn on this first day? When packing away trekking poles, make sure that all locks are tightly secured, and pack the poles upside down so that even if the locks aren't tight, there is no way that they will come apart. Also, bring a back-up filter cartridge and/or batteries for water - you can go weeks without food, but water is essential. Finally, when wanting to lighten the amount of weight you will be carrying on a backpacking trip, better forget leaving essential items at home, assuming that you wont need them (extra bug spray and, again, a way to filter your water).

I didn't take too many photos on this first day. Plenty more photos to come for days 2 and 3 though!

Meals for Day One:
Breakfast - Powdered Milk with Granola
Lunch - Mountain House Chicken Salad with tortillas
Dinner - Homemade spaghetti sauce (frozen, then thawed while on the trail) with Ramen Noodles.
Snacks - Snickers, dehydrated fruit rolls (actually yogurt that I dehydrated at home)
**As a side note, there is a quick fix to my filter, I was just too dumb to pay attention to the instructions when at home...and chose to foolishly leave the instructions behind.