Confident. Our morning at Boulder Brook dawned bright and cold. It was by far the coldest overnight we had weathered in Rocky Mountain National Park, and I for one had my mummy sleeping bag cinched all the way down so that only my nose and mouth were exposed. If I was cold, I know Torrey was freezing. Our bags are rated for twenty degrees and I'd guess the temperatures to be somewhere in the thirties so we were toasty as long as we stayed in our bags, but unfortuantley nature calls. We unwillingly slid out of the tent, pulling on gloves and hats to try to fend off the chill. We made ourselves a warm breakfast and found a sun spot, waiting for the tent to dry out and our limbs to warm up before we got moving.
Our hike back down Boulder Brook Trail went much better than our hike up, though the trail was just as steep as we remembered. Steep trails seemed to be the theme of our hikes this year; I don't remember hiking trails without switchbacks like the ones we hiked here in the history of my travels. It was killer on my ankles, unfortunatley, and I would slip or misstep every few feet and send my ankles rolling in every direction. I was lucky to only cause myself some minor pain and swelling; I easily could have ended up with a sprained or broken ankle.
We were picking our way down the last stretch of steep trail before it leveled out, Torrey some way ahead of me, when I saw her stop dead in the center of the trail. I caught up to her and she pointed out something big and brown moving just on the edge of the forest, not far from us. As we stood still and quiet, watching closely, a young male elk, his antlers barely more than velvet-covered spikes, wandered onto our trail a few hundred feet from us. He was taking his sweet time, munching on small aspen trees, though every once in a while he would pick his head up and stare us down. We knew better than to get too close: young male elk are particularly unpredictable with their high levels of testosterone. Unfortunatley, he was right in the middle of our trail, and there was no going around him without losing some of our tree cover protection. We were blocked in for probably ten minutes or more until we eventually had to scared him off by throwing rocks and me yelling at the elk like an idiot. I'm pretty sure if another hiker had heard me they would have wondered what the hell was wrong with me.
It was around the same time that Torrey confessed she had stashed a Dr. Pepper in the car back at the trailhead, and since we really weren't all that far away... So we made a detour back to the car and grabbed a snack while we were at it. We were only there briefly, but it was long enough to watch a couple of storms growing over the mountains near us, and we knew that it was a matter of time until they reached us, whether we were at camp or not. We finished up and got moving, following a trail that stank of horses a few miles back into the lush Wind River valley filled with beaver ponds and stands of pine trees.
It really was a beautiful place, and I was excited to spend our final night in the park at Upper Wind River camping area. We didn't waste time getting our tent set up and gear sorted for the night; the storm we had seen from the car blew up almost as soon as we arrived and pelted us with soft, half-formed hail and freezing rain until we zipped ourselves into our tent to ride it out. It didn't last long, though, and pretty soon we were back out, making ourselves some celebratory backcountry apple crisp before exploring the area. We spent the afternoon content and relaxed, Torrey reading and me writing, and otherwise just being lazy. I almost didn't register the sound of galloping hooves or the cracks of branches breaking, but I glanced up just in time to see the blur of a giant bull moose running through the meadow next to our camp, then I went right back to writing. In hindsight I should have wondered what in the world would cause a huge animal like that to run, but I was absorbed in my own head and it didn't even cross my mind. Not even five minutes later Torrey broke my concentration again with a chilling whisper. "There's something over there..."
I have one more story to tell, and it's my best one yet! Stay tuned for the final installment of my Rocky Mountain Adventures on the next full-length post. In the meantime, you can review the rest of our adventures with The Eclipse, Skeleton Gulch, Box Canyon, Thunder Pass, Glacier Basin, Unfinished Business, and Boulder Brook!
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