At the top of the pass, we stared into a part of Yellowstone that few ever see. No remnants of old footprints were to be found. The snow we did travel over revealed that we were undoubtedly the first humans to pass over it this season. Despite tremendous amounts of snow in the surrounding basins and passes, ours was almost entirely snow-free. To our great fortune (and Jenny’s), it was smooth sailing up and over the pass. It would be rather rude of Gabe and I if we schlepped through snow for so long that Jenny had to wait even a minute longer than our 10-12 hour expected finish time. Gabe’s wife Jenny was kindly watching their two young girls and meeting us at the end of our run. Our sights were set next on seeing if it was possible to get over Electric Pass without finding ourselves in a snowy, posthole-filled misadventure from hell. Then we nimbly crawled, gingerly hopped, scree-skied, and ran downhill with reckless abandon back to the trail. Gabe took a sweet photo of me peeing against a backdrop of the largest intact ecosystem in the Lower 48. After a very loose, slippery plod up a rather steep couloir dressed in fresh snow, we found ourselves atop the dominant summit of northwest Yellowstone and the Gallatin Range at 10,969’. We traversed a spectacular knife-edge ridge before tossing in a few bouldering moves up a rocky face. The frequency with which I make that proclamation brings me a tremendous amount of joy. I have written this before and I’ll right it again and again and again: there is nothing better than leaping across exposed rocky ridgelines in short shorts. ![]() The precipitous scree slopes fell away to rocky ridgelines and loose couloirs. ![]() Our trek to the summit ended up being remarkably snow-free and pleasant. People have a bad habit of getting electrocuted on Electric Peak. We opted to summit Electric at the beginning of our route in order to avoid the highly likely afternoon thunderstorms. When people were bad at measuring mountains, it was thought to be the highest point in Yellowstone (then people got better at measuring mountains, and realized the highest summits were in the trail-less Absaroka Mountains to the east). Right?Įlectric Peak dominates the skyline in the area around Mammoth Hot Springs. Or I guess we might also get mauled by a grizzly. If worst came to worst, we’d end up postholing in snow for hours. ![]() With comically conflicting reports, we decided we should embark on a 50-mile solstice run through the rugged northwestern corner of Yellowstone. One ranger told Gabe “that route is inaccessible.” Another told me “you can summit Electric Peak,” which it should be noted I didn’t even ask about. We juggled different route options with the confusing Yellowstone bear closures and our educated guesses at what the early-summer snow conditions might be like. Knowing the kind of fun Gabe likes to get up to, I needed no convincing. That’s a win if you ask me! A few weeks ago, Gabe reached out about doing a big solstice run through Yellowstone National Park. While we have used our bivy sacks 50% of the time, we have yet to spray a charging bear with glorified pepper spray. The two times Gabe Joyes and I have run together, it’s involved bear spray, bivy sacks, and copious amounts of snacks. Thankfully Gabe and I babbled incessantly with each other for the entire day and weren’t about to sneak up on any wildlife. For the one grizzly and one black bear we saw over the course of our 50-mile run, there must have been a dozen more that saw us that we didn’t see. We laughed at the fact that we kept pointing out that it looked like bear country – we were well aware we were traveling in a part of the Yellowstone backcountry with some of the densest bear populations in the Lower 48. A few minutes later, a black bear stared at us from the middle of the trail before sprinting away into the dense woods. ![]() HEY BEAR!” Gabe and I repeated this observation for perhaps the 44th time in 44 miles.
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