46 and 11

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6:47 am - Tuesday - August 29th - 44º F, 62% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east southeast.....partly cloudy with a forecast high for Gardiner, MT of 85º F, and 81º F for Mammoth Hot Springs.......and today is the 46th anniversary of our wedding.

Beginning Monday we still had about 21 miles to hike to reach our goal of 100 miles of hiking in Yellowstone National Park, a condition of our membership in the 100 Mile Hiking Club.  As you know we only hiked 4.2 miles the week before when we re-hiked the Bunsen Peak trail to watch the solar eclipse.  We want to finish the 100 miles by September 4th so we can hand in our mileage sheet to YCERP who is the sponsor of the club and get our commemorative patch, and free t-shirt.  TLE is the hiking planner, and after consulting our trail guide for Yellowstone she chose the Hellroaring Creek Trail.

We were on our way to the trailhead by 8:40 am....a little later than we had planned....and began hiking around 9:30 am......

.....the mileage sign does not come into view on the trail until the .1 mile mark....from there it is a 1 mile hike down to the suspension bridge which takes you across the Yellowstone River.....

.....within 5-10 minutes we come within sight of the Yellowstone.......

 

...... and about 10 minutes later we are actually crossing the bridge......

.....at the 1.5 mile mark we come to a fork in the road.....we continue to the left as our goal is the Hellroaring Bridge crossing.

.....within 10 minutes we sight an antelope running by us.....our first wildlife sighting in 84 miles of hiking (other than birds, lizards, and squirrels).......very cool.......

 

.....even though it is hazy due to the continued fires to our north the views are still magnificent......

....about 11:30 am we reach the Hellroaring foot bridge and cross over to the other side of the river to continue our hike back the same direction we just came, but on the other side of the river.....hate hiking the same ground twice!

.......around 12:30 pm it begins to get quite hot, and we find ourselves in a long stretch of trail with no tree cover, but we continue on.....our goal is to cover at least 11 miles this day.....

.....in order to get back to the Hellroaring trailhead we must find a place to cross, or ford Hellroaring Creek to get back to the Yellowstone River Trail.....this might mean we will get our feet wet......

.......and that is exactly what happens....we managed to get about 2/3's of the way across the river hopping from rock to rock, but eventually we ran out of rocks and had to take the plunge.....I went ahead of TLE and filmed her crossing the last 30 feet of the river.....

.....we found a pine tree with enough shade to sit and take off our shoes to let them dry out a tad, and also change into dry socks.  We rested for about 20 minutes before putting our shoes on once again....obviously they were not yet dry, but at least we had dry socks to begin the final 2 miles of hiking back to the trailhead.......after we crossed the Yellowstone River suspension bridge once again we still had 1.1 miles up uphill hiking to reach the trailhead and our VW, and that was a grind!  We kind of hiked from shady spot to shady spot where we would catch our breath and continue the uphill.....we reached the car about 2:35 pm (5 hours and 4 minutes of total elapsed time!).  Our actual moving time was 4 hours and 1 minute (give, or take a few seconds).....we covered EXACTLY 11 miles, burned 1,988 calories, and had elevation gain of 1,690' over the course of the 11 miles......WOW!  On top of that we average just under 3 mph for the entire hike (20 minutes per mile would be 3 mph....we averaged 21 minutes and 48 seconds per mile).

After taking off our still damp hiking shoes and stowing our hiking gear in the VW we began our drive home which took around 35 minutes....it was over 90º F at our Newell so we turned on the A/C ate a snack and then relaxed for a couple of hours.  What a great day of hiking, and I am so proud of TLE for enduring the heat and that 1.1 mile climb in the heat of the day back to the trailhead.....she never complained.....not one time, and I know she was suffering.

Tuesday we will celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary with an overnight trip to Chico Hot Springs where we will get 1 hour massages, spend a few hours soaking in their hot pools, and cap it off with an anniversary dinner in their on site restaurant.....stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission.