The Back Country
Have you ever wanted to do something that would be an experience of a lifetime? This is exactly what happened to me this past august, where my two friends Eric, Scott and I road-tripped to Yellowstone National Park for a back packing expedition, where I learned to be persistent and to never give up.
After we entered the East entrance of Yellowstone we had anticipated this moment for 21 enduring hours. The main road through Yellowstone took us on a scenic route that seemed like the landscape progressively became more unique and beautiful than the previous site. With the sun setting, we had to hurry to the one campsite that was nearest to our trail entrance. We luckily found a spot, and it took us awhile to set up camp due to the stars because they were too incredible and unbelievable, when I first looked at them. Around 6:30 a.m. the next day, I sluggishly woke up in a trance, ate some oat meal, packed and double checked my gear accordingly into my rucksack (giant backpack), so my gear would fit right and after we had all done that we begun our journey.
The first leg of the journey was spent climbing up a 35% incline on a five-mile windy path. It wasn’t until the first couple of miles I realized this was really going to test my physical endurance and at that point I said to everyone “Why did I agree to this?” When we neared the top, the path was positioned along the edge of the cliff, which was a sheer drop off and freighting to look at. From the result of four hours of continuous climbing, we reached the summit of the mountain, and I effectively never been so exhausted in my life, where my hips had needle and pin feelings due to the weight of the rucksack. Unfortunately, with ten miles left, we couldn’t rest tool long, or we wouldn’t make it to camp before dark. The rest of the hike was amazing because not only was it downhill, but the scenery was a vast open plane with blooming flowers covering every inch and the occasional screech of a hawk nearby. Though the path was narrow, it was difficult to look up without walking off trail, which was very taunting.
We finally arrived at our first campsite or T1 was technically the camps name. We set up camp in a triangle fashion, which had the tent up wind and 50 yards from both the fire and the hung backpacks. Setting up each station was assigned for a person, which kept things moving efficiently.
The second day of hiking, I took point this time and as we were walking by a river bank I spotted about a 500 pond grizzly bear coming up the river bank with a fish. We all froze in alarm to the site of a bear and then noticed it was pre-occupied with the fish because it hardly looked at us. Venturing on we came across our first traveler who went by Josh. We were the first people he had seen in six days! My friends agreed to hike with Josh to his campsite, which was good for all of us because it gave us something to talk about. Walking with a new person was a nice change because it
