7/25-27/24
Oliver-
I’ve wanted to do electric peak ever since we got to
Yellowstone and I am just now getting around to it. Most reviews of the hike recommend
a 5:00am start or earlier so we needed to sleep near the trailhead. After weighing
all options, the best one we could come up with was to backpack as little as
possible down the trail that takes you to Electric and camp somewhere out of sight.
It was up at five for me, and Opal, sorry, to make sure I had enough time to
get to the summit. The main concern with time is not that you can't do it in a
day but that you will get caught in an afternoon storm. Electric Peak is aptly
named. It's known for frequent thunderstorms and no room to shelter from rain or
lightning. The first person to summit the peak noticed halfway up that all of his
hair was sticking up due to the electricity in the clouds around him. All of
this was enough to motivate me to wake up early and after a cold bowl of
oatmeal I headed down the trail in the dark eager and nervous.
Opal-
After Oliver had left on his trip to the summit I went back
to sleep for around 30 minutes. Then I woke up, packed up, and unloaded in the
car. I was going to head to the Mammoth Employee Dining Room for some breakfast
when I realized it was prime time to see wolves in Lamar Valley. I immediately
changed course and headed over to Lamar. It took me around 40 minutes to get
there and I arrived around eight. One of the wolf dens is at Slough Creek so I
pulled in there first. There were a lot of cars on one section of the road, so
I headed that way parking on the side of the road. A car pulled in next to me
and a woman and her dog got out. She said some greetings and asked me if I’d
seen anything this morning yet. I told them I had just gotten here. Then someone
near us overheard and said, “They’ve made a kill just up the road from here, a
bison.” We both got in our cars again and drove up the road. When I pulled in, I
could immediately see the dead bison on the tree line. The woman pulled up next
to me and started setting up a spotting scope. She couldn’t find the carcass in
the scope, so I helped her find it. We got to talking, she was in her sixties and
found it awesome that I was working in the park. She and her husband had done
some seasonal tourist work once upon a time ago she told me. Then someone said,
“They’re out”. She flipped her scope to the other side of the road where the den
was. Then let me look.
Finally, wolves! Four tiny black wolf pups were romping around in the grass up the hill. Eventually, one of the adults came out
and started herding the young ones around. About 30 minutes later they all went
back inside. Laurie (the woman I had met) and I continued our conversation
for a while, she was a strong believer in conservation. Eventually, She
mentioned she was from Oregon. I asked her “You wouldn’t happen to know the Opal
Creek Area, would you? That’s what I’m named after.”
She replied “No way!” Apparently, she and her husband
had been a huge part of advocating for its protection from logging. I told her
that it was my parent’s favorite place in Oregon when they had lived there. She
was very touched. I could tell it was a full-circle moment for her. We kept
talking for a while until most of the cars had pulled away from the road. She
lived in a solar off-grid trailer on some land, traveled a lot, and loved wolves. She
was what I’d call a modern hippy. The conversation renewed some of my faith in
older generations.
After I left, I drove back slower, taking my time, stopping
at points of interest, and eventually made my way to pick Oliver up.
-Oliver
While unbeknownst to me, Opal was seeing something we had
been looking for all summer I had reached the base of the mountain. Here I took
my first break and ate a couple granola bars and a half bag of gummy bears. The
next mile was grueling. 95% of the elevation is within this mile and this is
where NPS stops maintaining a trail so it's just straight up. Parts got so steep
that they were imposable on the loose gravel-like rocks, and I had to hop from
one larger rock to another like crossing a stream. Eventually, I got above trees
and then grass, and to the hardest part of the hike, the scramble. I read about
the scramble online but didn’t really understand what that meant and largely
ignored it. Now it was impossible to ignore and worse than I expected. Between
me and the top was 800 meters of rock climbing on a thin ridge with
fatal drops on both sides and while I don’t love heights my mom raised men, not boys,
so I lost the trekking poles and started climbing. The climb took an hour or
so and came in waves of difficulty. Every section looked impossible at first but
then I would find a route and carefully make my way up. There were a few spots
to sit and catch my breath and take in the gorgeous view. One of the
last sections was thirty feet where the ridge got so narrow you couldn’t really
walk on top of it. Here I had to let myself hang off the side, grab onto the rock, and shimmy along until it flattened out. This was bad but the end was worse. I couldn’t
figure out any reasonable way to scale the last section of rock. There were only
forty or so feet left but it was all vertical. After determining that it was going
to be impossible, at least for me, to climb the face I was looking at I figured
that I would have to climb horizontally to find a more reasonable section. I
carefully started this task making sure to maintain three points of contact and
not look down. Most of the places to put my foot were only big enough for about
half of it and my heel dangled over open air. When I would accidently kick a
rock loose it would bounce until I couldn’t hear it. Once I finally started
moving up things didn’t get any better, my foot and hand holds kept getting
smaller and my chest was fully pressed against the rock, the wind was significant, and
I could feel myself start to panic. Here I made a business decision that I had
come high enough, and my life was worth more than twenty feet of mountain. The
climb down had none of the excitement of the way up and all of my energy was
focused on getting off the mountain safely. Eventually, I did and was thankful
for the flat walk back. Twenty miles all together in a little under eight hours.
I met Opal in the car, took some Tylenol, and fell asleep.
That night we camped on a mountain overlooking Gardiner and
the next day we went to Bozeman to do some shopping. Those were both great
experiences but it's getting late and Opal has work in the morning so they’ll have
to wait for another post.
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