WE MADE A DEAL: one Jolly Rancher for every mile.
After bushwhacking for 30 minutes, my daughter and I sat on a steep cliff face for the second time that morning, waiting for my husband to find a barely marked trail. We agreed to amend the deal: Now it was one Jolly Rancher for every half mile.
Hours later, I couldn’t argue with the bargain. Limber and whitebark pines, dead and fallen from wind and age, crisscrossed everywhere we tried walking. Hiking started to feel more and more like a chore.
The trail on the map made it look as if we would climb only about 500 feet before crossing a saddle, but maps of Wyoming backcountry trails are only so accurate, and maps of Wind River Indian Reservation trails are even less precise. So we kept hiking, finally reaching what we hoped was the top after 1,200 vertical feet.
A few miles later, we finally reached one of those saddles. Three men on horseback approached from the other side, an outfitter and two tribal game wardens. They checked our fishing licenses and asked where we’d come from. When they heard, they remarked on how they can’t keep up with clearing deadfall from the trails—there’s too much. Then one warden asked my daughter, Miriam, how old she was. She craned her neck to look up at him as he sat