We've been quiet the last two days because there hasn't been much to report. Even in the middle of Yellowstone there are mundane tasks that need to be done: bills to pay, laundry to do, cleaning...it's just that the view out the window while you're doing them is better!
We decided to hop on the ski drop to the Continental Divide this morning for our most challenging cross country ski yet--a nine mile ski in the "more difficult" classification. When we boarded the 8 a.m. drop there were 7 employees and 2 guests--needless to say, it's a little slow around here this week. The trail starts at the Continental Divide trail, then branches off to the Spring Creek trail, eventually meeting up with the Lone Star trail and taking us back to Old Faithful. It snowed a wee bit last night, and the fresh powder set us up for a great day of skiing.
We decided we'd head up the Continental Divide trail first, which was a semi-steep, 1 mile climb up. I thought we were doing pretty good, but we were promptly passed by the ski shop manager who's skiing with a broken arm and only 1 pole. Yup, we were blown away by a one-armed skier.
We reached the top and had beautiful views of Shoshane Lake and the mountains.
Only now we had to go back down. The bottom of the trail includes a very, very sharp left turn to pick up the Spring Creek trail. Steve went for the turn with confidence, missed it, and fell. I didn't even come close to the turn, instead went flying by the trailhead and continued to whiz downhill on the wrong trail until I was able to make myself fall over. Luckily we're both pretty good at falling, given all the practice we've had.
Spring Creek is now our favorite trail. There's only a short section that's near the road, so instead of hearing the buzz of snowmobiles we just heard the gurgling of the creek
That's not to say that it was all peaceful--the trail is very narrow in places and included several tight turns.
Two things we're not good at: tight turns and narrow hills. We fell. Several times. Sometimes on purpose, but mostly not.
We also had to contend with little trees in the trail
Somehow I manged to navigate the trees that were in the trail, but the trees that lined the trail? Not so much. I whacked my leg on a tree stump, and then somehow managed to fall over and tangle one of my skis in a pine tree. Steve was laughing too hard to take a picture, but it was pretty awesome. He also managed to whack his own leg with one of his skis, thus this blog might be hosting battle-of-the-ski-bruises-photos soon (to our mothers' pleasure, I'm sure).
Around 10 a.m. the sun came out
and we had a beautiful, clear day. We crossed the bridge over the Firehole River (look closely--Steve has a full beard!),
looked for otters (no luck, though we could hear one upriver), and then picked up our speed so we could make it back in time for lunch. By the time we reached the Kepler Trail back to the lodge we were following a familiar coyote's tracks...and we were burning up! It was in the 20's when we began, and it was in the high 30's when we were skiing the final stretch. Our skis kept sticking to the melting snow and it was, dare I say, h-o-t. We may be snowed in and in one of the coldest places in the lower 48, but all anyone here was talking about today was how it's way, way too warm here.
We stopped in at the ranger station, and while we were there someone came in to report a lone wolf at Solitary Geyser. So we may be cruising the geyser basin again tomorrow morning...
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