Monthly Archives: September 2015

National Park, USA

limping with the bears

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In Yellowstone there are a lot of Grizzly bears. We saw a movie how to behave at a encounter with a bear. 10 days before, a friend was in the park and saw a grizzly 10 meters away.
After discovering that hikers are 1000 times less than the ‘normal’ tourists, I thought that the probability of getting injured by a bear, increased by 1000 times.
I didn’t know any statistics. So walking alone whole day, with an expired bear spray, made me a little tensed. We were making noises when the trail was making a corner. We tried to camp before the sunset.

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We cooked at a certain distance from the sleeping place, we hanged the food on a horizontal pole at 3 meters height. No water, hygiene stuff in the tent.

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One day we could not find the camping site, because the marking was very bad. We decided to walk to the next one. So we arrived pretty late. Emilie was preparing the dinner, I was at the river trying to heal my feet wounds, when I heard a noise like a thunder, or airplane, from the forest. I ran towards Emilie, she heard as well. We started to shout and later to speak louder. I am not sure that it was a bear, but we got our dose of adrenaline. Next day I found that the site was not very clean, there were some rests of food.
Overall it was a thrilling experience, somehow I felt as a pioneer. We crossed big rivers

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Here the cloud passed so fast that I didn’t have the time to change the camera to video mode

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The last day, we were walking in the woods, but out of the national park. After several days of seeing no wildlife, I was almost wishing to see a bear. Turning a corner on the path, I saw through the leaves a brown thing. I realized very quickly that’s a horse, but my danger channel of brain already released the adrenalin. And the poor horses were scared by the noise I made with the sticks.
10 days later, a hiker was killed by a grizzly, in an area where we could have been, but we spent the day with a family.

Later I discovered some statistics
http://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/injuries.htm

Hitchhiking, USA

Hitchhiking in Yellowstone

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We got in the perfect spot for hitch-hiking: a T cross, with a Stop sign, in Yellowstone, where the cars pass one after the other. The people who have the car full, they look at us, and smile, and happily make the signs that the car is full. The other 33%, who have a lot of space, are embarrassed and look in front of them. Then I wave energetically my hand, pointing to Emilie, to show that we are a couple, having big backpacks. Then they put the head into their wheel.

Steve ended our 15 minutes frustration. He knows a lot about Romania, he had a dentist neighbor who moved their to do volunteer work.  I ask him what is the explanation for his knowledge, and only then he reveals that he is a Mormon. That when they got 18, they go volunteer into a remote country, learn that things are just things.

His son is very mature for his 11 years. We spent a great day with them.

At the end I asked what is the relation between religion and science. Steve told me that the bad thing is when you try to limit the knowledge, so he tries to know the last discoveries in science, but that they don’t affect his beliefs. And on the other hand, thinking that the science will explain everything one day, is like another religion.

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After we finished our trekking, we were pick-up by Stef. While throwing the backpacks into the car, she asked me if I have a gun. She is as well member of a Christian movement. During the evening we talked as well about religion. She said that if religions are created by people, so as the people, some are good, and some are bad.

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She and her son, they shared their tent space with us, their food. We spent a great day with them. In the last day, because it was supposed to have heavy rain, she invited to share with them the room in a hotel. We preferred to test the tent. Next day we could see some snow, up there.

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I could not understand why a good person must be a religious one. Why from all those people who passed by us, only religious people took the risk.

Next day, when we exit the park, my theory is infirmed by an archeolog.

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Larry is aerospace engineer. He told me that there are some prototypes of cameras of 2 Gb resolution. A scary vision of God.

Phil is working on a machine learning project for the army, to analyze data from thousands of sensors. Great people.

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Larry made a few points on the policy of arms:

1. only honest citizens care if caring a gun is legal or illegal

2. on TV there are broadcasted the few cases when mental ill people or kids use guns, but not the cases when citizens stop bad actions because they have guns, so it’s important to restrict the access to these categories of people

3. in 1996 in Australia they banned the guns. The result was an increase of criminality by 40% in the first 2 years, and then it went to the previous level, but a little bit higher.

My conclusion after these hitchhikes: I have only one conviction, that it’s not good to have any strong convictions.

Hitchhiking, National Park, USA

Cherchez l’ours

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Grand Prismatic Spring

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Ah Yellowstone… ce nom résonne doucement à mes oreilles, mes parents y étaient il y a près de 45 ans! Ils m’ont fait part de leur expérience, admirant les geysers, les sources d’eau thermale, dormant dans leur tente à au moins 15m de leur voisin, observant beaucoup d’animaux, des cerfs, des ours… (dont un directement dans la tente de leur voisin…ce n’était pas prévu mais personne n’a été blessé) Le parc est en fait un gigantesque cratère de la taille de la Corse, l’activité géothermale y est donc très importante. Je suis carrément ignare en géologie, mais si j’ai bien compris il y a bien bien longtemps (euh 2 millions d’années…), c’était la folie ici, ça a craché, explosé dans tous les sens, et cela s’est reproduit encore 2 fois: des milliers de km³ de cendres, laves, gazs se sont répandus dans toute l’Amérique du Nord. Ca a donné ça: le Grand Canyon

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ça: de magnifiques colonne de basalteIMG_3347

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ça: Hot Mammoth Springs, des vasques de calcaire en cascade

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et ça: surtout ne pas essayer de tremper un doigt de pied, c’est la cuisson intégrale assurée.

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Rien à voir, mais cela m’a rappelé les couleurs lors d’une randonnée sur le glacier Exploradores au Chili, si vous avez envie de faire un tour sur nos photos de 2013

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On en prend plein les mirettes, et ça nous rafraîchit les idées de se baigner dans cette rivière!!

