SEPTEMBER 3

BUFFALO CAMP TO SUMMIT LAKE, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Over the past four days we’ve covered a little over 40 miles on foot along the Centennial Mountains, crossed back and forth between Montana and Idaho, and into the Targhee National Forest and Yellowstone National Park.

Moments ago I was sitting on a sunbleached log on the edge of Summit Lake in full sun with a cool breeze. But rats, clouds have come over to hide the sun and the breeze is now cold. I’ve retreated to my cozy tent to complete this entry.

We drove into the Targhee National Forest in our 4WD Hondas on a forest service road normally open only to snowmobiles in the winter. Our guide to the boundary of Yellowstone is Robin Jenkins, Recreation Technician for the Ashton-Island Park Ranger District of the Targhee. Our hike with Robin includes a steep climb up a lave boulder slope and some interesting information about the Yellowstone burn in the late 1980’s, which Robin saw and tried to put out just after it started, and the monstrous volcanic explosion that formed Island Park. Rob quips, something to the effect, “did you happen to see that too?” (We do have a good time together and with those that we meet along the way.) At the Park boundary we’re turned loose - our first time without a guide. However, Stephen, from the Support Team is along to make sure that we behave. A note about Stephen, he’s our youngest member at 18 but a remarkably mature, capable young man I feel fortunate to have met. My only problem with Stephen is his darn long legs - gads, can that guy set a pace!

The Summit Lake Trail is narrow, flat, and only marked with occasional signs of horse traffic and small orange snowmobile markers placed about 8 feet up on trees. The burned trees are not as starkly beautiful as those under Scapegoat Mountain but still an interesting landscape. At a glance the area looks barren of all but dead standing and fallen trees. But stopping to look there are multitudes of small trees, bunch grass and gray and shiny black lava rocks decorating the recovering landscape. We pass a large area of dried-up smelly sulfurous mud flats and pots just before reaching Summit Lake. It has been a warm day, a long hike (7.5 miles) after a late night, and all of us are tired, thirsty and glad to reach our permit campsite (EO1). We almost miss the camp as the signs look like the snowmobile markers, are facing away from us, and as far as we can tell is the only campsite on the lake. Again we are in bear country so the first chore is to hoist all of our food and cosmetic stuff (like toothpaste) up on a 12-foot pole. With best intentions I go out to the lake to write in my Journal. But, as I mentioned above am driven back to my tent - where I fall asleep until dinner as does EVERYONE else. We have an early “gourmet” dinner of freeze-dried food, watch the sunset in pale lavender, silver and gold against a passing parade of clouds, sit shortly around a small fire and then turn in early listening to bull elks bugling in the forest around us. From the Journey, dana