Routing

The Walker Expedition left the 1833 rendezvous site on the Green River / Horse Creek alluvial plain and headed west to the headwaters of the Bear River, where they stopped to prepare provisions for the remainder of their journey.  That means the Walker Expedition crossed the Wyoming Range and the Salt River Range.  Today, those ranges are encompassed in the Bridger-Teton National Forest.  I will cross them too.

So I spent the morning and early afternoon in my Pinedale hotel room poring over maps and talking on the phone with Forest Service officials.  There is no record of where Walker crossed the mountains – we only know that he did cross them – so I had to pick my own route.  I started flipping though my paper atlas and paper BLM maps.  Clicking back and forth between the Garmin topo map on my hard drive and Google Earth.  Uploading maps from the computer to my handheld GPS.  Matching landmarks on one map to landmarks on another.  Finding a trail over the mountains was not easy.

So I called the Forest Service, and spoke with a guy named Nate.  He was incredibly helpful.  He pointed me to a Forest Service road called the “Lander Cutoff” that passes from the flatlands near the rendezvous site to the far side of both mountain ranges.  It looked to him, and to me, like the Lander Cutoff was the only trail passing over the ranges.  The other trails stayed on one side of the mountains or the other.  So I decided to take it.

It was, in some ways, a disappointing decision.  The Lander Cutoff became a wagon route in the mid-1800s – after Walker had crossed the mountains – and is now, for the most part, a four-wheel-drive trail.  There are parts where a hiker can take shortcuts not available to trucks, jeeps, or ox-drawn wagons, but for large portions of the trek, I’d be hiking on a road.  And the history of the Lander Cutoff was disappointing: it became a wagon route long after Walker passed through the area, but I had no evidence that the route was even known to white men in 1833.  Nevertheless, it appeared to be my best option.  And it was plausible that Walker knew about it before it became a wagon route.  So I packed for a seven-day hike, loaded my (heavy) pack into the truck, and shipped out.

Before leaving Pinedale, however, I visited the local Museum of the Mountain Man.  I got there half an hour before closing time, but the lady working the reception desk let me stay a little later.  I saw the rifle of William Craig, a participant in the Walker Expedition.  I looked over some beaver traps to see how they worked and inspected the gear that mountain men wore.  The museum was well-stocked, well-kept, and helpful.

As I was leaving, someone saw my Athens, Georgia tee shirt and stopped me.  James Thomas was a Georgian by birth and had retired out to Pinedale.  He sat on the board of directors of the museum.  As I was telling him about my book-writing plan, a gray-headed guy walked up and introduced himself as Sam Drucker.

To be courteous, I paused my story to ask Sam if he was familiar with Joseph Walker.  “He’s one of my heroes,” Sam said.  Sam was an archeologist with an interest in the fur trade of the early 1800s.  He had excavated a livery stable at the site of Fort Bonneville.  It didn’t take long to figure out that Sam had more to tell me than I had to tell him.  I brought my story to a quick conclusion and started asking questions.

I told Sam that I would be leaving in the next couple days to hike over the Wyoming and Salt River Ranges, and asked if he had any idea what route Walker had taken.  He confirmed that no one knew the route for sure, but he offered to give me his thoughts.  I waved goodbye to James, and Sam and I walked out to my truck to look at maps.

I told Sam about the route I planned to take.  “It’s possible that Walker went that way,” Sam said.  “But the Lander Cutoff didn’t really get started until later.  There’s some other pass that is more likely; it’s on the tip of my tongue . . .”

I spread the BLM map on the hood of the Subaru next to my truck.  The edges of the map fluttered in the wind.  I smoothed the map and looked for any trail besides the Lander Cutoff that crossed the ranges, but found none.

“McDougal,” Sam said.  “McDougal Pass.”

We found it on the map.  From the east, there was a solid red line, indicating a road, that led up through McDougal Gap and headed toward McDougal Pass, then petered out into dotted line, indicating a foot trail.  From the west, a red solid line headed toward McDougal Pass, then became a dotted line.  But the dotted lines didn’t connect, and neither reached the spot labeled “McDougal Pass.”  Both dotted lines stopped a few inches short.

“McDougal Pass is the most likely route,” Sam was saying.  “It could have been the Lander Cutoff.  But McDougal Pass was an old Indian trial, so it would have been there when Walker was there.”  He had his hands on his hips, remembering.  “And also, somewhere up there, there’s a sandstone quarrying pit where either the mountain men dug stones to build fortifications against the Indians, or the Shoshoni dug stones to defend against the Blackfeet.  If it were me, I’d bet on McDougal.”

“Alright,” I said.  I checked the map again.  “So, if you’re me, and you walk up this path . . .”  I traced my finger along the red line approaching McDougal Pass from the east, then stopped where the red dotted line stopped.  “What do you do when you get here?”

“Oh,” he said, looking at the map.  He held a corner of the map back against the gusting wind.  “That will be tough.”

But that’s where I’m going.  There’s a drainage leading down from McDougal Pass on the east called Bear Creek, and another called Willow Creek leading down from the pass on the west.  My best bet is probably to travel along the drainages to the extent possible.  Still, I will have to cover some ground to connect the two.  The headwaters of the drainages are only a couple kilometers apart on my map, and the topo lines between them look manageable.  My plan is to mark the headwaters of each watercourse on my handheld GPS and try to bushwhack between them.

I’m betting that Duke and I can do it.  It won’t be easy.  Duke and I are, after all, Georgians unaccustomed to fall hiking in the Rockies.  And it will be cold – it was 20° at dawn this morning in the flats.  It will be colder in the mountains.  Neither of us are as accustomed to the altitude as I would like.  I’ve got Raynaud’s Syndrome, meaning that my hands get really cold really easily, and Duke has the beginnings of dysplasia.  So it’s not a sure thing.  If we can’t make it, we may have to turn back.  But I feel good.  We’ve got the right gear, our planning is as good as it can be, and I think we’re psychologically equipped for the trip.  (By which I mean, I am adventurous by nature, and Duke is a dog so he doesn’t know what he’s getting into.)  The time for adventure has arrived.

And I am excited.  This beats the hell out of the Lander Cutoff.  That plan sucked.

Sunset from the truck's parking place on the night before the hike.

POSTSCRIPT.  Right now, I am backpacking in the Wyoming Range and Salt River Range.  I will probably be gone on that backpacking trip for a week or more, so this blog entry is one that I prepared ahead of time and scheduled to post in advance.  I’ll start writing “live” posts again when I’m back to my truck and computer.  While I’m gone, there will be no new blog entries for Saturday or Sunday.