A Week of Solitude

A 60 mile hike in the Cloud Peak Wilderness turned into about a 90 mile hike for me and Wes this last week, but would you really expect anything less from a hiking adventure with us? We hiked Solitude Loop and boy was it beautiful. We drove up the mountain, camped a night near the trail head, and then drove to the overnight parking lot the next morning to start our adventure. I put on my hiking dress and stuffed all my hiking belongings into my pack and was ready to get hiking. I have to be honest though… after my pack was filled and closed up, I stared at it sitting on the ground for a minute not really wanting to put it on. I even said those words out loud. There were two main reasons for this. One, it contained more food than I could possibly eat in 5 days, meaning it was very heavy, and two, based on my last experience with this pack on my back, the one where I cried 4 times in one day, I wasn’t sure I liked hiking as much as I thought I did. I soon found out, though that… False. I love hiking. (Please read those last 4 words as if I were a female Dwight Schrute talking about how I don’t miss Jim Halpert.) Reluctantly, I put on my pack and Wes and I headed out to the trail. I had even less knowledge of where I was going on this trail than I did the PNT, so I was fully relying on Wes and his map to get me where I needed to be. The first words he said as he folded up his map and we started walking were, “So do you want the good news or the bad news?” As it turns out, because we started on the opposite side of the mountain than most people do when hiking solitude loop, we had just shy of 9 miles before we got to trail 38 to start the 60 mile Solitude Loop. Round trip, that added almost 18 miles of hiking we weren’t planning on doing. Not a big deal, really, just unexpected. We began trudging along and by mid afternoon we had made it to Misty Moon Lake where we stopped to eat lunch and met up with trail 38 to finally begin the trail we’d wanted to be on hours earlier. We were immediately met with incredible views including giant boulder walls, the most golden of fields, and lakes and rivers winding through tall, golden grass, all underneath the bluest of skies without a breath of wind. The first day of this adventure wasn’t even over and I had rebuilt my relationship with nature and hiking that had been ripped from my soul weeks earlier. We came upon our first camp spot earlier in the evening than we had wanted to stop, but it was too good to pass up. We slept near a cliff edge that overlooked a mountain face with a beautiful waterfall streaming down the side. A low mileage day was worth waking up to that view. The next evening was when the first loss of trail and mileage arrived. We’d spent most of the day hiking through the most beautiful fields of golden foliage. There was no visible trail, but there were rock cairns built several feet tall every few hundred feet that helped navigate where we needed to be. It was truly incredible, even though it was the climb that never ended. Our plans to make it to a certain camp were thwarted when we reached a huge reservoir littered with four wheeler trails all around it. We spent over an hour along a one mile stretcj searching for a trail we could not find. Any side trail we found thinking it was the right one lead us straight back to the main trail we’d been on that was not trail 38. It was beyond frustrating. We decided to call it another early day and search for the trail in the early morning with fresh heads and try to make up the lost miles from the previous day. Unfortunately for us, it was a very restless night. The temperature had dropped an incredible amount. Even with all of my clothes on and snuggled up in my quilt, I was still cold. Wes battled the cold all night and a few very persistent mice. He was up throwing rocks and sticks at mice who successfully found their way into his food bag until light started to peak through the trees. I’d finally fallen asleep and he decided to close his eyes for an hour or so and then get up to hike before it got too late. We ended up waking up around 10:30… a couple hours after we had wanted to be hiking. We got up in a hurry and hit the ground in search of the trial we couldn’t find. We didn’t find it after a few attempts, so we decided to take an alternative trail that we could find. We had no idea how well maintained or marked it would be, but at least it would get us moving. Fortunately enough, the alternate trail took us exactly where we needed to be, just on the opposite side of the river. After that, it was smooth sailing again. We hiked, saw more beautiful views, and continued to climb and descend at manageable grades and paces. It was lovely. Day 4 is when we hit another hiccup, which had nothing to do with lost trail and everything to do with rain… and my forgetful brain (#AlwaysGoForTheRhyme). I’ve always been good at going from loving to life to Negative Nancy within seconds, and that rain storm did me in. We walked through a light mist for probably an hour before a solid rain hit. At that point, Wes and I huddled, hunched up under the canopy of a single pine tree attempting to stay dry after having just forged through a river minutes previously. My immediate plummet in mood wasn’t necessarily warranted, but I did have my reasons. As any genius backpacker who primarily cowboy camps would do, I forgot my groundsheet at home. In the current moment a groundsheet wouldn’t do me much good, but for camping a couple hours later, I was out of luck and that’s where my mind was stuck. The previous nights hadn’t mattered. We had used our shelter, a tarp, as a groundsheet for both Wes and I, but tonight, we might need the tarp to serve its shelter purpose. I just knew I was in for a miserable night with the potential of ruining my sleeping pad and quilt. It ended up being okay, as Wes assured me it would. After hiking a bit longer when the storm let up, we found as unexposed an area as we could to pitch the tarp and then tried to squeeze both of us onto his ground sheet. The next morning began our last day on Solitude Loop and the final time we lost the trail and hiked a few extra miles. We hiked along swimmingly all morning until we ran into a fellow hiker who had seen a black bear and was trying to wait it out. He tagged along with us as we continued to walk and approached where the bear had been. The concern came from the conversation while hiking, not from the bear. We discovered he had camped at Misty Moon Lake that previous night and was hiking away from it. We had confidently been hiking toward Misty Moon Lake all day, or so we thought. How had we screwed up again?! We were just harmlessly following the trail and now who knows how long we’d been walking the wrong way. We walked with the guy as far as he felt comfortable with us leaving him and then turned around to find where we had gone wrong. Pizza and beer were all we’d had on our mind all day and now we were even further away than before. We didn’t have to back track too much to find the trail heading in the right direction, though we were still unsure of how we had gotten off track. Either way, we were headed the right way and by 4ish that afternoon, we were hobbling our way down a set of stairs to the vehicle. It was a beautiful, unforgettable 5 days spend in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. A 10/10 would recommend hike, especially in fall. Golden hour hits and the sun sets the season changing fields on fire, figuratively of course, but it is absolutely breathtaking. Mixed with the crispiness in the air, the smell or decaying earth, and the crunch of dead foliage, you won’t be disappointed. Fall is my favorite time to be outside and even though it seems a bit early for the appearance of fall, this trip solidified my love for mountains and being outside.

Next for Wes and I is a 275 mile trail in Vermont called The Long Trail. We are trying to hit it as the leaves change color to get more of the beauty I crave. Be ready for endless photos of fall colors in a few weeks!

“I’m making you a spreadsheet.” -Wes after finding out that I had forgot my groundsheet and that I hadn’t charged any of my camera batteries before leaving