Pebble Creek is another trail that brings back great memories.
My family and I flew into Salt Lake City on an early flight, did a 5 hour drive to Yellowstone, checked in and got our camping permit from the Backcountry Office and raced to the Pebble Creek trailhead (several miles down the road - this is the Pebble Creek Campground - where the trail ended).
We arrived at the trailhead late - like 7:30 pm Mountain Time - but sunset wasn't till like 10:00 pm cause it was early summer - so we loaded up and took off....
In a misting rain.
On a trail that had a pretty stout ascent to begin with.....
Then an icy creek crossing...
Then a hike through a meadow with mountains on each side....
Prime Bear Habitat.
My wife's shoes got wet but I pushed us on.....Hard.
I got an 8 year old girl, a 17 year old young man, a pissed off wife....
And it's getting dark.....
Check that.... it is dark.
And we're looking for the campsite....
And we find it....
At about 10:30!
We get a fire going and start trying to dry out our shoes and socks.
Which my wife does successfully by melting the rubber on her hiking boots and burning her socks!
She starts crying and I get some hot food in her and Aaron and I get the tent and sleeping mats and bags laid out in it.....
It's a 4 person backpacking tent so we're laid in there like lll.... so 3 people parallel and Aaron laying crosswise at our feet.
It's freezing cold when we go to bed and I wake up hearing a scraping sound on the roof of our tent.
I'm immediately recalling stories of bears tearing into people's tents and snatching people out of their sleeping bags.
I'm wide awake and unfolding my 4" Buck knife.... the only weapon I have.
I quietly extract myself from my sleeping bag, slowly unzip the door to the tent while hearing more scraping on the back side of the tent.
I have my headlight on my head and step through the door of the tent, turn on my headlight, pivot on my feet in a crouch towards the opposite side of the tent and fully expect a standing Grizzly that will take a swing and knock my head clean off.
What I find is a 1/4" thick layer of ice building up on the roof of the tent until it reaches a critical mass and the flexing of the tent roof breaks it and it slides off the tent roof to the ground below.
Sliding ice was my Grizzly scraping on the roof of the tent.
Funny what your imagination and the right environment can do to a Man's Mind....
And his heart rate.
We got up the next morning to a Bluebird sky.... caught a couple of small trout in Pebble Creek.
The chipmunks tore up our shoes from chewing on them to get the salt absorbed into the fabric.
We later camped out at the head of one creek emptying into the larger Pebble Creek and had Mule Deer walking through and lingering around our campground.
It was a Great Hike, Great Experience and remains one of my greatest Memories of all time.
With these memories making me smile, I cruised into the Pebble Creek Campground which was under renovation by the Park Construction Crews and had a quick snack of the nuts and dried fruit and a chocolate bar a passerby gave me earlier.
I headed back at Warp Speed with a goal to beat the sun's meeting of the mountains.
With beautiful and menacing clouds moving in.
I pulled into my departure point right on cue.
I checked the map and it's about 22 - 23 miles from Tower Junction to the Pebble Creek Campground so we'll call it 45 miles round trip in the beautiful Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park....
One of the things I've always wanted to do.
And right on cue.... on the drive back to Mammoth....
A Buffalo Jam!!
And beautiful views of Yellowstone in the saturated and subdued light of the evening.
Thanks God.....
For Creating and Preserving....
Yellowstone.
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