A history-loving writer gets more than she bargained for on a backcountry horse-packing trip.
I fell in love with a ghost two decades ago. I saw her headstone on display at a ramshackle museum in Cody, Wyoming, on my first real trip out west. She’d died in 1897, at age 30—the same age I was at the time—and ran a bar in the waning days of the Wild West. Had she been drawn there by the lure of Western dime store novels and tales of outlaws, just like I’d been drawn to NYC by tales of CGBGs and punk bands? I felt an immediate kinship, and I think she did too because she’s never left my mind since. She’s so insistent that she’s become the central character of my working novel.
When you fall for a ghost, you want to learn as much as you can about her and her contemporaries (which includes Buffalo Bill Cody and Butch Cassidy). This June marked my eighth trip to Wyoming and my fourth to Cody. I’ve driven endless back roads, checked into historic hotels, combed through out-of-the-way museums, and sought out scholars, both official and amateur. I’ve even gotten onto private land to see what remains of Arland, the town where she lived and died, which disappeared soon after her death.
What I hadn’t done was experience the backcountry in the way she might have. Stagecoaches and buckboards are things of the past, but horse-packing—basically, camping trips where everything comes with you via pack horse—is a time-honored tradition across the West. So, I signed up for a backcountry horse-packing trip through the Absaroka Mountains, the very area she and her friends would have ridden.
Top Picks for You
Recommended Fodor’s Video
Setting Out Under Unsettled Skies
In the nights before the trip, I’d dreamed about bears—this is grizzly country, after all, and we’d seen two mamas with cubs on our drive through Yellowstone National Park the day before. I borrowed some bear spray and, knowing Wyoming weather can be fickle, I threw in a wool hat at the last minute.
The owner of the outfitting company told us at the last minute that he wasn’t leading the trip; his daughter and her partner would be. That was a blow; his reputation was one of the main reasons I signed up, despite my infrequent horseback riding and lack of backcountry camping experience. But if he had faith in the team, so would I. After all, they knew more about Wyoming than anything I could get from books, and I wanted to experience it firsthand.
By the time we met the team at the trailhead, the breeze had picked up, and thick clouds raced across the sky, their dark bellies holding portent of rain. We did a last check of the weather; today was to be the worst—light winds and a sprinkle or two—with warm, sunny days due to follow. So off we went: two guides, one apprentice wrangler, and three guests, all on horseback, plus five pack horses, three pack mules, and three dogs scampering underfoot, unable to contain their excitement at being back on the trail for the first time this season.
Each pack animal can handle up to 200 pounds of gear, hung in large saddle bags and covered by canvas tarps, the same way it’s been done for centuries. I chuckled when I saw a milk crate filled with Doritos and Cheetos snack packs. It was a long way from the jerky and pemmican—a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and dried berries—that my ghost’s contemporaries used to sustain themselves on the trail.
The climb up that first ridge was astounding. The grade was so steep that in 20 minutes, we had views across the whole valley, with little brown houses dotting expanses of summer green. The atmosphere was free of pollution and humidity, bringing everything into stark relief— a crispness I’d never seen on my hazy East Coast home turf. I was mesmerized. The guide’s hat blew off, and as she dismounted to retrieve it, I was glad I’d left my baseball cap in my bag, now tucked in a pack astride one of the mules—one less thing to worry about as I focused on soaking up every sensation.
An hour in, we had views of the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, which looked so different from this perspective that one of our fellow guests, a longtime resident of Cody, didn’t recognize where we were. I paused to zip up my jacket before we climbed over a high ridge, steady wind causing the long grasses to dance, then descended a steep hillside scarred by forest fires. This part of the Shoshone National Forest was home to more than 100 square miles that burned in the summer of 2008, and it was still littered with the ashen corpses of fallen trees, interspersed with juvenile lodgepole pines and shimmery quaking aspen, valiantly reclaiming the land in the endless cycle of destruction and rebirth.
In a national forest, when a fire starts from natural cause—in this case, lightning —the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t remove logs; they let nature take its course. Nor does the Forest Service maintain the trail; that’s up to the riders who use it, and that was why one of the guides had set out earlier than the rest of us. We soon caught up with him, chain-sawing a path where downed branches made the trail impassable. In other places, they let the fallen trees be, and the lead horse picked its way around the debris field, with the other animals following its chosen path. The ride was hard and steep, and the horses paused to drink as we crossed waterfalling streams bursting with runoff from winter snow melt.
By the time we started making camp, 12 miles and four hours later, the weather had changed. Unfortunately, our chosen home was a wide meadow at 7,800 feet, positioned to catch the ever-increasing gusts sweeping down from Jim Mountain behind us. Dark clouds raced in from Yellowstone National Park, which the weekend before had seen freak snowstorms that closed one of the popular passes for Memorial Day.
