Taken near where the trail was supposed to cross the lake outlet, instead our course took us far up the valley then back down and around.
It was 6:30 am when I woke up. Whenever on trail mornings never seem to be an issue for me. There is just something about the morning aura that wakes me up immediately. I do my best to sit up but end up having to slouch pretty hard. Though not necessary, my tarp was pitched pretty low again in fears of another storm moving in overnight since the clouds were still pretty low at dusk. Thankfully it did nothing more than drizzle.
I can’t quite remember now but I think I might have made a fire since I was first up. Morning fires tend to be a blessing and a curse. Few things are nicer than a warm fire after a long cold night. Yes, it makes crawling out of the sack a little easier, but it also makes you not want to do the responsible, adult like activities, such as breaking camp and that whole hiking thing. Today was a bit of an exception though. The fourth day was finally the day we got back on to trail (hopefully) and, more importantly, get in to town.
The sun began burning off the heavy cloud cover by mid morning.
If there is one thing backpackers may love more than backpacking it is town days; the glory of the first shower in a week, more food than one can eat (doesn’t stop us from trying), and a bed doesn’t even have to be inflated. Usually when such an amazing opportunity is presented camp is packed up ASAP and suddenly we become trail runners with backpacks.
The trail to get us out of here seemed to be so close I could feel it. In reality we had a couple miles of dense and trailess forest ahead of us, not to mention the fact that we were on the other side of a string of lakes connected by a swollen creek from the trail. The night before some of the guys gave their hand at fishing using their rudimentary bottle rig. Unfortunately they didn’t catch any fish but were able to scout the mouth of the lake and found what looked like a fairly easy ford.
Once camp was packed and fires drowned we started making our way across the wide and shallow channel. The lake had been filled past capacity by the constant snow melt and the rain from the day before causing the water to flow out quite quickly. Did I mention this was mostly snow melt? The water rushing past us was frigid and above our knees at times. By the time I had made the 30 yard wide crossing my feet felt like they had pins and needles hanging out of them. On the other side of the river bank I looked down to find the skin tone of my legs to be on par with that of a lobster.
Water Boy stretching his legs on the first trail we had been on in four days.
The next couple of hours are near mirror images of our first two days, bushwhacking through dense Montana forests with now snowcapped peaks all around. We had learned our lesson about where we can make the best time, so we stuck a little higher and hopped from boulder field to boulder field. After a couple hours we found our team separated again.
For the last several days we had come up with a simple systems of “whoops” that were loud and carried through the woods well. This allowed us to communicate with each other over sizable distances, or at least let us know where someone is. The guys I was with had somehow gotten in front of some of the others but we weren’t too worried, everyone behind us had GPS and everyone knew where we were meeting. So we stumbled ahead through the brush.
It was a bit of a shock to me, a lone tent in the woods. It had been four days without seeing anyone besides the crew. Hell, there weren’t any signs that someone had stood in the same spot as me in 50 years. Yet here was a yellow tent in a pretty and flat lightly wooded section on the banks of the river. It took me a second to process why someone else was in the middle of nowhere, then the realization that we must be getting close to the trail head hit me.
We must have been a strange sight to the man in the camp. He had come out with his dog to fish for a few days. By the looks of it he had just finished up breakfast when a group of bearded men with backpacks and ice axes emerge from the woods, shins covered in blood. A strange sight indeed, but we greeted him with smiles and chatted for a minute. He told us we weren’t very far at all from where he had gotten off trail to get to this ideal campsite. We thank him and set off again, still no sign of the rest of the crew.
A virtual superhighway for us after the bushwhack. Cheese Beard (whose shorts were shredded during the bushwhack) leads the way with Oil Can right behind. Mystic Lake is in the background.
After crossing a small swampy section and another boulder field or two we finally make it to trail. It was such a wonderful experience to know that my work for the day is mostly done; that for the rest of the day I could cruise downhill; that I survived four long and grueling days in an uncharted land. For some reason though it didn’t feel right, it felt like I was cheating. I knew what going in to town here meant, the next section was going to be missed due to time restraints on many of the crew and lack of food.
The crew regroups at the trail and we are able to put in a couple of miles before lunch is had. We take the break at the trail intersection that is supposed to take us up and over Froze to Death Plateau. We had been eyeing this feature since the second night on top of the unnamed pass we crossed. The formidably named plateau was the left wing of Granite Peak and we knew our route had us crossing it. I got a sinking feeling as I knew I wouldn’t be finishing this beautiful section, not on this trip at least.
The idea of part of the crew giving all of their food to a few and letting a couple complete this section was brought up and quickly shot down. The next place where we could rendezvous would be Cooke City, Montana, right at the gates of Yellowstone National Park. Those who went for the section likely wouldn’t get a break until Jackson Hole, Wyoming, some 220 miles away. Trust me, we all needed the time off so we decided to go in to town together.
Pebbles making his way down a nearly flooded section of trail just below the Mystic Lake Dam.
That brings up another small obstacle, we had no idea what this trail head led to. No research had been done to figure out what the nearest town was since we never were supposed to make a stop there. We had no idea if this would be an easy hitch hike in to town or if we were going to be walking for a whole extra day just trying to find someone to drive us in to a town.
