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Tom Ross

Tom Ross' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays in Steamboat Today. Contact him at 970-871-4205 or tross@SteamboatToday.com.

Steamboat Springs — Steamboat is chock full of backpackers and hikers, every one of whom would drop everything to stuff a rucksack and earn a paycheck by backpacking in Yosemite National Park.

Kelly Bastone did just that. But she's a pro. She landed the lead article in the June issue of Backpacker magazine with the story of finding unheard of solitude on the trails above Yosemite Valley.

Bastone, a former curator for the Tread of Pioneers Museum in Steamboat Springs, previously earned a master's degree in English from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

The profession of freelance writer may sound like the most carefree existence on the planet. However, endless marketing and economic uncertainty offset the obvious rewards. I know. I tried it 15 years ago.

Bastone has to possess business acumen as well as an engaging writing style to succeed at what she is doing.

Her piece, "Alone in a Crowd," begins on page 10 of Backpacker and describes - in prose that is frequently elegant - her quest to find a hiking route affording solitude in the heart of Yosemite National Park. That's a tall order when it comes to the third-most visited national park in America, hosting 3.6 million visitors a year.

"I had been to other parts of Yosemite before but never to Yosemite Valley, even though it contains natural wonders of the world like Half Dome," Bastone said. "I was never willing to head to the valley because of the horror stories of congestion and development."

Bastone, who had been a regular contributor to Backpacker for several years, became a contributing editor this year. When the magazine planned a series of articles about America's national parks, she took up the challenge of finding seclusion where thousands of tourists ride shuttle buses daily to natural wonders such as Tuolumne Meadows.

The key to her successful magazine article, she said, was meeting up with longtime Yosemite naturalist Pete Devine who revealed to her the secrets of the OBOFRT. The acronym stands for the Old Big Oak Flat Road Trail, an abandoned road that was used by visitors more than 60 years ago until it was closed by a mega rockslide.

Known mostly to locals, the unmarked trailhead isn't far from large groups of park visitors training their binoculars on rock climbers making their way up the famous face of El Capitan.

The OBOFRT - yes, Bastone takes note in her article of what that flatulent string of letters sounds like when you try to pronounce it - is the key to unlocking the entrance to the North Rim Trail. The route isn't even marked on current park maps, but it takes in all of the major sights of Yosemite Valley from high above the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

Devine accompanied Bastone on the first few miles of the hike before turning around and returning to the bustling valley. She continued to hike solo for several days, taking notes about the dramatic granite formations of Yosemite and capturing video footage for Backpacker's Web page on a tiny camera not much bigger than a cell phone.

Along the way, she encountered only a few people.

In Backpacker's style, Bastone's main article is accompanied by a package of specific advice for hikers in an "Insider's Guide" to Yosemite. They include tips about how locals avoid traffic congestion by going everywhere on bicycles and how to successfully photograph waterfalls.

On her last night on the North Rim, Bastone watched the play of last light over Half Dome and its companion, Cloud's Rest.

Mesmerized by the sight, Bastone speculated that because she had found solitude, she was watching the fading of the day with the eyes of 10 people.

This month, Bastone is working on an article for Wired magazine, about an inventor working on a process to build a wooden baseball bat that is less prone to shattering than traditionally built wooden bats.

A freelancer writer's work is never done.