Packin' the Beartooths! The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, 8.15.21 - 8.26.21, Part 1 of 6
flexible: able to be easily modified to respond to altered circumstances or conditions
So I have this friend named Ron. He and his family spend a lot of time traveling and knowing that I too love to explore, over the years he has imparted a wealth of information to me about several places I had never either heard of or been to. One such place I had never heard of was a road known as the Beartooth Highway. On the map it shows as U.S. Route 212 and for roughly sixty-eight miles it stretches from the town of Red Lodge Montana across the southwestern border of Montana into northern Wyoming to Cooke City and the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The Beartooth Highway climbs from about 5,200’ to 10,947’ at its high point at Beartooth Pass. For a long section the road runs along the border of the Absaroka (pronounced Abzorka) - Beartooth Wilderness on a wide plateau mostly above timberline past numerous picturesque lakes. There may be a more beautiful road in the United States but if there is I haven’t seen it yet.
My first visit to this area was last September on an RV trip. Sadly, the entire area was covered in thick smoke and haze from the 2020 fires but I saw enough to know I had to return someday. I bought a map of the entire area and discovered that the Absaroka - Beartooth Wilderness was a series of very high plateaus with names like Hellroaring and Froze To Death. Interspersed among these plateaus were hundreds, perhaps over a thousand lakes nestled into every nook and cranny in granite bowls. In an east/west orientation, huge walls of cliffs separate the north and south along the high points of the plateaus, culminating in the highest point in the state of Montana, 12,807’ Granite Peak.
One look at a map was all it took to begin planning a backpack trip to really get into the heart of this incredible looking country. Ron wasn’t so sure that was such a great idea. This is well known as grizzly country and more than one person upon hearing of my plan would say “You’d better bring bear spray”. Undeterred, I spent the winter researching and came up with an itinerary for a seven day backpack trip. My dear friends Mike and Sandy from Steamboat Springs signed on for the adventure and plans continued. We set August 19th as the start date, late enough to hopefully avoid the billions of mosquitos known to deplete a person of every drop of blood within seconds, yet early enough that if we got really lucky we could avoid getting buried in a foot of snow. Of course we still had to be concerned about lightning but Sandy and I are much shorter than Mike so we felt confident he would be much more attractive to a bolt than we would. The plan was ambitious but seemed totally achievable if everything lined up just perfectly. It didn’t. My plan was to leave on August 15th, see an old friend in Butte for a day or two and then meet Mike and Sandy at a dispersed campsite up on the Beartooth Plateau on the 17th. That would give me a day and a half to acclimate before throwing on a heavy pack and hiking at 10,000’. It sounded good on paper.
I had been following the detailed weather for the specific spots we would be hiking to for weeks prior to the trip. The temps hovered in the upper sixties with lows around the mid-forties and it had remained dry. Even though there were many fires raging in Montana and around the country, somehow The Beartooths had been spared the smoke. It was all lining up nicely. Just the way I planned it. A few days before my departure date, a cold front began to move into the area. Since the NOAA forecast only goes out to seven days, I couldn’t tell if it would last or if it was just a going to be a passing day or two of bad weather.
Being the eternal optimist, I hopped into Mr. Green Jeens on August 15th and headed east on I-90. The reason I didn’t take the Navibahn was twofold. One was that I didn’t want to leave the RV parked at the trailhead for a week while backpacking and the other was that it is one steep road leading up onto the plateau and preferred to avoid the strain it would put on the RV. I drove straight through to Butte, Montana and met up with my old friend John Lowell. John and I met the first day of first grade so we have known each other a mighty long time. Since moving to different parts of the country we hadn’t spent any quality time together in many years so we were both excited for the opportunity to catch up. On a side note, John has developed into a very accomplished bluegrass guitarist and songwriter and has numerous albums to his name. I would encourage you to check him out at http://www.johnlowell.com. We had a great night going out to dinner, filling each other in on our histories and playing guitars for hours.
Old friends
The next morning we had the entire day to kill so we decided to go for a drive into the Pioneer Mountains and see a couple of old ghost towns. I had been to the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway once before but had never been to the ghost town of Coolidge. This was Montana’s largest and final silver mine. It operated in the early 1920’s and was named for future president Calvin Coolidge who happened to be a rumored investor in the operation. Due to a poor economy and a major flood the town eventually was abandoned, yet numerous buildings and equipment remain. It was about a one mile hike into the town from the end of a dirt road and then we just wandered around imagining what it must have been like living here a hundred years ago.
Once we left Coolidge we continued south on the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway to another ghost town called Bannack. This town was much better preserved as it is part of a state park. Bannack was the site of a major gold discovery and once served as the capitol of Montana Territory in the mid 1800’s. It turns out that John is fascinated with Montana history and knew a ton about these old towns and the characters associated with them of which there were many. It was fun to hear some of these stories as we walked through the town.
The old jail
From Bannack we made our way over to I-15 near the town of Dillon and headed back up to Butte. Another meal, another great session of guitar playing and it was time to turn the focus back to the backpack trip. A quick check of the weather did not bode well. The forecast went out to Sunday and we were supposed to start hiking on Thursday. Every day was rain or rain and snow mix with up to an inch and a half of snow possible in the higher elevations (where we would be). It did sort of seem like maybe Sunday was a bit better so if you were an optimist that might mean a clearing trend but even that was a stretch. The highs were predicted to be in the mid forties with low temps around freezing. Now I may not be smarter than the average bear but I knew enough to deduce that hiking all day in the cold rain and then sleeping with my water bottle, my filter and my camera batteries inside my bag so they wouldn’t freeze up solid sounded less than idyllic. Sandy and Mike agreed. And here’s where flexibility comes in. Being retired, I had no particular place I had to be at any specific time and neither did Mike or Sandy. They hadn’t even left Steamboat Springs yet so we made the command decision to wait until Sunday to start the trip. John had commitments so after a call to my dear, understanding wife I decided to rent a motel room in Cody, Wyoming and just find something to keep me busy for the next five days. So what did I do to stay busy? The saga continues in Part 2