One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"What do you mean there's nothing to do in Wyoming in November??"}]

One more for 11 10 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, November 10, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

What do you mean there's nothing to do in Wyoming in November??

One More For The Road: Friday, November 10, 2023

 What do you mean there's nothing to do in Wyoming in November??

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Government & Politics

EVANSTON — Prometheus Hyperscale laid out a vision for its massive 1.2 gigawatt data center campus on a ranch east of town owned by native Trenton Thornock. It’s a place where cattle still graze and the residents prize open country and sky.  

That includes Thornock, the fifth-generation ranching family member told a packed room of Uinta County residents, many of whom are wary of becoming the next front in Wyoming’s data center boom.  

“Our family ranches here, and my great-great-grandmother homesteaded here down Bear River back in 1869,” Thornock said. “I started the company because I saw two things that were wrong with the data center industry. 

"They’re using way too much power for the amount of compute that they’re getting out and they’re using way too much water for cooling.”

Thornock said he started his company in 2020 with the idea of first innovating water cooling systems and doing things in a more sustainable way and second improving the economy of his home state.

Wyoming has struggled with outmigration of its youth, losing most of them by age 30 to other states. 

It’s a dynamic Thornock, as an Evanston graduate, said he's all too familiar with. He knows plenty of his Wyoming classmates who wanted to stay in Wyoming, but couldn’t find high enough paying jobs to support a family.

His thought was that data centers could be part of a new story that changes that dynamic.

That’s one of the reasons he settled on a “bring-your-own-power” approach. Because of severance taxes paid on every molecule of natural gas used, that would be the best way, he figured, to support the state.

“Instead of exporting all of this economic value from the gas that’s produced here in Wyoming like we’ve always done, the point is to consume that here, do the compute here, have the property taxes from these facilities here to support our tax base, to support our schools, and all the other county services,” he said. “That’s my reason for doing this project.”

Thornock’s data center would be built on family-owned ranch land near the Silver Eagle refinery.

This, he added, is not a case where some billionaire from far away is coming to buy up Wyoming land. This is a born-and-raised Wyomingite, wanting to make a difference for his home town.

Prometheus Hyperscale has faced a rising tide of opposition against data centers amid broader concerns gripping the state, following a surge of as many as 70 data centers headed for Cheyenne. 

The meeting Tuesday was informational to answer questions from Uinta County residents about the company’s plans — and they had plenty.

It wasn’t just the usual gamut of water and power use issues. 

People wanted to know who the tenants were, who would be minding the man camps and policing any crimes, whether public officials have signed any non-disclosure agreements, and whether there are any federal, state, or local subsidies, tax abatements, or special utility deals. 

As far as tenants, Thornock said he’s not able to reveal the tenants just yet because they’re not yet ready to go public.

However, he would say that he’s signed a binding agreement with a tenant that restricts future owners of the facility.

“It will not be sold to certain types of entities,” Thornock said. “And there are at least five Chinese names on that list.”

Thornock revealed that he’d gone through a full-blown process early on to bring in a tenant, and ultimately had to reject the contract when he learned that the tenant would have been Chinese-owned ByteDance. 

“So we’ve waited two more years to get to someone we think is the right person to have in this county,” he said. 

 ties to the World Economic Forum, as well as his ties to Blackrock, his involvement in environmental, social, governance (ESG) measures during his tenure as CEO of BP.

Thornock had to say, more than once, that he hasn’t requested any abatements, nor is he accepting any government funding. Looney, he explained, made a better CEO than himself for the sake of name recognition.

“No one knows who Trenton Thornock is on Wall Street,” he said. “They don’t care who I am. The CEO of the company, Bernard Looney, everyone knows him. Jamie Dimon knows him. The head of Blackrock knows him. He’s the reason we had a CEO change, to go raise the money for private markets.”

All of the equity, all of the debt, will be raised from private investors using a bond offering that will be managed by Morgan Stanley.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Remote Jobs"}]

Uinta County Commissioner Mark Anderson told Thornock and his team that he’d been engaging with local residents for the past two weeks, and that he had a long list of questions from them. 

Chief among them was whether the 200 long-term jobs the data center projects it will have once operational will be actual jobs for people residing in Uinta County.

“Or will these be jobs created for somebody to sit and operate remotely?” Anderson asked.

The jobs will not be remote, Anderson was told, and the company is taking extra steps to try and hire as many people locally as possible.

