Now this was one hell of a day. It rained most of last night so everything was wet so I slept in, rolling out of the tent about 8:30am. Fortunately it was sunny so I let my gear dry out and didn’t hit the trial until 11:00am. The road needed to dry out, too, or I wasn’t going anywhere with all that sticky mud. The jeep trail deteriorated into an ATV trail with lots of ups and downs and creek crossings and deadfalls so I could only ride about 20% of the time – 80% I was pushing up steep hills, easing my bike and trailer down steeper hills, mushing across flats and mud bogs.
It was rough going and after a few hours of this slogging I started to question the wisdom of following this trail. However, I kept pushing forward because I didn’t want to turn back. Some of the hills, while not long, were so steep that I could barely make it up, pushing on the handlebar end with one hand, pulling on the back of the seat with the other, and cursing the weight of the boat anchor (trailer)! Then it started to drizzle and I’m slip-sliding all over the place. The terrain was through thick alpine forest sometimes, rocky meadows at others, and at one point I’m sure I disturbed a bear which sounded like a car crashing through trees. I rang my bike bell every few minutes to make noise…and carefully took the trigger guard off the can of bear repellent that I kept within easy reach right in the corner of my handlebar bag.
Finally after about 5 hours of this I came to trail’s end, or rather where the trail is supposed to cross the Gros Ventre River, which was impossibly swollen with melting snowpack. Hmm…what to do…I could not contemplate going back through several hours of hell, then 35 miles to Kelly. The mosquitoes were so bad I had to slather on the insect repellent every 20 minutes or so. I think the flies had given up. Ok, so here I am in the middle of this meadow, stuck at the bank of the very swollen Green River, wondering what to do. I climbed a small bluff nearby to look for a place where I could cross, and upstream about 500 meters the river widened a bit and I thought I might be able to wade and/or swim across. I envision one trip with my bike…a second trip with my trailer…and a third trip with my dry bag. However, the consequences of losing my bike or trailer were unthinkable, much less being swept downstream and drowning.
So, I get out the USGS maps again, and spot a wilderness guest ranch (Darwin Ranch http://www.darwinranch.com/) upstream about 2 miles away. There were two trails that crossed the river, one marked BR 8160 which I figured was a bridge, so I went back up the hill from the Green River and followed the trail, which at this point was just a cattle trail. After another hour of pushing and pulling my bike and fighting the mosquito swarm I spotted the ranch in the distance…yay! More pushing and pulling and a few meters of riding and I arrive at a cattle gate into a mostly flooded pasture. I stick close to the wooden stock fence as the cattle trail continued uphill around a bluff, then follow a small stream through the pasture to avoid the hill going up the bluff. I had to go around two or three lagoons when I finally spotted the handrails to a bridge! The problem was that most of the pasture was underwater from the swollen river…but it was grassy and I had good footing so I waded through ankle-deep water to get to what I saw was a small footbridge. At one point the water was waist deep but that part was only about a meter wide so I took a leap and made it across, the trailer following obediently along.
Well this was much more than I bargained for when I mapped out my route connecting the Gros Ventre and Green rivers, but I made it to the guest ranch fat and happy so I started singing “Dippidy-Do-Dah” to myself. There were a few people around in the distance, but they didn’t pay me any mind so I just hit the blessedly dry gravel way and made my way uphill out of the river basin. I spend almost half the day traveling about eight miles…and I still had a long way to reach my intended campground. I ended up making camp about 9pm and I sure felt like the KING.
