Friday 28 September 2018
As expected, it is cold during the night, but with our fleece clothes, down quilt and extra fleece blanket it is warm and cozy inside Wglwof. The challenge is convincing ourselves to get out of the tent this morning. The temperature is -5 degrees C, about 23 degrees F. O and I replace our night time fleece layers with our daytime layers of jackets and vests. I breakout the handwarmers we bought at REI. They work well. Our hot coffee is soon ready and a cardamom coffee cake is baked fairly quickly. Today O also cooks up some hot water for dishwashing so we don’t freeze our fingers. The morning’s saving grace is the bright sunshine. Even now, at the end of September, it provides extra warmth.
Soon O and I are on the road to the Petrified Forest trailhead. There is a north trail to one patch of ancient trees and a south trail to another. Energetic hikers can connect the two and make a triangular loop using the Mah Dah Hey Trail, but we are not feeling that energetic today. Instead we elect to walk out to the north trees, return to Vincent for lunch and then hike out and back to the south trees. In all we hike about 6 or 7 miles and gain around 460 meters of elevation. Although the walks are similar, the terrain is different enough that each hike has its own beauty. From the parking lot the trail dips down and then climbs a ridge from which there are beautiful views of the layered and broken badlands. On top of the ridge is a beautiful prairie. Then the trail dips down into eroded bentonite layers. Bentonite is a crumbly clay-like layer of volcanic ash origin. The petrified trees were buried by this ash ages ago, the wood structure replaced with minerals. The petrified trees look amazingly wood-like. It’s hard to believe the logs would not burn in a fire. On our way back from the north loop we stop to watch a family of goldfinches feeding on thistle seedheads.
After lunch we climb back up to the prairie ridge. A couple passes us on their way out and warns us of a large bison near the trail. Bison appear to move slowly, but they do keep moving, and they have long legs. As O and I trek along the trail we see no bison. On our way down to the petrified trees we hear a huge flock of birds cooing and whistling in the dark juniper forest on the north-facing slopes, but we spy not a single bird. We visit the petrified trees on the south trail and, through our binoculars, can see more petrified trees extending along the bluffs in the bentonite layer. Eventually we turn and retrace our steps back to Vincent. Between our lunch break at 1:20 and our return to the trailhead, the brilliant blue sky has clouded over. We are expecting another cold day tomorrow and a chance of rain mixed with snow on Sunday.