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Par rapport aux souvenirs des parents, pour nous ça a été un peu différent. D’abord accéder au parc sans voiture et sans payer une centaine de dollars pour monter dans un bus touristique, c’est impossible sans faire du stop. Ensuite, c’est le plus vieux parc national et un des plus visités, presque 4 millions de visiteurs par an: imaginez un peu ça sur les quelques artères qui traversent le parc. Tout est fait pour les voitures, les camping-cars XXL, et les motos. Nous avons eu pas mal de difficultés à s’enregistrer pour les campings dans le backcountry. Pour aller randonner dans la plupart des parcs nationaux américains et canadiens, il faut s’inscrire au poste du ranger et réserver chaque nuit dans un emplacement de camping donné.

Après plusieurs rencontres en stop avec un fermier de marijuana (c’est légal pour usage médical), et des locaux bien sympathiques, nous sommes arrivés à l’entrée ouest du parc. Au poste de ranger,  les deux personnes qui nous accueillent sont des volontaires, chouette! sauf qu’ils ne connaissent pas très bien les randos… c’est un peu embêtant quand même. Ils n’ont pas de cartes ni de livres qui indiquent les dénivellations ou les distances exactes, décidément ce n’est pas très pratique… On se rend a une librairie pas loin pour chercher dans un guide les emplacements qu’on pourrait réserver. Quand on revient, ils nous passent une vidéo sur les ours et comment les éviter… comme ils n’ont pas de système informatique ils doivent appeler au poste central à Old Faithful pour s’assurer de la vacance des campings que l’on a choisi… sauf que la majorité des emplacements de bivouac sont déjà réservés: il faut repenser la rando différement, bref, après avoir cassé la croix et brûlé la banière on arrive à réserver pour se faire une petite rando sympathique de 5 jours.

Entre l’entrée ouest et le début de notre rando, on rencontre un père et son fils qui nous prennent en stop et font un bout de visite avec nous: baignade, visite des must du parc… Ils viennent de Utah, le pays des Mormons. Ils nous ont invité à venir leur rendre visite quand on repassera par là-bas. Très ouverts, ils m’ont donné un autre point de vue sur les Mormons. Non ils ne sont pas polygames (seulement une minorité très conservatrice), et non ils ne réfutent pas toute explication scientifique; en tout cas pas eux. Ils ont un grand sens de la famille et de la communauté.

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Nous entamons notre randonnée il est déjà 13h… il faudra marcher vite pour arriver au premier bivouac prévu, mais surprise! Il n’y a simplement personne dans les emplacements de bivouac. On rencontre de temps en temps des groupes de randonneurs, mais c’est hyper rare à côté des millions qui se baladent en voiture dans le parc… Puis il faut aussi un peu d’organisation par rapport aux ours pour évite de les attirer: manger à 100m de l’endroit où tu plantes la tente, et suspendre ta nourriture à un pole bear pour éviter que les ours viennent te dévaliser durant la nuit. Quand je dis ours, ce peut être autant des ours noirs que ces énormes grizzlis. L’autre élément nécessaire contre une éventuelle attaque d’ours, qui normalement ne considèrent pas les humains comme de la nourriture sur deux pieds, c’est le bear spray, une sorte de pshit au poivre qu’utilisent les mémés qui craignent les voyous en ville, puissance x10. Il faut toujours l’avoir avec soi, car on ne sait jamais…

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Belle rando tranquille, Bechler River, Union Falls, nous avons passé plusieurs fois à gué de quoi rafraîchir notre petits pieds congestionnés:

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Baignade intéressante: l’eau est froide au milieu et très chaude sur le bord où se déverse un petit ruisseau d’eau bouillante…

IMG_3065Mais même dans un endroit si préservé nous n’avons pas vu d’animaux, euh… ah si un écureuil et un chipmunk (ou suisse, cf article ceci est un suisse). Il fallait attendre d’être en voiture pour en voir, car ils ne sont pas bêtes, ils savent que pour une séance gratuite de shooting c’est près du parking ou des routes qu’il faut se balader…

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National Park, USA

Backcountry pass in Yellowstone

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I write this post more than one month later, but the anger still is present.
They say that in Yellowstone come more than 4 millions people, that’s way booking well in advance is mandatory. I fully understand.

But 99.99% of these people drive in the park and change on parking site with another.

We tried to book on internet, but it is not easy at all to find information about the trails. As we try to be as free as possible, we decided to go directly to the ranger office at the entrance in the park. We have to book all the camping sites on our trail. But the information on trails is only the millage, not the elevation, or time needed to get from A to B. And there was no description of the tracks. The ranger (volunteer) recommended us to go to a book shop to search in a certain book more information. I was thinking to buy that book and donate it, but it was too expensive for such a gesture. We select a couple of trails.

We come back to the office and there the ranger starts to call to check that each camping site on our route is free, the IT system was down for a couple of days. The majority of sites were booked. The camping sites near the lakes are booked by fishermen. So we had to change the route and the sleeping points due to those restrictions.

We are happy to finally go. But how can I explain that during 5 days of backcountry ( in the mountain, not on the highway), we met maximum 3 groups of hikers ?
Everyone told us the same story, that they camped alone on a site with 6-8 places.

there are nearly 300 back country camps, so if there is only one group in each, lets say 4 people, there are 1200 hikers per day. If on average, a hiker stays 5 nights, and there are 5 months of good weather, that means there are about 36.000 hikers / year, so 0.9%

why do they make so difficult for the hikers to plan their trip, and to be free to chose, when the resources are so poor exploited ?

they say to stay on the trail, but quite often it is very poor marked.

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Sometimes we walked like in a desert, other time like in a swamp, with high grass. Once we could not find our camp site, we passed a group and they said they couldn’t find it too. Another time we spent 20 minutes in a heavy rain trying to find the trail, luckly I got GPS signal.

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