2025 CDT, Day 4 - July 6, 2025

TWO OCEAN PASS; Convergence of Pacific Creek and Atlantic Creek

Pinnacle Buttes near Brook Lake, Shoshone NF, WY

First solid night of sleep I’ve had for a while. Beau seems to have acclimated to sleeping on the floor at night although I let him up on the bed the rest of the time (so I can move about the trailer). Made my coffee and sat down to my phone to find 2 bars! Wahoo! Got some posting done right away (sorry, not enough to upload photos) and got a “checking in - I’m okay” message from Runningbird. It’s a bright sun shiny day. Hopefully not too hot. She will be hiking between 8,000 and 9,000 feet in the Teton Wilderness with plenty of creek crossings.

For Beau and I it was pretty much just hanging around Hatchet Campground and taking walks up the forest road behind it. The spring flowers are all in bloom and it was a nice uphill trek out with some intermittent avoiding of some quad ATV scrambling up and down the dirt road. I did find that if I walked up the main highway a short bit I could pick up a second bar and I made good use of it to watch Runningbird’s progress. By midday I noticed a slowing of her progress and I started to consider the weight of her pack, the elevation nearing 10,000 feet, the heat of the day, and her cracked or bruised rib. From there I made an executive decision to leave Hatchet Campground in the morning and haul the trailer up to the Brook Lake Campground closer to where she would be just in case she wasn’t feeling so great or needed anything. Our next scheduled meeting spot would not be for another 60 miles after that and I would be way out of position down there. I would need to go way west, then south below Jackson, WY, and then east before going back up north again to get to Green River Lake. Getting there would include a 2-hour traverse of a 19-mile dirt road. So, I shot out a text to her to let her know my intention just in case she got cell service and might check.

Later in the afternoon I saw that her pace had picked up considerably and she was still hiking into the evening. At one point she had left the main trail and was on a side route that would take her down the mountain towards a lodge near the highway. This really got my attention. Then I checked the FarOut App and saw that, right where she left the trail at a turn, there was a comment by a previous hiker about how easy it was to miss the turn on the main trail. I kept watching trying to decide what was going on. And then I kept on watching. Of course, if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you would know that it’s easy for me to jump to conclusions. Eventually she turned around and got herself back up on the main trail and was making fast tracks to a nice water spot on a creek with good campsites. Now I’ll rest easy and get up early to make sure I’m in position to make the rendezvous.