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We crossed through valleys, over ice, and finally to the bank of some body of water. We were exhausted physically, but mentally overjoyed because across that body of water was what looked like a trailer! As we made camp we chatted and laughed, as if the stress of that night had never existed (or perhaps I was the only one that had felt that?). We scouted and saw that we were about a days walk from lights, that we figured had to be houses. So we ate dinner and hit the hay. My god was it windy. The tent was blowing all over the place and the sand of the bank that we camped on hit us like small bullets. I woke up with sand in my hair, and teeth. We ate breakfast and were on our way. We got to a house and jumped the fence and knocked on the door. We were going to ask to use their phone because we had left our itinerary with a few people and were getting very close to over-due. No one answered so on we went. The last ten miles or so were uneventful. David took off and was way ahead of Dan and me. We had no idea how far it was to the highway, so when I crappy old Nissan flew by we put our thumbs out and got a ride. We got in, and in the back was a couple of shotguns, and the floor of the car was covered in spent shells, I mean covered the layer of shells was like three inches deep. 


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Finally the highway! We exchanged a few holy hell I cant believe we made it’s and were pretty proud of ourselves. Sadly we were still twenty some odd miles from the car and almost over-due. So we started walking and trying to thumb a ride, and were pretty unsuccessful. Every car that passed was either full of smiling natives laughing at us, or women, who would never stop and pick up three guys with ice axes. I think was Dan that said “we need some of our people”, “Yeah we need a Subaru or something” I said. Lo and behold ten minutes later a crappy old Subaru peaked the hill. We turned and put our thumbs out as he passed, and bingo break lights! We ran up as he was pulling rifles out of the back seat and throwing them in the back to make room. This guy had been guiding and hadn’t been home in like a month and his wife was waiting for him, so we just asked for a ride as far as he could give us. He gave us a ride all the way back to the car, ten miles past his house. We had made it. In true Outdoor Ed fashion we made a stop at the drive through liquor store for Dan and were on our way back to Riverton.


This trip was somethin’ else. It was epic. We made mistakes, we refined our judgment, and we put it all on the line. Dan and I had both just come off of semester courses, him with NOLS Patagonia and me with OB Alaska while David had just thru-hiked the AT. I don’t know about Dan and David but I am thankful this fiasco was my first major outing after my course. You come off of those things thinking you can do anything, and that attitude can really get you hurt, this took me down more that a few notches. It also taught me the value of good trail buddies. This trip could have been a disaster but instead it was fun, yes it was stressful/depressing/unnerving at some times but over all it was fun. I can think of a lot worse ways to spend thanksgiving than wandering around the Windrivers with two good friends.