The team set up the two guest tents made of heavy-duty canvas on steel-pole frames, and as I unrolled my bedroll and down-filled sleeping bag, I thought of how lucky I was to have modern-day comforts that my ghost couldn’t even have imagined. The sturdy frame shook in the wind, but I quickly fell asleep, worn out from the ride. I woke an hour later to even more shaking; the wind had picked up considerably, and I couldn’t hear anything from the horses tied up nearby or the cook tent down the hill. I unzipped the canvas door and climbed out to join the others, blasted by a gust that took my breath away. Walking down the meadow, I heard a thump behind me. The teenage wrangler ran up, worry on his face.
Did the tents fall?
No, I was just in one.
I looked back, and both tents were now heaps of dun-colored canvas collapsed on the grassy plain, their edges whipping in the wind.
Hunkering Down
They’d hung up a fly tarp at the cook tent, double-tied to whatever trees and logs seemed sturdy. They’d started a small fire, built in a pit to minimize sparks, but it was too windy to do much of anything else. During a break in the clouds, someone walked up to the ridge, seeking cell service, and managed to get an updated weather report. It was not good news. The forecast now called for gale-force winds, with heavy rain and snow showers. It was nearing 5 pm. We considered making a run for it, packing up, and heading back down the mountain, but that wasn’t realistic. Packing up camp and resaddling the horses would take at least an hour, and we were losing sunlight. Gale-force gusts, mud-slicked trails, and possible flying timber were a recipe for disaster. The only option was to ride it out and hope we could get out in the morning.
As one guide cooked burgers over the low flame, attempting to get something hot into our stomachs, the other guide and the Wyoming local went over the tents. The canvas was intact, but some of the steep poles snapped in the wind. They were able to jury-rig one working tent from the broken pieces and some duct tape and moved the shelter behind a stand of baby lodgepole pines to provide some sort of wind break. They picketed two horses and set the rest free in the meadow with bells on their necks so we could hear if any of them decided to make a break for it and attempt the trail back home. Then they staked the fly tarp, and the rest of the group huddled under it as night fell, hoping for the best. I went back up the tent with my head pounding and a throat so sore it hurt to swallow from a summer cold exacerbated by exhaustion and harsh conditions. That’s when it struck me how truly alone we were. If anything happened—someone getting hit by debris, an errant spark setting a brush fire, potential hypothermia if we couldn’t stay dry—we were 15 miles from the nearest paved road. No ATVs could make it over the minefield of fallen trees in the acres of burn, and it was way too windy for a helicopter rescue. We were on our own until we could get ourselves out. It was far from what my ghost may have experienced in similar conditions without twentieth-century gear, but it was too close to peril for me.
A Break and Escape
I spent most of the night listening to the wind howl as sleet spattered the sides of our tent. But the poles held, and the rest of the group stayed dry under the fly tarp. When dawn broke, the rain stopped, and the sun came out, which was a relief. But the wind showed little signs of easing, and the shelter was still damaged, so we began the long process of packing everything up for the trek home. Thankfully, we had a choice, unlike the nomadic Crow people and early settlers whose stories filled my bookshelves.
The ride back down the trail felt more treacherous than the ride up due to gravity and lack of sleep. A few more trees had fallen during the night, and we gingerly picked our way around them as we descended. At points, we got off our horses and led them by foot across incredibly steep patches of trail. Any worries about bears had long since disappeared; with a group this large, they stayed so far out of our way that we never even saw one, or any other wildlife for that matter.
We finally passed through the last thicket of trees and got our first glimpse of the valley floor, with Highway 14-16-20 tracing through it like a river. I’ve never been so happy to see asphalt, and it brought home how the sight of habitation, however humble, would have seemed a beacon of safety to earlier inhabitants of this harsh, high desert landscape. I had to hold myself back as much as my horse as we climbed down the last stretch of hillside, grateful to be safe and sound.
Chasing History
Did I get what I wanted out of the trip? No. Did I get what I needed? Possibly.
I’d read of mountain men breaking trails so steep they had to lead their horses and stop to hack their way through the trees. Now I’d seen it and learned that even with chainsaws, the estimate of pack trains covering three miles per hour was just an aim, never a promise. I’d read of how the wind can scream as it rushes over canyon crevices and past the cavities of ancient stone hoodoos. Now I know that the sounds differ wildly, sometimes presenting like music from a distant static radio and sometimes mimicking an animal being tortured. The ridge crests can block it or amplify it in such a disorienting measure that you can’t even discern where it’s coming from.
I’d always wondered, who’d be dumb enough to go out in the wilderness with a bad weather forecast? But there’s no such thing as accuracy, even with today’s satellites and NOAA stations. And there was certainly nothing like that in the days when the Crow people inhabited the lands, and ambitious outlaws, ranchers, and farmers moved into this part of Wyoming, one of the last places in the West to be settled.
I was cowed by my experience and left with a new respect for my ghost and her peers. As we unpacked the horses and led them into their trailers, I thought, I will never do this again. But there’s always more to learn, so who knows?
I would definitely go again but in the absolute middle of summer.
What an adventure - the pioneers who made the trip out West were truly brave.