Pushing that out of mind, we packed up our few items that had been laid out to dry in the now brilliant sunlight. The bone chilling day before felt like a distant memory as I absorbed the sun’s rays for a few more minutes. We made quick work of the rest of the trail which had been made for the masses. What had gone from one encounter with a guy in the backcountry soon turned in to a trickle of other hikers and eventually in to a flood of tourists.
The scars of train tracks and pipes were dug in to the landscape as we dropped in to the trail head.
The trail for the last two miles essentially became a super highway. Several feet wide and concrete at times, it followed the shore of Mystic Lake, a large man-made lake. I found myself perplexed as to why someone would come to the middle of nowhere Montana to see the beauty of nature and walk one mile on a paved path amongst hoards of tourists to look at an unnatural lake when just up the valley were a half dozen of beautiful and natural lakes and solitude. That’s a riddle I will have to figure out another time.
The silver lining of having the hoards around us is that meant cars, and a lot of them. Not to mention it was one of the first beautiful Sundays of the year for this area and the evidence of the popularity of this trail head is evident many miles out. On our way in to the road we passed several dozen day hikers and weekend warriors, all of whom gave us strange looks as we came stumbling in. In the small breaks between bubbles of day walkers we began to take notice of how man has changed the world we were hiking in.
We walked past Mystic Lake, a man-made concrete dam placed at a choke point in the valley. The lake was quite large and supplied a large area below it with hydroelectric power. The scars of “progress” went far beyond the dam itself; two miles of train tracks, cables, and pipes paralleled the valley opposite of our wide and paved footpath that had been dug in to the side of mountains and rivers. It was strange to see a landscape to be seemingly tamed.
Jet Fighter takes a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture… Mystic Lake in the background.
“Hi, excuse me? Quick question, what is the nearest town on the road out of here?” This turned out to be a magnet for puzzled looks from a few of the day hiker we passed. As far as we could figure out the “town” of Fishtail, Montana was closest, and so we made that tiny town in the middle of nowhere our hitch destination.
Pebbles enjoying the sunshine from above Mystic Lake Dam.
This is far from our first rodeo when it comes to hitching, and that will come to seriously pay off. Our group split up seeing how nine people trying to get one ride could be overwhelming to even the most helpful of drivers. Luck was on our side though as we walked down the dirt road with thumbs out, it was the afternoon of a beautiful Sunday and everyone still had to get back to work the next morning.
Low and behold the current Northern Terminus of the GYT, the powerhouse at Mystic Lake.
First it was a mother and daughter that let us in the back of their truck who got us in to town, then a man who decided to take pride in how many of us and our gear he could fit in to his much smaller truck (somehow he fit all 9 of us plus packs) and drove us to another gas station. It had been four long hard days and we needed only two things: a beer and a gas station burrito. The spoils of the adventures are enjoyed outside under a shade set up by the store. We all kind of start snapping in to place. The woods seem like a distant place now that we have our new goal in mind, Cooke City, Montana.
Spirits were high as we hitched out of the trail head. I’m pretty sure Oil Can was thinking of a burger here.
Now we had been lucky thus far with fairly quick hitches coming to us, but the next part blew me away, and is yet another reason I want to move to Montana. We walked to the curb of the highway in a 90 plus degree direct sun that was oppressive to our existence, and I had a sinking feeling that this was going to be a long time spent with my thumb out. First car coming through is a Mercedes SUV. “Great, they’ll never stop” we all mumble under our breath. Almost before we can even finish the negative thought the Mercedes has pulled over and another mom and daughter duo are clearing room in the back for a few guys. Before they can even get out of the car two more vehicles had pulled over to pick up everyone else.
From the gas station we hitch to Red Lodge, a small town half a little ways down the road, then another hitch up and over the Beartooth Highway. This part of the hitch was a mind numbingly beautiful road that took us up through the range in a pretty spectacular way. On the side of the road near the top of the pass is the only ski lift than can operate year around in the lower 48 since snow never really disappears up here. Every turn had massive views as the road twisted and contorted itself across a treeless landscape two miles above sea level.
Smiles all around as we head in to town. The Absaroka - Beartooth Wilderness in the background.
Once down from the highlands we get dropped off in Cooke City. We had hitched 105 miles in four different hitches and never stood on the side of the road for more than a couple minutes. I honestly couldn’t believe how easy it was to get such a huge distance with such a large group so quickly and so relatively easy. The car I hitched in had made it to the city first and those of us who had made it almost immediately dive in to a bar. We smelled like hell and had the looks to match. It was a long several days and a burger and brew was about all I could think of.
While Cooke City has the word city in its name, it is anything but a city. The entire place was a few buildings along Main Street were the central focal point of this town of 140 permanent residents. The quarter mile long strip has a tourist information site, a few hotels, several restaurants that all serve bison burgers, snowmobile rentals, two gas stations owned by the same man, and of course several bars. Paralleling the Main Street is Soda Butte Creek which forms the corridor for the North East Entrance to Yellowstone National Park, where the creek flows in to the Lamar River. Between the banks of Soda Butte Creek and the local dump was a small set of trees that were on National Forest land so we set up out stealth campsite for the night. The legality of our campsite was questionable but none of us cared too much, we were far too tired.