“Heyyyyy bear!” Ben slapped his paddle against the boat on his shoulder. It was two in the morning and we were making as much noise as possible. We hoped to intimidate nearby bears with our haggard voices. Still, our pace picked up in the bear infested section before Ben stopped suddenly and checked the downloaded map on his phone.

“Shit, we’re somehow on the Continental Divide Trail, we’re gonna have to backtrack”. 

There wasn’t much to say at that point. We turned around and walked back through the bear den before reconnecting with the route that would take us over the pass and into Bull Lake Creek. 

Our plan was detailed, if ambitious.  We would hike through the night and onsight the river in one continuous push. Ben and I wanted Bull Lake to be an experience we could be proud of in tactics, style and execution. It was Ben’s dream, and I felt lucky to have been invited. My devotion to our kayaking partnership bordered on hero worship; I often told him “I will meet you anytime, anywhere”. Since meeting Ben, I had aligned the entirety of my paddling philosophy to match his. We were about to put it to the test. 

Bull Lake Creek runs through the heart of the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Its headwaters originate along the continental divide and flow north, northeast, east, and southeast before the water eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico. First run in 2002, the whitewater section of Bull Lake requires a 22 mile hike with 4500 feet of elevation gain. The hike tops out on 12,000 foot Hay Pass. Bull Lake Creek cascades down the other side of the mountain. It tumbles 5200 feet over 22 miles, finishing with an 8 mile paddle out across Bull Lake Reservoir. Ben and I estimated that the river has been done 15-20 times over the last 20 years, with most groups taking 4-5 days. The infamous Team Wiener knocked it out in 3 days a couple years ago.

If I had really considered the logistics prior to committing I would have hesitated. Thankfully, blind zealousness to go on a trip with my kayaking hero left me woefully ignorant to everything this mission would entail. I rallied from California to Landor to meet Ben with the naive enthusiasm of a farm town girl just getting off the bus in the big city, ready to make her dreams of show business a reality. 

We began hiking at 5:15 pm with the intention of getting to the river before sunrise. 100 yards down the trail I realized I forgot my puffy coat, the one concession Ben and I agreed upon when formulating our light and fast no bivy program. Unfortunately, our shuttle driver was already gone; we shrugged, chuckled darkly and kept moving. The first several hours flew by. The trail was good and the gradient mellow. I did my best to keep up with Ben as my music left me to contemplate some deep epistemological questions such as “if Gucci Mane got so much money, why he robbing?” After several hours we stopped for a quick bite of food and dug our headlamps out of our drybags. Pink and red streaks juxtaposed the darkening peaks as the sun set. Just as the day gave way to the night the trail began to ascend up the mountainside more quickly. We switched our headlamps on and my world shrunk to the beam of light in front of me. 

The miles stacked  up as we journeyed deeper into the night. We switched which shoulder the kayak rested on every couple minutes, never setting it down and instead using a shrug technique to move the kayak while still walking. The night muted the vastness of the wilderness, and there was a lot of time to think. 

Around midnight our kayaks were starting to feel heavy. Deadfall littered the trail; we continuously climbed over and around logs. Ben suggested we take a break from hiking and paddle an alpine lake that paralleled the trail. I readily agreed. On the lake we switched our headlamps off, the full moon provided  adequate light. Stars danced above us as we slowly paddled across the lake, savoring the brief change in routine. The mountains that surrounded us were illuminated by the moon and perfectly reflected in the stillness of the lake. The magnitude of this adventure hit me. I felt a deep sense of gratitude to be there with Ben, attempting something that’s scope felt similar to the types of legendary pushes I grew up reading about and hearing in quiet conversations around campfires. We were on the verge of something special. 