“The way we’re going to do it here is that we’re first going to post all these jobs locally so that we can pull all the talent that’s here or people who are interested in getting a job there,” Thornock said. “And I can tell you what the wages are, because they’re kind of the same across the industry. 

"These 200 jobs range from $75,000 a year on the low end to about 150 on the high end. They’re good jobs … and these jobs will come with all the benefits. You’ll have bonus, you’ll have overtime, vacation, full healthcare, 401K — all the things that you want that I don’t have working for a startup.”

The data center will bring “a lot of advancement in the learning and the workforce,” Prometheus Head of Construction Ahmed Anwar said. 

“When you talk about direct construction, we’ll need electricians, we’ll need pipefitters, we’ll need ironworkers,” he said. “Pretty much any trade that supports an oil and gas field, any type of power plant project, those are the same types of trades that we’re looking for as we build data centers.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Minimizing Water Use"}]

In a state where ranching and water rights are existential issues, residents pressed hard on water use and power use. 

Thornock spent the most time addressing questions about those issues, explaining that his data center will use a closed-loop, liquid cooling system similar to the radiator of a car.

Unlike the radiator of car, the cooling loop for the data center will be filled with a propylene glycol water mixture referred to as PG25. 

Propylene glycol is an additive that’s been generally recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration for food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. 

It has a variety of uses including as an anti-caking agent, as well as an emulsifier or stabilizer. It’s also useful as a humectant — absorbing and retaining moisture — which helps keep baked goods fresh and soft.

PG25 is good for around six years, after which it requires recharging. That will be done off-site by a chemical supplier, which will manage trucking the fluids in and out of Wyoming. 

The spent fluid will not be released into local well water. It will be drained and sealed into 1,000-gallon drums or containers and shipped off either for recycling or disposal in a Class VI well.

The only well water the site will use is for domestic uses such as employees washing their hands when they use the restroom.

The company also promised it would report daily water extraction from its wells on a portal, so that residents can track usage.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Staying Off Grid"}]

As far as energy, Prometheus is proposing a fully off-grid power strategy that will be built around on-site natural gas generation through the Kern River pipeline, which already loops through that area.

“Because we’re not connecting to the grid, there’s zero impact on your rates, because we are not connecting to Rocky Mountain Power,” he said. “The rules in Wyoming are such that we can consume our own electricity on site, and we’ll have to abide by all regulations.”

The type of power generation will be natural gas reciprocating engines, which Thornock said will use very little water. 

“We’re talking about, on a per engine basis, a couple of Yeti cups per day,” he said. “So it’s not significant. And when we get to the larger turbine generation, those will be cooled with dry coolers, similar to the data center, so there’s no water consumption there either.”

Thornock further committed to paying for municipal fire protection, road maintenance, and emergency service responses required by the facility, and said the company will be working with Target Hospitality to provide workforce housing to avoid affecting the local housing market.

Wyoming’s abundant gas resources and existing gathering systems, meanwhile, mean that production can increase with demand without dramatically spiking prices for that resource, while simultaneously supporting the state through severance taxes. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Data Centers Matter"}]

Swipe a credit card, and you’re interacting with a data center somewhere. Go to a gas station and use a preferred shopping card, and you’re interacting with a data center somewhere else.

“Our health care rules have been focused around the fact that all the records are in data centers,” Prometheus Hyperscale Head of Global Infrastructure James Faccone told the standing-room only crowd at Evanston’s Roundhouse on Tuesday. 

“So, as much as we think we might be trying to avoid data centers, they’re here to stay,” he said. "They are very much part of our life, and they bring us a lot of value.”

That frames the Evanston project as part of a broader shift in “critical infrastructure,” akin to things like hospitals, military installations, and other complex facilities that require operations, maintenance, and security personnel to run safely and reliably.

Inside these data centers, there are hundreds of computers sitting in rows on server racks, supported by intricate systems that require skilled jobs and long-term technical capabilities who both work and live in their host communities. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Overall Economic Impact"}]

An economic analysis commissioned from the University of Wyoming projects a $3.1 billion economic impact in Uinta County through 2032, with hundreds of permanent jobs and hundreds more indirect positions once the campus is fully built out.

Statewide, the economic impact for Wyoming is $184 million through 2029, Thornock said, with a $40 million impact to Uinta County over the same period.

Once operational, it will be good for $53 million annually to the state, largely from severance taxes on natural gas consumed on site, and roughly $13 million per year in county and sub-county impact, which includes property taxes. 

