Just another day in Theodore Roosevelt NP, Day 13 Hiking the Painted Canyon Trail (after a horseback trail ride/horsie-day)

As usual, one activity wasn’t enough so we went off to the visitor centers to talk to rangers about a good hike to complete the day. We listened intently to the basic bison instructions, “there may be a herd at the visitor center fields, but they are pretty docile right now, not calving and just move slow, keeping your distance of 2 school buses or more”. “They may be grazing near the trail, but you can go by, just be predictable, talk low tones and don’t go closer to them”. We picked a trail with plenty of elevation change, it drops down into the canyon with switchbacks immediately after a half mile on the flat.

The trail was dusty-dry and dropped steeply, enough so that I was sitting my butt down a bit to dig in the heels of my boots. Yes, both of us prefer heavy boots above the ankles. We know that real hikers, even AT hikers wear trail running shoes, but the tread and weight of boots is protective and predictable. yep, immediately near blinding down a narrow single track we weren’t more than 1-2 hundred yards in than I looked back and there were bison following us! I told Jane, sending her ahead of me and said I’d figure out if they were faster or slower than we. It seems our natural pace was just a bit faster, so I pressed to keep going as we surely weren’t going to go straight up that pitch to head on with a bison.

After later telling a friend, he mentioned he knew a guy who butchered a large male and its head weighed 600 lbs. The bison knew their trail and my luck such that it is, led me to keep us going down further and take a right turn on a small game-trail looking spot. As we leveled out on a plateau, we looked back again and the crew of four took a left and went to the watering hole. Boy were we glad!

It was a very nice, strenuous hike with 1000′ of descent to be climbed on our way back out if we did the whole trip as an out-and-back. We did do that, going through about 3 Liters of water, wearing dorkie hats, sunscreen and carrying a day pack with emergency supplies worthy of any overnighter. The hike went fine, we only saw people when we were about 3/4 done. On the climb we didn’t kid ourselves as we knew the herd would be grazing somewhere or another. Yep, right on our exit trail up on top. The ranger had told me that bison were the only reason to leave the trail and if they were blocking, it was okay to walk across the meadow and skirt around. And skirt around we did. Jane and I stopped for several long minutes to try to study the herd and decide if we’d be sleeping somewhere on the far side of them?

It was a long wait, but my call was to walk out into the middle of the field, outside of the first two. Then we kept going at that distance until we saw the clear chance to walk back across the field to get back onto the trail. By this time, all of this was in sight of the Painted Canyon visitor center and a huge parking lot.

David