This elation was extinguished almost immediately when I put the kayak back on my shoulder and walked in the wrong direction. Whether or not the eyes we saw lurking just beyond the trail were those of a bear, I thought that going toe to toe with a grizzly would elevate this mission to being archetypically way too much for me. Our detour only cost us 10 minutes but it felt like a lot more. As we ascended higher into the Winds, the trail became more obscure. We relied on Gaia and Ben’s intuition to guide us. We trudged through a long marsh, and hopped over small streams in an attempt to keep our shoes dry before we finally made it to the base of Hay’s pass. Our dreams of arriving at the river with ample time for a predawn  nap looked  less and less likely. This hike was no joke and the two mile per hour pace that had seemed downright easy a couple of hours earlier felt unachievable. 

I bonked hard at the top of the pass. I pulled  my phone out every couple minutes to see how far away we were from the pin I had marked as the high point of our journey, and was repeatedly disgusted by the remaining distance . We switched shoulders more frequently as we stumbled through the darkness. Finally, we arrived at the top of Hay’s Pass and descended  down the other side to Bull Lake Creek. The trail was hard to keep track of in the dark. We dropped  too low, then climbed and traversed to get back to the trail. We arrived at our put-in–an alpine lake with a small trickle falling out the other side–11 and a half hours after we started hiking . The darkness felt lighter but the sun had yet to touch the surrounding landscape. Ben and I hugged, then curled up into two little balls and fell asleep. 

I woke up freezing twenty minutes later. I thought longingly of my puffy coat, resting in the top of my bag, a universe away. Teeth chattering, I pulled on my drysuit as Ben stirred. We each had brought two sausage egg and cheese McMuffins. However, two bites in it became abundantly clear that my stomach was not happy and I called it quits. We pulled on the rest of our gear and took our first strokes on Bull Lake shortly after sunrise. 

The river began with beautiful granite lakes divided by classic rocky mountain mank. There was very little water and we did our best to not get stuck. We moved efficiently, portaging and paddling across small lakes. Shortly after putting on we reached our first massive cascade of the trip. Ben, an excellent student of the river, had gathered beta and scoured satellite imagery before our trip. His knowledge was invaluable as we quickly portaged. The deadfall we encountered on the trail extended to the Bull Lake watershed, and we were forced to hop up and over fallen logs. Once we were back in our boats, the river went from bad to terrible. Braided channels rendered the river too low to float,and we were constantly in and out of our boats. We dragged our kayaks down the riverbed. The gradient was concentrated in several unrunnable slides, most of which landed on rocks and trees. We reached another, longer lake where we finally dipped our entire blades in the water. 

At the end of the lake, I bonked hard again. Ben and I had been periodically doing “vibe checks” with one another. On this particular vibe check, I recall saying “I feel like absolute shit”. We stopped for a moment as our path converted from a lake back to a river and I forced down some food and electrolytes. Like a magic potion, my energy rapidly returned. The quality of the river remained poor. We portaged another large gorge, this one slightly more runnable but not quite in alignment with our priorities, which were, in descending order of importance, safety, efficiency, fun (fun would eventually be cut from this roster due to concerns over it inhibiting the success of the other two and opposing forces including, but not limited to: no sleep, lots of hiking and caloric deficiency). 

After four hours of mank bashing and portaging, we finally made it to the confluence of North and South Bull Lake, where the good whitewater was rumored to begin. Ben ate a meat stick in honor of our good friend Bernie, who had brought countless mini spicy Slim Jims on our trip to Pakistan a couple of years prior. We were disheartened by our progress; we had taken far longer than we anticipated to drop a fraction of the gradient. However, properly fueled by gas station meat we climbed back into our boats and began reaping the rewards of 16 hours of effort. Fun boulder gardens were punctuated by the occasional wood portage, the aforementioned deadfall continuing its adversarial role in our quest. Ben and I scouted, probed and relayed beta. Despite the fatigue, we were having fun, and at moments it felt like another day of paddling with a good friend in a beautiful place. We encountered several more slides, drops and portages before arriving at “Norway Drop”, a big multi-tiered slide. I was exhausted, but as we walked down the shore to scout I turned to Ben and said, “well, it looks too good to not run”. He nodded and we got back in our boats. I peeled out first and the fatigue  drained away.The sensation of dropping into a big rapid overtook me with a bizarre familiarity. I plugged the entrance hole, and moved  left as I was resurfacing and skipped  through the final ramp into the eddy. A small smile touched my lips as I turned to watch Ben. He blew through the bottom hole no problem. Not a bad performance on 20 minutes of sleep. 