These revenue streams would help stabilize a county whose tax collections have been buffeted by swings in oil, gas and coal, Thornock said.  

The biggest beneficiary will be school districts, he added, followed by fire districts, roads, infrastructure, public safety and county government. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Continued Engagement"}]

With opposition to data centers rising across the Cowboy State, residents have voiced concern that Prometheus’ data center campuses are large enough to still put pressure on local water supplies and the regional power grid even with these efficiency measures in place.

Along with the Uinta County project, the company also is moving forward with a data center in Natrona County.

They’ve had a long list of growing questions from residents, ranging from what the campus will look like on the ground to how it might affect everything from housing and traffic to emergency services. 

Prometheus has promised to engage with those concerns directly through community benefit agreements and local-hiring priorities through a broader “Build Wyoming” message that pitches data centers as a tool to fight the state’s brain drain and keep more young people working at home.

Company officials have said construction is expected to begin on the Evanston data center within six to nine months, with an eye to starting operation sometime in 2027.

Tuesday’s informational meeting was the latest opportunity for residents to weigh those assurances, ask detailed questions about water and power use, and help shape how this ambitious AI campus, if built, fits into Uinta County’s future.

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<title>Prometheus Faces Skeptical Crowd In Evanston Over Huge 1.2GW Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fifth-generation Wyoming rancher Trenton Thornock pitched a huge 1.2 gigawatt data center on family land to a skeptical Evanston crowd on Tuesday. The project is facing a rising tide of opposition against data centers locally and across Wyoming.

Prometheus Faces Skeptical Crowd In Evanston Over Huge 1.2GW Data Center

Coy Knobel

Don Day Weather

Chance of afternoon rain, breezy in parts of Wyoming on Wednesday, otherwise partly sunny skies. Breezy overnight. Highs mainly in the 70s and 80s. Lows from the mid 30s to upper 50s.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":" "}]

Chance of rain, otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 53 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph.

Slight chance of rain, otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 86 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight a low near 49 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

 Chance of rain after noon, otherwise partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 79 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 51 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

 Sunny today with a high near 73 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 39.

  Sunny and breezy today with a high near 79 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Mostly clear and breezy overnight with a low near 46 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

Sunny and breezy today with a high near 74 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph. Mostly clear and breezy overnight with a low near 39 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph.

Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 74 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph. Mostly clear overnight with a low near 38 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph.

 Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 84 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 42.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 75 and wind gusts as high as 33 mph. Mostly clear and breezy overnight with a low near 37 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph.

 Chance of rain mainly after 5 p.m., gradually becoming sunny today with a high near 71 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 43 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

  Sunny today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 44 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

:  Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 73 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 39.

Partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 87 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph.

:  Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 59 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 88 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 56 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise partly sunny and windy today with a high near 82 and wind gusts as high as 41 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 57 and wind gusts as high as 34 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 87 and wind gusts as high as 38 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 51 and wind gusts as high as 38 mph.

:  Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 85 and wind from 16-21 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 50 and wind from 16-21 mph.

Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 36 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 36 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 83 and wind gusts as high as 36 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 58 and wind gusts as high as 34 mph.

:  Mostly sunny today with a high near 87 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 57 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 83 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 58 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 40 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 50 and wind gusts as high as 35 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon, otherwise partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 50 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon, mostly cloudy and breezy today with a high near 69 and wind from 10-20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before midnight and a low near 49.

  Chance of rain after noon, mostly cloudy and breezy today with a high near 65 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 46 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m., mostly cloudy and breezy today with a high near 75 and wind gusts as high as 35 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 53 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon, mostly cloudy today with a high near 72 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 46.

  Chance of rain after noon, mostly cloudy today with a high near 72 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 45.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 73 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 42.

Daycap small 5 27 26

<title>Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Wednesday, May 27, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Two hikers on a multi-day excursion in Teton County were helicoptered out of the mountain range by Teton County Search and Rescue after becoming dangerously dehydrated in the snow-covered mountains.

Around 1 p.m. Monday, Teton County Search & Rescue (TCSAR) received an emergency alert for two backpackers in distress on the Death Canyon Shelf, a plateau on the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park. Two men, ages 20 and 22, were suffering from intense gastrointestinal issues.

“Both had excessive vomiting and didn't feel like they were going to be able to get out,” Anthony Stevens, TCSAR’s chief advisor, told Cowboy State Daily. “They were unable to maintain hydration or food.”

