I woke up at the trailhead. It was 35 degrees and I couldn’t feel my fingers. I still had food to sort out; I knew I’d overpacked, but didn’t know by how much.

At the picnic table I sorted everything out and filled the waterproof, odor-proof bag with what I thought was five days’ worth of food, tossing out extra bags of couscous and Clif bars. Olive oil, peanut butter, tuna packets? Y’all can stay.

One of my last to-dos: repairing my broken pole strap, with its useful but amusingly vague built-in compass. (“North is, uh, that-a-ways. ish.”) I managed to do this in the process:

Just as I was finalizing everything, I heard the clop of hooves, and marveled as an enormous line of pack mules sauntered past me and onto the trail. It was bad-ass old-school cowboyery in effect.

Final pack weight: 52 pounds. I was hoping for more like 45. But I could still stand upright. With a warm weather forecast, I made one last risky decision and left behind the waterproof REI jacket that I’d paid dearly for.

At 10:40 AM, I was off.

By 11:00 AM, I’d made my first wrong turn.

In my defense the signposts are rather vague. An arrow pointing to the right means “down the trail to the right of this sign,” not “down the overgrown footpath that you actually see to your right.” I had to bushwhack to get back on track, and go another half-hour before I was confident I’d made the right decision.

For the rest of the morning I followed mule-shoe tracks, and lots and lots of mule dung, up the dusty trail. The concept of the mule train was suddenly much less cool to me. One stretch was so narrow and full of poop that I named it Mule Dung Alley. I’m witty!

First break was after 90 minutes at the actual entrance to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. It was another burned stretch of forest, with little three-foot baby pines sprouting up by the thousands among their dead ancestors. It had been my first cloudy day thus far, but the sun peeked out as I reached the packbridge across the Sun River.

I’d hoped the mule train would’ve followed the trail to the northeast at this point, but the tracks turned west just as I did, heading along the river and up to the Continental Divide. So it was to be Mule Dung Alley the whole way, then.

About a half-hour after the packbridge, I passed another backpacker. We said hello. He was the only human being I would see all day.

The trail moved up the hillside until I was a good 100 feet above the river. I had a lunch of Gorp and refilled on water next to a little spring-fed creek; I was keeping an excellent pace thus far and feeling good. I was visited by some of the biggest flies I’ve ever seen, but fortunately for me, they were easily shoo-able. It could’ve been horror-movie territory if they’d been the swarming type.

At a place called Indian Point, down the hill from a remote ranger station, I stopped again around 4:15. This had been my target campsite for the first night, but I realized I had energy for more. As soon as I hit the trail again, I was officially ahead of schedule.

I walked through another burned forest—if you haven’t gathered, these are much more common than you’d think. The dead trees creaked and groaned as they swayed in the wind. I went up a dreaded switchback and found myself next to a pristine field full of soft grass.

I set up my camp with daylight left. I made a fire from pine needles, absolutely terrified of kickstarting a new wildfire, and cooked my remaining chicken-apple sausages, followed by half a wheel of delicious gouda I’d bought in Choteau the day before. It’s strangely exciting to eat when you’re backpacking, not because you’re hungry, but because it’s one less thing weighing down your pack.

I felt pretty accomplished for the evening:

• Set up camp — ?
• Cooked dinner without burning down the forest — ?
• Hang the food bag so bears can’t get to it — Uhhhh… Turns out I could have used some practice on this one. I got my cord over a nearby tree, but couldn’t get leverage to haul the bag upwards. After half an hour I finally gave up and decided I’d rely on the bag’s odor-proofing to save it from foraging mammals.

I took two ibuprofen to rest my acheyness, and was asleep before dark, miles from anywhere.

At about 4:00 Wednesday morning, I woke to a strange sound in the trees.