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PrintGood Buddies, 'biles, and Bear Dens
Riding the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail
Arick Auyang from Atlanta, Georgia, explores the limits of his snowmobiling skills while on a tour along the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail.
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We’re huffing and puffing at an elevation of 10,000 feet, in twelve feet of snow. My triathlon training doesn’t seem to be helping here. As we gasp for air trying to lift his stuck snowmobile, our understated Wyoming guide calmly proclaims, “We should try to keep it quiet folks, ’cause this appears to be a bear den right here.” Claw marks on surrounding trees drive the point home, and we resume working with silent urgency.
It’s a mid-February boys’ weekend on the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail, with Togwotee Mountain Lodge as our base. We’ve come from several different states and backgrounds, with the common denominators of friendship and a love for snowmobiling in the high country. With a couple of decades in the outdoor and snowmobile industries, plus a home in nearby Teton Valley, Idaho, I’ve been here a few times before. There’s no place I’d rather spend a weekend like this.
My good friend Jon is the ringleader and trip coordinator. I’ve been working in Park City, Utah, for much of the winter, and I drive up for the occasion. Andy flies in from Phoenix, packing every piece of insulated clothing he owns, and I pick him up at the Jackson airport. Greg drives down from Montana to Driggs, where he joins Jon, Mo, and Mike. They load snowmobiles into Mo’s trailer, hook onto Mike’s truck, and roll. We all arrive at Togwotee Lodge within an hour of each other, and kick off the weekend properly over happy hour. The stories are good and will only get better.
The week leading up to our trip was the coldest of the season. Fortuitously, a storm rolled in the day before our visit, replacing below-zero temperatures with two feet of fresh snow followed by sunshine. Year-to-date snowfall is at near-record levels, and we’re itching to experience it.
The Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail (CDST) comprises over six-hundred miles of continuous groomed riding trails, almost all in Wyoming. Running from South Pass near Lander, north to near Pinedale and Dubois, then onward to Flagg Ranch and into Yellowstone National Park, it bisects some of the wildest terrain in the lower forty-eight states. Endless off-trail riding beckons along the way, and it is truly a powder, hill-climbing, and tree-riding paradise. Because of the sheer scale of the area and the frequent whiteout snowstorms, guides are recommended even for experienced riders.
I’ve been riding since childhood, although erratically during the past twenty years. My earliest memory is putting an Alouette sled together in the garage with my dad, when I was five. For the next fifteen years, I’d come home from school or work or ball games or dates, and ride up into the northern Utah mountains. My Irish setter Rusty would usually accompany me, and we’d simply sit, think, and watch the world go by far below. I still draw from that perspective, and have been drawn to mountaintop views ever since.
The entire article can be read in the Winter 2012 issue of Jackson Hole Magazine.
