August 5th
Qtip caught me fairly early. Lucky was not with him, but we hoped he would catch up.
We were in heavily used horse country in the morning. Forested hills, open valleys and creeks in the middle. It was great hiking. One horse riding couple gave me 2 oranges. Fresh fruit tastes so good on the trail.
Around 11:30 I encountered another horse group. There were two men, a woman, and a younger rider. They had a small dog leading them. Apparently the dog’s name was Grizzly. The lead rider said “Stop, Grizzly, stop” when the dog saw me and started barking. The lead rider asked if I was hiking the trail, I said yes, and he said “You’re f**king nuts, man!” He asked some questions and then went on. Both he and the other man were riding their horses with ice cold beers in hand.
Around midday we broke off the horse route. We went through a burn area and the heat with no shade made things tougher for me. We crossed into some non burn area. I had Qtip stop so he could see that a medium sized bear had been using the trail before him. Later, there was some very fresh scat.
We had one final climb as it was getting dark. We climbed Cub Pass and scrounged up campsites. Qtip was going to get up early to get to town (Dubois). I offered to join him. Partly I was motivated to get to my resupply at Brooks Lodge, but I was also thinking 2 pre-dawn hikers in bear country made sense.
backpacking over the hill 