I can't even keep track anymore. What is what, where is where, who I've told this or that too... Normally, I am quite horrific with keeping in touch, yes, even in this light-speed, fiber-optic, internets and cellphone tee-ex-teeing generation... but c'mon, I'm on a bike in the middle of the Wyoming wilderness. Cripes.

Let's not fight, huh? Let's try to be civil and just catch up. To the pics! The Salmon-Challis Trail Crew. From L-R, Bill Dickson, long-time part-timer, chainsaw massacrist, and generally cool guy; Sean (oh shit, or was it Shawn? Spellcheck, buddy, help me out), the young gun of the USFS crew, though he's spent as much quality time with a shovel, hoe, and polaski as anyone- former Americorps backcountry trailbuilder, frmr. Denali trail crewer, frmr Guatemalan habitat restorer, and emerging nature photographer extraordinaire; Richard, the Marine turned Mercenary turned thru-hiker/trail builder/N. Idaho wheat farmer and invasive cat killer (what happens when your neighbors cat population gets outta control? a can of tuna and a .22 cal longrifle, that's what)- basically, dude's hard-f'in-core; Henry, our Southern Gentleman, fond of such sayings as (no shit) "dad-gum," "sho-nuff," and "whoo, boy." The Southern Alabama tree-farmer loves the outdoors, the trail, and is perhaps the most friendly, genuine dude I've met on the whole excursion; Jim, the Coloradan, frmr. techie for the D.O.D., retired early to hike more, and used his back vacation pay to purchase the sweet camper-rig pictured in the background. His propane-fired coolerator provided us with cold diet sodas, carrot sticks, and snow peas. A funny man. A nerdy, fatherly, funny man whose wife is the director of the Reptile wing of the CO Humane Society- there are some stories that go with that job, lemme tell ya; Amanda, the fantastic coordinator of the CDTA. She only hung for a day, as she has several other projects to oversee; and myself.
Laying out a reroute over some nasty shale/talas washout. Busting a nice, flattish 12% grade through the woods, 100' feet at a time. Yeah, boy. The bear grass made the slopes good and slip'ry, prompting a string of wipe-outs from our courageous "stick-boy" Henry (stick-elder, really, as the agreeable old hound of our crew), complete with exclamations of "dad-gum..."
Billy D., looking, well, Rangerly at the finish line, the golden spike of day 2, if you will, and I think you will. The 1.5 miles of trail we staked and flagged will have to be aproved by NEPA (a think-tank of "-ologists" to make sure we don't hose up trout habitat or mow over the last remaining spotted mountain Lily patch in the W'ern U.S. Gosh, those frog-kissin', tree-huggin 'viron-Mental-ists sure is touchy) before any real surfacing takes place. Time and bureaucracy will tell if all of our effort was for naught. The forest is always on fire out here. Perhaps it's the zero moisture content of the thickly accumulated duff. Perhaps it is the acres of standing dead lodgepoles or sub-alpines, loaded with pitch and yellowed needles (thank you, pine bark beetles). Perhaps its the dry-firing thunderstorms and stingy rain-makers. Maybe it's all of these things, and little Jim-Bo McHickerson and his 4th of July Fireworks fancy. Whatever it is, it makes for thickly smoked air, and fantastic sunsets... and plenty of overtime and hazard pay bonuses for our seasonal forest rangers, Shawn and Bill.
Skinning a chunk of lodge pole with a polaski for use as a water bar. I love trees, more than life itself, really. If a crazed gunmen held his weapon to the temple of the Western woods, I'd negotiate a trade, my life for theirs, really, really I would... That said, there is something morbidly gratifying in dropping a healthy specimen in three quick cuts, snapping it into sections, and skinning it like the neighbor's cat.
About 100 miles due East of Salmon, Idaho gets, yes, even DRIER. This stretch of road cost me 2 inner tubes and plenny of sweat, but danged if she weren't purdy. Longhorn steers, red-tailed hawks, and prickly pear. Heading towards DuBois, where, due to lack of water, I had to stop early and sleep in a city park before pressing on in the (cooler) morning.

