Again I didn’t sleep well due to my ongoing sinus situation. I woke up to the alarm at 4:45am and got the crew up at 5am. Camp breakdown was great this morning and we were hiking well before 6am.

We stopped by Cimarroncito Reservoir for sunrise coming up over the lake, then continued on our way to Clarks Fork for our 8am horse riding reservation. We arrived at Clarks Fork at 6:45am after covering a whopping distance of 1.66 miles – over half of the days short hike was done.

We dropped packs and started our breakfast in the “yard” in front of the Clarks Fork cabin. We chose to cook the oatmeal breakfast this morning since we had ample time before our horse rides and plenty of water for cooking and the little clean up required. The warm breakfast was a nice change of pace from the previous 8 trail breakfasts.

At 7:40am we walked over to the horse corral to watch the wranglers ready the horses for the 8am ride. The wranglers handled the five crews there to ride very efficiently, and all riders were mounted on their horses by 8:20am. The horses for our crew were Chuckles (SarahAnne), Secretariat (Sofie), Dip (Travis), Cody (Marshall), Shiner (Rhys), and Diablo (Branden). The group rode off at 8:25am and left us advisors with about two and one-half hours of downtime.

Robin went to the cabin’s porch to journal. Elmer, Robert, & I were going to just mess around doing a bunch of nothing, but we saw a hand-made branded plaque and decided that we had to make our own plaques. We spent about 45 minutes trying to find the proper fallen tree trunk to cut into slices and then started our branding. We branded plaques, smaller wooden slices, and our hats. Before we were done (about 10:30am), the crew returned from their ride and joined us in the wood cutting and branding. While the crew branded, Elmer and I played another game of horseshoes. I won the single game match with a ringer (around the backside of the stake somehow). By the time our game was over – we aren’t very good horseshoe players – the crew was ready to hike on up to Upper Clarks Fork and set up camp.

Again, everyone loaded up to maximum capacity on water (Clarks Fork had the last sure water we would cross until base camp) – my pack was heavy again! We started the walk up to Upper Clarks around 11:20am. The walk was all uphill but was not that bad although it was very hot and there was not a cloud in the sky to provide some relief from the mid-day sun. It took us about 35 minutes to go the mile up to our campsite. Upper Clarks Fork is split into two sets of sites and we opted to walk on up to the upper set of sites just to shorten the hike tomorrow that much more. The campsite the crew selected was great – nice shade, flat tent sites, and a campsite/meadow across the trail just perfect for a friendly game of Frisbee.

We got camp set up and ate lunch about 1:15pm, then played Frisbee in the hot sun until about 3pm. Some of the crew played Frisbee and others chose to take a nice mid-day nap. Since we were going back down to Clarks Fork for the chuck-wagon dinner, we had to send two cooks down early – Sarah and Branden. They had to be at the dinner shed at 4:30pm. I changed clothes and woke up Sarah. Branden and Sarah got ready and I walked with them back down to Clarks Fork at 3:30pm. They went on down to the dinner shed and I sat on the porch and journaled for almost an hour. Sarah got to help make the peach cobblers in the Dutch ovens. The rest of the crew gathered at the cabin at about 5pm and we walked down to the dinner shed at 5:15pm. Dinner began promptly at 5:30pm.

The advisors could sit at a row of picnic tables on one side of the shed and the youth sat on logs lined up like pews under the shed’s roof – much different set up than the last chuck-wagon dinner I had at Beaubien back in 1981. The head staffer called out the order of serving, advisors and ladies first, then crews by itinerary number. Sarah was serving stew and I got a fair share mug full of stew from her. I don’t know if beef stew out of an aluminum pouch is really “real food” but it was pretty good – lots of meat, potatoes, and carrots. I was pretty much done after my first mug of stew, but Elmer made me go back for seconds and I about burst. I sumped my fair share mug with weak lemonade and then it was time for cobbler. Again, Sarah served me and then Branden called me over and gave me some more. I couldn’t eat it all and gave Sarah my leftovers. Once the eating was done, Robert and Rhys were on the KP team. Clean up went very quickly.

We re-loaded our water and walked the mile back up to camp – totaling 4.66 trail miles walked today. When we arrived at camp we had our TB&R. My thorn was that my running shoes were starting to rub hot spots on the tops of my pinkie toes. My roses were seeing Sarah on her horse and the branding. My buds were the Tooth of Time and hopefully talking to Pamela.

After TB&R we played Frisbee until 8:30pm then got in the tents. It was a beautiful cloudless night with a light breeze. I journaled until 9:10pm then got to bed.

I cannot believe how fast these 10 days have passed. I miss Pamela and the girls but do not want this to end. 

(journal of Shane Hoffman)