Heckel's Adventures

I love to travel and see new locations around the world. Most of my vacations are continental USA for backpacking, though recently I have done some trips abroad with the Wild Women Expeditions (WWE). This has been a great travel group for me to travel with as it is devoted to groups of women. WWE posted a couple years ago that they were beginning to craft a trip in Bhutan and I have been looking forward to this trip since then. I knew I needed to get into better shape for the vertical climbing to the renowned Tiger’s Nest, but I have been limited in what my body would tolerate due to an old spinal injury that resulted in a neck fusion in 2012. Since 2012, I have lost the ability to tolerate most of my favorite forms of exercise due to risk factors associated with them and I subsequently have gained some mass myself. I did however, with slow diligent progress beginning in March 2019, build up tolerance to spin classes, thereby building my endurance. By September 2019, I was ...

Day 1, August 9, 2019 Lora, Jen, and I met up on the north shore and left one car at the day 3 end location for further future car shuttling, then returned to Oberg Mountain to start our adventure. We began sans packs doing the Oberg mountain loop taking in some great vistas.  Then we donned our heavy packs (mine was 46.4 lbs including the 3L of water weight) and hit the trail heading north.  We had a lot of great views along our journey past lutsen and to West Poplar River campsite.  We learned that Lora is a great gatherer of firewood and an amazing fire tender!  We had a nice fire and at 10PM or later a group of a couple guys and a pit bull ("Thunderheart" rescued from a meth house) joined our site.  We were only 1.5 miles from the nearest parking lot/access site, and the guys had driven up after work from the Twin Cities to the SHT!  And I thought that the 3 hour drive to the Sawtooth Mountains in ID could be a bit long.  Wow.  But un...

August 10th started the drive to meet up for our summer hiking adventure.  Larry and I stayed in Bozeman, MT, while Jen stayed in Glendive, MT, allowing us all to arrive in Red Lodge, MT, on August 11th within 5 minutes of each other.  This was better than when we have ever tried to coordinate a meetup, and we were perhaps more relaxed in our planning this year, sharing primarily our arrival date and packing list with one another prior to getting on the road.  We had thought  perhaps we would be able to shuttle the cars on the 11th, but deep down, I thought that may be a "pipe dream" and not a reality.  However, it did become a reality. One challenging variable about the car shuttle, is that it requires traveling the Beartooth Highway.  It is gorgeous!   The only other time I had been on this road following Kevin and Chelle Buffington's wedding in Anaconda, MT, many years ago.  My mom had thought that would be the fastest route from Billings, MT...