Neither of us had been to Wyoming before this trip in fall 1999. Unfortunately, the thing about Wyoming is that it's separated from the Bay Area by 1,000 miles and the state of Nevada. Fortunately, the Wind River Range is separated from everywhere by 1,000 miles, but that still doesn't get around the whole Nevada thing. Also, Mark and I, being the expert woodsmen we are, misread the map, which had a -1 to 1 scale, as being a 0 to 1 scale, and so walked about twice as far as we thought we would have to. It's interesting, because we didn't figure this out until the third day, when we hiked way off trail and were trying to hike back to the trail and were finding it much, much harder than we thought it would be. We pulled out the map on the side of one of the mountains we were scaling, and discovered that we had been misreading it the whole time. And here, we thought we were just out of shape when it was difficult to hike the 5 miles to our base camp on the way in. No, it was just 10 miles.

"Are you cold, Mark?"

Mark looked over, surprised.

"No," he said. "I'm roasting."

"Hmm," I said. I was freezing. I was wearing a down jacket, inside my down sleeping bag, and I was shaking. It had been raining or snowing most of the night, but the tent was pretty warm inside. Mark was in his sleeping bag without a jacket on.

Neither of us had been sleeping much since the blizzard came, so Mark turned a light on, and we very quickly figured out why I was cold.

* * *

	Holding up a stringer of grayling and trout at the Cross Lakes (top) and the scenery at Barnes Lake on a sunny day.

When we pitched our tent four days ago, the sun was shining, birds were singing and fi were flopping. The campsite was as close to perfect as campsites can be: no people, on a peninsula, surrounded by a beautiful lake, with tree roots that made a small circle just made for sitting on while cooking. So we pitched our tent in a nice, shallow depression at the base of a hill, which looked like a comfortable place to sleep.

Fast-forward four days of gorgeous scenery: endless forests and flowery meadows framed by untouched blue sky and soaring white clouds.

On that last day, we hiked north from our base camp, in search of bigger and better fish than the 12-15-inch brown and cutthroat trout we had been catching. We hiked about six miles in the sun, to a large lake, where the sky very abruptly turned black. Mark threw out one cast, and saw the largest fish we'd seen all trip swim by.

And then, thunder rolled off the mountain. A bolt of lightning slashed across the sky. And it started snowing. We hauled out rain ponchos and sat under a tree to see if we could wait it out while we had lunch. After half an hour though, conditions had only worsened. The snow was coming down faster now, and sticking to the ground for a few seconds before it melted.

Mark never got a chance to go after the big fish, which was disappointing, because in cold weather, fish like that go nuts. But we decided to hike back to our camp, without fishing.

The clouds cleared up a little on the way back, giving us a break. We found a huge meadow, with a river overflowing with 6-8-inch trout cutting straight across the middle. The fish were so plentiful that Mark needed only to stick an un-baited hook in the water and wait for one to swim by, and then give a sharp pull. We caught dinner this way, and lingered for a while to test out flies.

When we finally got back to our camp, the weather seemed nice again.

We made a fire to cook the fish. The sun went down and some stars came out. It was incredibly, incredibly still, like the first moment of a concert, when the musicians have raised their bows but the music hasn't started yet, and the entire audience is perfectly hushed. Experts, I believe, call this the "calm before the storm."

As we sat around the fire, we heard the noise of a train, far off in the distance. It was a dull, steady howl, which built up gradually to become like the growl of an airplane passing overhead. The airplane noise continued to get louder, and louder, and louder, like a jet was flying right into us.

Out of the stillness, the waves on the opposite side of the lake picked up and dark clouds raced across the sky, covering the stars and moon, blotting out the light. The far end of the lake was a seething, choppy mess, although our end still was quiet. But the roar continued getting louder, and louder, and louder, until -- bam! -- the wind slammed into our camp. The fire jumped out of its containment pit, then suddenly went out, vanquished by the gust. Our cooking materials were blasted off the stove and branches rained out from the trees.

The gale was accompanied by a torrent -- first rain, then snow -- pouring out of the billowing clouds. Thunder blasts rocked the valley, reverberating off of the mountains and drowning out all of the noise for miles. Forked lightning flashes revealed a thick snow layer already covering the top of the mountains, which were barren just minutes before. And the wind pressed onward, forcing the tent to strain on its moorings and sending any items not tethered to the ground flying across the meadows.

We scrambled back toward the tent, tying everything down and pushing our food and dinner bags up into a tree, where the wind rattled the pots and pans. The tent seemed to be holding up, but the wind was rocking the canvas, and making it vibrate like straps on a car roof.

* * *

We both tried to sleep, but Mark was concerned about the snow obscuring our way out -- we still had 10 miles to the trailhead. I drifted off, but woke up cold.

I turned and asked Mark if he was cold, and he turned on the flashlight.

And we noticed then that the shallow depression had filled in, and my sleeping bag was soaking wet. Although I wasn't too concerned about it at the time, I was also probably in the beginning stages of hypothermia.

Mark got out the stove and boiled some water inside the tent. It was sometime around 4 a.m.

Once the stove water was boiling, Mark decided to have some Ramen noodles. At one point in my life, I was able to eat Ramen noodles, but at four in the morning in the middle of a blizzard, they sounded like the most unappetizing thing in the world. That feeling has stayed with me -- I have not eaten Ramen for breakfast since Wyoming. I had some hot chocolate. We decided to wait for daylight and a break in the rain, and hike the 10 miles out as soon as we got a chance.

	I swear, you used to be able to see a mountain back there.

At around 6 a.m., gray morning light started to peek through. The sky was still heavy and overcast, but the snow was melting on the ground. We sat at the edge of the tent, waiting for a break in the downpour so we could pack up and leave. It came around 6:30, and we hastily shoved all our stuff together, lashed the tent onto my backpack and started walking. We hiked through standing water, mud, fallen trees and wet bushes. My jeans started to pull themselves off: because I had lost weight the waist no longer fit and because they were so heavy from the water we walked through.

About two miles down the trail, we heard the sound of screaming, echoing over the valley. It came from a direction where there were no people. I've been told that mountain lions sound very much like women screaming, and I believe it. The noise instantly raised chills on my neck, and some instinct from ancestors a million years ago kicked in to tell me: that scream means danger.

Mark heard it too. We picked up our walking pace a little bit.

Eight miles down the trail, still without having rested, we arrived at the lake where we camped the first night. Our clothes were so wet at this point that we simply forded it, plunging through knee-high water instead of taking our chances with the slippery log crossing.

After walking straight for 10 miles without stopping, we reached a meadow of high grass, the last thing that separated us from the car. We started tromping through the grass, which was about chest-high. Somewhere, buried in that meadow, was a ditch.

At precisely the same moment, Mark and I found the ditch. There was a simultaneous "whump-whump," as we both fell forward, flat on our faces. The heavy backpacks landed on top of us.

"You ok?" Mark looked over.

"Yeah," I grunted.

I was so tired I couldn't even laugh.

* * *

We got to the car, took a victory picture, and drove back to Pinedale. We stopped and had cheeseburgers at "Mom's" restaurant, where we saw a truck outside with the license plate number "1."

I started driving, through the rain. We passed the Tetons in a thick, foggy mist, crossed the beautiful Hoback river several times, and then, suddenly, as we crossed the state border into Idaho, the sun came out.