We are in the narrow bottom of Palmer Canyon, deep in the backcountry of Wyoming’s Wind River Range, when she breaks down. We had pushed hard past the noisy group of young boys at Palmer Lake in hope of reaching the flat open meadow of New Fork Park. Now Jenn is crying, standing on a gravel bar between braids of river bed with no sign of a definable trail, both sobbing and yelling at me. “I fucking hate this!” she shouts. There is nothing I can do to make her feel better. We are both stuck in this canyon, surrounded by steep walls and tall grass, left with no choice but to hike on up and out, hoping to hook back up with a maintained trail. A trail that will not offer us surprises, lose us in the seams, or subject us to the myopia of scale.

Later, I will blame the map. I am used to the more detailed 7.5-minute topographic quadrangles at 1:24,000 scale, as opposed to the larger 15-minute map (1:48,000) we were using in the Wind Rivers. I had a compass. I know how to use a map, how to decipher the cryptic language of lines and colors. Yet, I feel as if the map let us down, had not prepared us for what we might find along those trails, or the trails themselves. We bought the map, A Hiking Map & Guide: Northern Wind River Range, WY (new waterproof edition), at an outdoor store in Pinedale. A gold sticker on the cover excitedly announced “Only $7.95!” and the blurb at the bottom was from the editors of a well-established outdoor magazine: “Ultimate maps!” But despite all the trails being marked and the contours drawn, as well as the warnings and guidelines located in the accompanying text, something was overlooked by somebody somewhere. I would not consider me and Jenn novice backpackers, having spent a fair amount of time in the out-of-doors humping full packs across a wide variety of landscapes, but the map left us unprepared for what we encountered in the Wind Rivers.

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