Natty Bridge in Yellowstone- they were gonna pave the top of the sucker and turn it into a spur-route of the main highway. Thankfully, cooler more preservation-minded heads prevailed. Cool to hike around, though- well laid stone steps and the whole works.

Granted, I've never been to the Grand Canyon Grand Canyon, but I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here and say that the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of if not the most breath-taking gouge in Earth's surface that there is or ever will be. Give it a billion years, though, I'm sure something else as spectacular will shape up, who knows. The steam vents and other hydro-thermal features of the parks caldera are still shaping this stretch of rivers steep, sulphur-yellowed rock-canyon walls (hm. that's why they call it Yellowstone... hm), so it may just keep getting prettier. This here's the lower bracket of falls. 115 feet of vert or thereabouts, I do believe. Yeah. Fan. Freakin. Tastic.Mammoth Hotsprings is the end-result of a 21 mile downhill straight out of any touring cyclists dreams. A smooth strip of highway that descends at a good enough clip to swish you through a white-rock garden of giant stones, like the Yellowstone Mountain God came home drunk and threw all his rocky layers of club clothes scattered across the floor, and his sulphury cigarettes burning in a terraced ashtray at the bottom. What a ride. What a view. What a rotten egg funk. I breakfasted on egg-n-cheese sandwiches, nasty hash browns, ice cream and coffee at the cafe here, and toured the (disappointing) historical museum, though they did have a kick ass old penny-farthing high wheel on display. Anyway, I'll load more kickin' Yellowstone wildlife pics (and video of me skirting a band of ornery bison on bikeback, if I can figure that out) when I get homewards.On the way out the park, the Lamar branch of the Yellowstone carves its own sweet canyon, with big, snaky, sand-n-water scoured, pod of beached Beluga boulders, nasty rapids and quiet little eddying pools. I was danged hot, semi-isolated, and feeling nakedly spunky- so, into this crack in the Great Mother I gratefully dipped my own (top of the crack to ya). I know what you're thinking: "He must've photoshopped that, it's incredible!" No, no. I can assure you, the un-sunburned bits and pieces of me are, in sad actuality, that pasty white. Go ahead, zoom in. I'll wait... To conclude, I'll just say this: Ladies? Eh? Eh? That is all.

That's right, punks. I might've schickened on out when it came to the Beartooth, but I'll show you the gradient profile on this nasty climb when I can scan it in. As my late, great, ever-oddly expressive grand-pop would say: "Jiminy Whiskers." 20 miles of 6 percent grade, and the view from the top wasn't even all that... I mean, it was nice, but man. I shoulda taken more pics on the way up, but dang, the last thing I wanted to do was waste any precious Snicker-fueled kilocalories.

Speaking of food: I had to take a break at a picnic area halfways up, and what did I do? I ate two cans of tuna- tuna in oil. What should've been about 32 grams of fat per can (a goodly amount, to be sure) turns out is the fat per can when said can is DRAINED. I was soaking up all that fishy, salty, soybeany goodness with some thick slices of flax and sunflower seed whole wheat. I must've sucked up a good 3 tablespoons of straight oil. Then, guts churning in a maelstrom of vomitous twistiness and horrendous gas, I slept, hard, for about 2 hours, til the nausea passed. Dang. From now on, it's kippered snacks or tuna in spring water only. Let this be a lesson to all of us wayward vegetarians.

The Bighorns, the bighorns, and the aforementioned view from the top. This is all I get for 5k vertical feet of climbing. I want my money back. I want my 7% downhill grade- and got it, the next day, after a refreshing but not too cold camp-out at about 8000 feet. Nothing like the rush of an effortless descent, huh?

Tomorrow, I hope to cross into South Dakota (state No. 5!) and, in short order, all misty-eyed into Moorhead, the land of my birth, and the loving arms of the North-Flowing red. All that stand between me and it? A 65-mile strip of I-90, the grizzled remnants of the Sturgis rally, pheasants, farmers, and a whole damned state of prairie. My climbing days are over, kids. It's all downhill from here.