The group of four hikers from Iowa told TCSAR volunteers via cellphone that they’d try to hike out of the mountains. After an hour, the two afflicted men were unable to continue.

TCSAR sent a helicopter to pick up the two men at Hurricane Pass, a mountain pass in the Alaska Basin within the Teton Range. They were flown to the TCSAR headquarters in Jackson but didn’t needed to be hospitalized.

“We gave them some Zofran to help control the vomiting,” Stevens said. “After they got to sit tight and recuperate a bit, we gave them some food and water, and they were able to get a ride back to their vehicle.”

The other two hikers in the group were able to hike out of the mountains and reunite with their peers.

“Last I heard from them, everybody was doing better, they’d gotten a meal in them, and they were starting to hydrate,” Stevens said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Not A Drop To Drink"}]

Death Canyon Shelf is a section of the 40-mile Teton Crest Trail. Stevens said the four-person group was on the second day of a multi-day excursion.

TCSAR routinely rescues people who’ve been seriously injured in Teton County’s backcountry. This incident was a little different.

“My guess is that they were dehydrated to the point that they couldn't hold down any fluids or food,” Stevens said. “It sounded like they weren't prepared to hit as much snow as they did in the high country when they were coming into Alaska Basin.”

According to Stevens, the group had expected to collect water on the trail. When they got up there, there was more snow than they anticipated, and the effort to get through exacerbated their dehydration.

The hikers seemed aware of their circumstances. Stevens said that at one point, they resorted to boiling snow to get drinking water.

“It sounded like they didn't have enough water between the four of them to maintain hydration,” he said. “They boiled what they could, but it wasn’t enough to maintain them for the amount of time they were traveling that day.”

If that seems unlikely, the National Weather Service says 1 inch of liquid water is equal to 12 inches of snow. You'd need a lot of boiled snow to sufficiently hydrated one person, let alone four hikers on a high-elevation hike.

That’s why the two rescued hikers didn’t need to be hospitalized once they reached Jackson. Once they stopped vomiting and started to rehydrate, they recovered.

Stevens asked whether their condition was related to high altitude, since Alaska Basin is above 10,000 feet. The hikers told him it wasn’t.

“They’re from Iowa, but they said they had all been at altitude before,” he said. “They just hit a lot of snow and did a lot of post-holing, and that’s exhausting. They definitely struggled up there.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Simple Swoop And Scoop"}]

Stevens said this incident wasn’t due to lack of experience or preparedness on the hikers’ behalf. They were prepared for an intense, high-altitude backcountry hike.

“I don’t know what they did for trip-planning or prep, but they definitely had had the gear to be out there for a couple of nights,” he said.

Despite the overall below-average snowpack across Wyoming, areas above 9,500 feet still have significant snow accumulation. Even in late May, TCSAR encourages hikers in the Tetons to bring ice axes and crampons in case they encounter impassable snowbanks.

In this case, the moral of the story is to bring enough water for a multi-day, high-energy excursion. Finding drinkable water in the mountains is a reliable workaround, but not always an option.

For TCSAR, the entire mission took four hours. It was what Stevens called a simple “swoop and scoop.”

“It was just a couple of kids unable to maintain hydration who didn’t think they were going to get out,” he said. “They didn’t expect to encounter as much snow as they did.”

Teton rescue 5 26 26

<title>Hikers Rescued From Death Canyon Shelf In Grand Teton National Park | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two hikers on a multi-day excursion were helicoptered to safety by Teton County Search and Rescue after becoming ill on Monday. “It sounded like they weren't prepared to hit as much snow as they did in the high country," one rescuer told Cowboy State Daily.

Hikers Rescued From Death Canyon Shelf In Grand Teton National Park

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

CHEYENNE — The fire was so intense, Paul and Alexandra Trujillo said it felt like they were standing in front of a blazing campfire.

They were instead in Paul’s truck on Del Range Boulevard just behind Sam’s Club in north Cheyenne watching from the road as a huge apartment complex under construction burned Tuesday afternoon.

In the next 15-20 minutes, Paul and his daughter were mesmerized by the intensity and ferocity of a fire that consumed the building, a garage next to it and sparked a grass fire.

“We literally watched it from the beginning,” Paul told Cowboy State Daily. “It was 15-20 minutes from start to collapse. It spread to the garage in between the two buildings, and it also started a grass fire.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That whole area, just stay away.”"}]

Paul said the in-progress apartment building is in the Ridgeview Apartments located at 2025 E. Carlson St. just off Converse Avenue between Sam’s Club to the south and Storey Boulevard to the north.

