The last time I visited with my Grandma before she died from a long bout with colon cancer she said that I was a “searcher”.  I was fifteen years old at the time and didn’t have a clue what she meant; I probably thought my Grandma who I adored had lost her mental capabilities in her poor health.

A decade later I shouldered my backpack and aimed my well worn hiking boots for the farthest spot away from a road in the lower 48 states.  The spot is located in the SE corner of Yellowstone and the surrounding wilderness area, Teton (not to be confused with Grand Teton National Park).  For thirteen days I was humbled by the rugged wild country, spooked up a plethora of wildlife including a grizzly, chilled mentally and physically by the swelled rivers I had to ford, climbed over snow covered mountain passes, and discovered immense solitude.  Never before had what my Grandmother said made so much sense – no doubt I am a searcher, a searcher for wild beautiful country.

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I got dropped off at the empty trailhead from a gregarious family who were on a massive road trip all the way up to Alaska’s northern tip.  I told them to say hi to a ranger friend of mine when they reached Denali which I just recently found out that they actually did.  Not smoke signals but a similar form of communication.  I hiked along Yellowstone Lake and reached the marshes that formed as a result of the Yellowstone River emptying into the lake.  Wildlife was thick with elk, deer, pelicans, swans, hawks, and humans were scant.  Bald eagles were in healthy abundance along the rivers and I had the luck to watch one that was perched on a rock along a small creek hop in and float with wings spread on the surface, however it didn’t emerge with the fish it was going for.  I followed in the foot steps of grizzly bear and wolf which left their tracks in the muddy trail.  Right after I watched an elk with massive antlers, I found a giant intact rack right on the banks of the river with an eagle feather lying next to it.  Surely a good omen.

Yellowstone National Park is America’s first national park designated in 1872.  However some major tourist roads carve up the park and none is designated as wilderness, much of the backcountry is some of the wildest and best wildlife habitat we have in our country.  Directly surrounding the Park are seven different National Forest wilderness areas.  One of those is the Teton Wilderness which was designated in 1964 and covers over half a million acres.  Together with Grand Teton National Park and the Wind River Range farther south, this area makes up the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, some of the healthiest land we have left in America.

I split off the Yellowstone drainage and followed the Thorofare River to the SE corner of the Park.  A mile or so before I hit the boundary with the Teton Wilderness, I spooked up a grizzly bear, probably very close to the actual spot farthest away from a road.  I was coming up on a small creek in thick timber and as I did hundreds of times throughout the day, I called out “hey bear” and clapped my wooden hiking sticks together to make noise so to let bears know of my presence and not spook them at close distance.  The instant I clapped my sticks together I saw the brown fur take off before I had time to freak out, thankfully it took off in the opposite direction.

To get across the Thorofare River I had to either swim in the raging freezing water or hike up to the headwaters to a spot I could ford.  I choose the latter and managed to ford across the still powerful waters that came up to my waist.  Crossing the rivers was the part of my trip that freaked me out the most; the waters were running high from lots of rain in the early summer on top of a significant winter snowpack.  Once across the Thorofare there was no trail till I got back to the Yellowstone confluence so I had to travel cross country that was littered with downed timber probably from the 1988 massive wildfire, thick with young pine trees, and marshlands.  I took one bad fall in the downed timber where I was surprised not to hear my leg snap like a twig.  I walked away from it unscathed but shook up mentally and scolded myself to be more careful.  I had never felt so “out there” before and fragile.  I was reading “Grizzly Years” by Doug Peacock (who Ed Abbey based his character George Hayduke after) and it was the perfect book to read on my trip, yet Doug spoke of Grizzly attacks, drowning in swelled mountain rivers, and hard bushwhacking, words that kept me a little more jittery at night when trying to fall asleep or think about the rivers I needed to ford the following day.

I did make it back safety to the Yellowstone River at Hawks Rest and ran into the first people I had seen in five days.  I headed up the Yellowstone drainage and managed another hard crossing near its headwaters and then started the climb up to the Continental Divide.  Storm clouds lingered in the distance and my cold wet feet made me debate whether or not to attempt the climb over the snow covered mountains.  However I went for it and was rewarded with a remarkable view of the valley I had come from and the valley I was heading.  The first lake I had considered camping near was still completely frozen over and above tree line so I dropped down to Crater Lake that had just thawed out and had a good spot for my small camp setup.  I decided to rest up the next day so I stayed up late huddled around my campfire in the below freezing temps.  Not until I was about to put down my book and head for bed did I realize it was the forth of July and I was spending it in one of the most incredible places in America.

While relaxing after a cold swim in the lake, a bunch of guys from Idaho on pack animals came up to the lake to fish.  After chatting with them a bit they offered to leave me a few fish they caught, but then when they were about to leave they said I should just come down to their camp for elk steaks instead.  I of course took them up on the offer and it reminded me of the kind folks in Utah on a mountain biking trip who had also invited me to dinner in their camp.  The elk steaks were amazing, as well as the cutthroat trout that they had caught only a few hours earlier, and to top it off peach cobbler for desert.  The guys were not traveling light and with pack animals you don’t have to.  However the trails bear witness to all the pack animals, majority coming during the fall hunting season resulting in some areas having 5 rutted out trails side by side.  However after the satisfying meal I pondered the idea of traveling like Evertt Ruess with a pack animal, however hitch hiking with one would probably be a bit of a challenge.

With a full happy belly I decided to choose my more ambitious route of going back north and finishing up my trip by coming out of Yellowstone.  Up on the plateau I could see the majestic Grand Tetons off in the distance.  The last two mornings I got up with the sun and put on my frozen boots to get an early start so that I could make sure I made the final river crossings before they swelled higher from the afternoon snowmelt.  However, neither the Snake nor the Heart River gave me any challenge and I coasted my way to Heart Lake.  For the icing on the cake, on the final morning hike out I found a hot creek that was flowing out of some thermal pools that I was able to kick back and soak in.  I pondered how far I had come, the majestic landscapes and wildlife that I viewed, the obstacles I overcome, and what a hell of a good trip I had.

See photos and wildlife video clips at http://picasaweb.google.com/nickdobric/YellowstoneTetonWilderness#