Louis Norris

“Heyyyyy bear!” Ben slapped his paddle against the boat sitting on his shoulder. It was two in the morning and were making as much noise as possible as we walked down the trail in the dark, hoping to make any bears in the nearby vicinity aware of our presence and hopefully too intimidated by our boisterous voices to contemplate having a middle of the night snack of two very haggard kayakers. Still, our pace picked up in this theoretically 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 correct route that would take us over the pass and into Bull Lake Creek.  It is often hard for me to pinpoint when precisely a dream becomes a goal. The Bull Lake single push onsight was no exception, and inspiration for this mission was drawn from...