While he saw a window open from the inside in the apartment building next to the one that burned, Paul wasn’t sure if it was finished and occupied yet.

What he was sure about is that the fire burned incredibly fast and incredibly hot.

“Oh my gosh, we were back by Sam’s Club and you could feel the heat like you were standing in front of a campfire,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Window Opens"}]

“I was worried, because there are two sets of apartments there that they’re building,” Paul added. “We did see a window open, and when you see a window opening and that fire’s going on, I was worried somebody might be in there.”

He didn’t see anyone come out, “But we did hear some explosions coming from the building,” Paul said. “And the first thing we saw was the (construction) crews running around with their yellow vests on.”

Paul said he and Alexandra watched as firefighting crews started to arrive and search for fire hydrants to hook up to. But from what he saw, he didn’t observe any hydrants and watched as they fought with water from a ladder truck and a couple of pumper trucks.

Because the fire had spread so quickly throughout the unfinished building, it appeared firefighters were concentrating on nearby structures to keep the fire from spreading, Paul said.

“They were just trying to keep the fire from spreading, because that building was a total loss,” he said. “They were putting water on the other unit, and the garage, but the garage burned anyway.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I couldn’t believe how fast it spread.”"}]

Along with a heavy response from Cheyenne Fire Rescue and other agencies, the Tuesday afternoon fire also wreaked havoc with traffic in Wyoming’s capital city.

Cheyenne police and Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies directed traffic away from the area of the fire response, which also is one of the busiest sections of the city. That caused massive traffic backups around the Frontier Mall south to Pershing Boulevard.

“Road closures are in place … please avoid the area while crews work to contain the fire,” the Cheyenne Police Department in advised a statement about the response. The agency later added that the roads had reopened.

The firefighting effort was still ongoing at the time this story was published.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.

Cheyenne fire 5 26 26

<title>"Total Loss": Witness Says Fire Ripped Through Cheyenne Apartment Building In Minutes | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A fire tore through an under-construction apartment in north Cheyenne on Tuesday, burning so hot and intense it was “a total loss” in minutes, a witness said. “You could feel the heat like you were standing in front of a campfire,” he said.

"Total Loss": Witness Says Fire Ripped Through Cheyenne Apartment Building In Minutes

Leah Veress

[{"type":"text","text":"“Leah, get up. The horses got out.”"}]

I burrowed my head deeper into my sleeping bag against the cold, feigning sleep. Outside my synthetic-filled cocoon, my tentmate was shuffling around, unzipping her sleeping bag.

In the distance, a creek was roaring, and horses were whinnying, and dull bells were ringing.

“You put the bells on the mares,” Matt, a contractor who grew up locally, explained to me the previous day. “They’re the trouble makers. If they get out, the rest will follow.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Like a queen bee, I had thought."}]

Suddenly, I was fully awake. Shit, the horses got out! Deep in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, dozens of miles from the nearest road, two days into a five-day trip, the horses and mules were our only way to pack out our camp.

I threw open my sleeping bag, pulled on my jeans, grabbed my headlamp and bear spray, and crawled out of the tent.

Despite the darkness, camp was alive with motion. Tent doors flew open, riding clothes were thrown over sleepwear, and saddles were slung on the remaining horses. I clicked my headlamp to the highest setting, blinking hard to adjust my eyes to the low light and shake the sleep from my mind.

Two horses and two mules came into view, tethered to trees by their lead ropes. That left eight animals missing. Lights scanned like spotlights as horses whinnied and the mules brayed, casting an eerie, wail-like sound into the darkness.

As Matt and Antonio, a seasonal outdoors worker, mounted their horses to track the escaped equestrians, the outfitter turned to me.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Stay here and watch the animals in case any trouble comes.”"}]

Two days earlier, our posse of five mules, seven horses, an outfitter, two contractors, a nurse, an outdoorsman, and a reporter embarked on an extended weekend pack trip.

New to horseback riding, having taken a multi-year hiatus from the backcountry, and largely unfamiliar with my companions, I was immediately overwhelmed with a deep appreciation for their company, keen to learn as much as I could.

Suddenly, I was fully awake. The horses got out! Deep in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, dozens of miles from the nearest road, two days into a five-day trip, the horses and mules were our only way to pack out our camp.

One More For The Road: Friday, November 10, 2023

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