The Beaten Path and Bernard – July 27th – 31st, 2016

After a very bumpy ride on a long dirt road, we camped at East Rosebud Campground before starting “The Beaten Path” the next morning. The Beaten Path is a well-known backpacking trip, which starts in either Cooke City, MT or East Rosebud Trailhead. Most people drop a car at one or the other starting points and drive several hours to get around the mountains to start the trip at the other (usually the Cooke City side). The entire trip is 26.6 miles with 2122 feet of elevation gain (if you go from Cooke City to East Rosebud) and 3850 feet of elevation gain going the other direction (the direction we went). We did not have the luxury of two cars, so we did an out and back trip starting at East Rosebud Trailhead.

After promising ourselves to buy a map for each backpacking trip, we did not buy a map.  We ended up bumming one off of a reluctant backpacking group that was almost finished with their trip. Guilt ridden, but excited, we started into the stunning granite canyon on our way to our camping destination, Rainbow Lake (about 8 miles in). The trip was absolutely incredible and rivaled our all time favorite backpacking tip (The Enchantments) for beauty. The trail went through a canyon with white water rapids, more waterfalls than you can count, glacier lakes every couple of miles, and high granite walls surrounding the canyon.

We stayed two nights at Rainbow Lake and did a ~10 mile day hike continuing up the trail to Duggan Lake on the second day. In an effort to pack light, we went a little overboard and ended up having to ration food. Exhausted, sore, a little hungry, but thoroughly impressed, we trekked out on the third day, making the total mileage about 26 miles. Much to our delight, Bernie started and we were on our way back towards Bozeman.

As it had been almost a week since being stranded last, Bernard decided it was time to act up again. While happily driving down the interstate cruising at about 20 mph under the speed limit (our normal cruising speed), Bernard’s engine started cutting in and out. Let me tell you, this is quite a terrifying experience. Although a well-known problem with Vanagons, appropriately termed “Vanagon Syndrome”, we were more than a little worried and not pleased with Bernard. We crutched along to Three Forks Campground, an RV park with wifi, which we planned to use to figure out what to do next. Upon arrival to the campground, Bernard died completely, refusing to restart. We spent the evening fiddling with the engine (and not finding anything wrong) and attempting to connect to the spotty and painfully slow Internet. There were showers though so we were thankful for that!

There is a saying the VW community, “VW: Making drivers into mechanics for over 50 years” There is also a well-known phenomenon in the Vanagon community called the “fairy mechanic.” Fair to say that on this occasion we employed the fairy mechanic, because the next morning Bernie started up no problem and ran continuously without the engine cutting out. Still skeptical of the fairy mechanic, we stopped in Missoula to buy a soldering iron and order a capacitor that could potentially fix the Vanagon Syndrome. We had the part shipped to the West Glacier post office for pickup three days later.