We arrived at the infamous Jim Bridger Portage. The river steepened at a rate that was too much for a Colorado dad (Ben) and a history teacher (me) to contemplate. We boulder hopped, and did our best to find the path of least resistance. I wasn’t helpful in the tactical component. My brain felt like molasses, and I resigned to doing what I do best– I followed Ben and tried to not slow him down too much. Twenty plus years of river travel (and more than his fair share of heinous portages) allowed Ben to crush the route finding, and we put back in with minimal issues. Flatwater separated us and the second half of the portage. We were under the impression that this part would be shorter, and our beta said to “put back in when it looks reasonable”. In the state we were in, it took a long time for the whitewater to look reasonable. Back at river level, we had another vibe check. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I recall expletives and negativity. Exhaustion had set in, and I felt irrationally upset about the physicality and viciousness of the river. These emotions were compounded by a self-assessment that I was a bad partner; I was confident that I was too soft, too slow, and worst of all, letting Ben down. I articulated some of this to Ben. He hugged me, and assured me that we were on the path for success, together.

He then grabbed  the reins and probed several long stretches of steep boulder gardens. My confidence and psych returned, catalyzed by Ben’s support. We Looked across the river and saw a massive bull elk, the biggest animal I have ever seen. The creature meandered  up the bank, completely at peace in the rugged canyon. 

 We portaged a couple of stout rapids, then put in and routed some read and run. The final major portage, Bull Lake falls, dropped 400-500 vertical feet, necessitating a large boulder-filled walking experience. Near the beginning of the portage, Ben slipped and plopped to a seated position. He looked up and whispered  “I am really tired”. I was filled with schadenfreude as Ben struggled to get his kayak off his shoulder from a seated position; this was also hard for my kayaking hero. The river was asking a lot of us. 

We scrambled over more boulders before the gradient began to ease up. I plugged every class III hole, too tired to take a real boof stroke except when absolutely essential. Several more engaging portages and rapids later, the reality that we succeeded  set in. The gradient flattened, and we drifted through braided channels, surrounded by massive cliffs illuminated red in the late afternoon light. Ben and I hugged and chatted about everything and nothing as we rounded the last couple of bends before the lake. I can’t recall ever feeling more relieved, satiated and grateful to be at the end of a river. 

At the beginning of the 8 mile lake paddle, we took our longest break of the trip, (30 whole minutes!). We stripped off our drysuits, and indulged in candy and spliffs. We began the final chapter on the calm lake as the sun disappeared behind the canyon. Watching the sun set two consecutive evenings without sleeping was a new experience. I savored the uniqueness of the mission we cultivated. The full moon illuminated the lake and the water shimmered and moved psychedelically. When I thought I saw something swimming just below the surface, the small rational part of my brain knew  that it was time to sleep. In what felt like a long time and no time at all, we were at the boat ramp. As immediate as the extinguishing of a flame, the dream turned goal, turned mission, turned sufferfest, then vision quest of the highest caliber, was over. 

No river trip has satiated me more. I am proud of the execution of  our vision, and our commitment to safety and one another. Specific moments are fragmented in my mind. The myriad of emotions– repeated cycles of crashing, finding a way to keep moving, and moments of joy and psych have stuck with me. I have never pushed so hard or had to dig so deep. The next day, Ben texted me “that was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I feel like we went to battle with one of the final bosses in the kayaking video game. Going to take a while to process that.” It’s been a while, but I still have not fully processed it. I am humbled by the power and remoteness of that river canyon. I am  eternally grateful for Ben’s mentorship. It allowed us to tap into the experience together, and provided the opportunity to go beyond the mental and physical domain I am comfortable operating in. For now, that seems like enough.