Safety First...For Serious (Part 3)

People ask me what my highlights were from my course in Wyoming. Instantly my mind floods with ambition to determine how much time I have to speak and which specific highlights I think about most often VS depth filled moments VS views VS insights. One story that I never leave out is the couple days upon our second excursion to the Teton Wilderness.

Let me remind you that our time in The Voo (See my previous entry) was rather structured yet unstructured. We had a plan and we stuck to it pretty spot on. As soon as we left Laramie to head 6 hours North West, God through our plans out the window. We reached the road we would drive 6 miles to the trail head and camp the night before hiking into the abyss for 10-ish days. We drove about 2 of those 6 miles and found that there was a lovely gate we weren't expecting. After talking to Leslie and her husband Bob outside of their cabin near the gate, who thought we were just some random kids wandering in the woods about to be slayed by Grizzly bears,  we headed back to town to figure a plan out.

Bear School Kev-Kev

We prayed that Gods will be done and that we would seek Him through it all, seeing that He clearly knew what was needed and what He wanted to do was communicate. So after going through some "Bear school" to learn more about how to shoot bear spray and react if a Grizzly bear were to attack or approach our team. After all we were heading into Category 1 Bear country.

We were thinking about pitching our tents right in the nice grass of the US Forest Service but thought perhaps that wouldn't build the best relationship with them. A thought struck my head and my heart that said, "Malinda"! Not just some random name, but the name of a lovely woman who worked at the gas station we had stopped at close to the road with the closed gate. My mind instantly went into Bike tour mode and I told the team we should ask Malinda if we can camp behind the gas station. We hopped into the van with our bear spray and headed back to the gas station. 

Jay hopped out and luckily Malinda hadn't left yet. The gas station was closing for the evening but Jay found her before she left. Now to understand Jay better, you honestly can't always tell what's on his mind or what's happening with him because his composure if priceless. He came back to the van and told us that he had an update for us. We waited intently while he pulled out patience thin and said, "Malinda said we could stay at her church!" 

We followed her to down town Du Boise, WY. and pulled in near her church. She ran in to see that everything was good to go. She came back out and said that she had bad news. That we couldn't stay in the church because there was a cycling team staying there as well... WHAT?! Is this real life?! Awesome. The good news was she still let us stay but we pitched our tents in the back yard of the church and then went over and debriefed the first part of course over some very needed burgers. Bliss.

The next morning we felt ambitious and headed back to the road with the gate that was still closed and decided to hike the 7 miles we needed to get to the Continental Divide. Reason being we only had permits to camp across the Divide, so either way we needed to get there. We hiked the 4 miles on a dirt road to Brooks Lodge to the "trail head" and stopped to use a real bathroom one last time in the 1920 built rustic, STUNNING, lodge. 

We hit the trail and as soon as we got to the bottom of the hill near the lake, of course, it began to rain. So we started taking our 70+ lbs packs off to grab rain gear. Now when you're in category 1 bear country, not only is it protocol to have the safety on your bear spray off at all times, ready to shoot. You must also be on top of "bear calls"... We spent the next 10-ish days yelling "Hey Bear"! You can imagine we became creative.

Nikki's eyeball on FIRE!

Jay took his pack off to put on his rain jacket and his pack fell on his bear spray which then caused it to barely spritz. But the spritz that came out went into Nikki's eye. We spent the next 10 minutes flushing her eye out. The reason? Bear spray is 10 times more potent than normal pepper spray.

We encountered more storms, more rainbows and again our minds were blown by the terrain and the views. We began hiking at 9am-ish and made it to Brooks Lodge by around 1pm. From Brooks Lake to The Divide it was 3 miles. We arrived at our destination literally on the other side of The Divide at around 9pm. Because of the time of year that we were hiking in Wyoming, there was still a lot of snow but there was also a lot of mud. so that created ankle deep marshes and thigh deep snow every couple hundred feet.

By the time we made it to where we could set up camp we had set up our tents just in time before the rain began. God's good like that. 

So we had been thinking about food for hours and couldn't wait to cook some good hardy beans and rice in the rain. Then the lightning and thunder set in and we settled for a handful of trail mix so that we could just go to bed. We carried our food bags down to the bear hang areas so that the food wasn't near us to deter Grizzlys. So we headed a little ways down and across a creek. Yelling, "Hey Bear"! the entire time. As we took the bags off our bodies to secure them for the night, I took a bag off my back and it landed on the bear spray that had its safety off in my pocket. There was a long loud spray noise and we all dispersed...

This night just got better, right? Luckily no one got a direct hit. We all just were consumed in the cloud of bear spray. Nikki was hit for the second time in less than 12 hours and Kevin shouted saying that it felt like someone had rubbed a jalapeno into the side of his lip.

The direct hit went all over my had. My head lamp looked down at my left hand and it was doused in orange liquid. The force of the jet stream caused it to shoot up my jackets all the way up to my elbow. We got soap quickly and I tried to wash it off in snow...My hands were on fire for the next 3 days. Let me remind you that this was the first night of our 10 day back packing excursion...WOOF!

The next morning I washed my jackets the best I could and several days later was using my puffy jacket as a pillow on our solo time in tents and my face began to burn... I cussed pretty loudly in my head to say the least.

So moral? Even if you're in category 1 Bear Country, ALWAYS keep the safety on when you are on the WMPC Team 2 in June, 2014. Clearly we couldn't handle the responsibility. But luckily we never actually encountered Grizzlies... Directly at least.