Achieving New Heights in Blogging

Greetings from 9,500 feet.





Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I am blogging from the top of Black Mountain, Wyoming. I have reception for the first time since entering the Big Horn National Forest yesterday. And hiking at this altitude has about wore me out. So I've decided to sit and catch my breath and write for a bit before heading back down.

The hike up wasn't too difficult, technically, but the air is certainly thin up here. Plus I was already a bit light headed from being bathed constantly in DEET.

But the view from the old lookout tower up here is simply amazing.





Getting to the trail head was quite an undertaking. Grigsby and I had to ford two streams, and the road -- if it could be called that -- was itself steep rivulets punctuated by boulders. But Grigsby did great. He only stalled twice. And that was in high 4WD. If I had put him in low, I'm sure he wouldn't have stalled at all.

I'm camped down at the bottom at a campsite called Tie Flume, right on the South Tongue River. The setting reminds me of Middle Earth:



But being near the water increases the bug factor. And the animal factor. A deer came right up to my campsite last night, oblivious to me until I went "boo" and she bounded away.



And then in the middle of the night I could have sworn an animal was trying to get in my tent. Or maybe it was just the wind. They do have signs posted around the campsite warning of bears and mountain lions...... But it was a lovely chilly night, and I got to break out the sleeping bag for the first time.

OK. Going to head down the mountain soon, take a freezing cold stream bath, and then cook up a nice dinner. I've got some steak and corn on the cob in the cooler. Yum.

I'll spend one more night here, then head towards Yellowstone tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a handsome photo of Grigsby from yesterday, when we took an old logging road to get up into the mountains.





He's such a stud.

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