My Hyperlite 8x10 Flat Tarp on the third morning on trail. Granite Peak was partially hidden by low clouds all morning.
I jerked my head up in surprise at the sound of the alarm on my watch. It was the third morning on trail and I could feel aches with every movement. I carefully rolled on my stomach to peer out of my very, very low pitched tarp and a soft glow was there to greet me.
The night before had been rather rough. Our hasty and not overly well thought out push over the pass had some repercussions. Oil Can, who had been sick for two days now, was depleted of energy before our push and just couldn’t muster the strength and will to get up and over the very technical pass. So we had ended up splitting the team for the night.
Water Boy with his Hyperlite 8.5x8.5 Flat Tarp. It was an early night for us all.
Pebbles, Cheese Beard, Water Boy and I all camped in a gorgeous bowl near a small lake and a series of waterfalls. By the time I had made it down there I was feeling an oncoming wave of altitude sickness. Thankfully the bowl was just low enough (roughly 9,000 feet) for me to fight it off once I sat down. The entire ground had a thick coat of deep green grasses with an occasional ancient boulders poking out. Out beyond us lay an incredible view of the back bone of the Absaroka – Beartooth Wilderness, and the tallest peak in Montana, Granite Peak.
Shortly after setting up our shelters for the night the weather begun making a turn for the worse. Suddenly the clouds weren’t so high in the sky and an ominous energy filled the mountains. I quickly threw up my Hyperlite Flat Tarp and knowing it could get bad at any time went ahead and set up my Enlightened Equipment Recon Bivy incase water came under the tarp.
Almost as if it had been scripted, the rain started as I put my final stake in. The night was filled with several more waves of thunderstorms and seemingly increasing intensity. Three times during the night I had to put on my rain jacket and restake the tarp even lower as the winds kept getting stronger and stronger. By the time day broke I had switched from an A frame pitch to a much more secure and lower single pole storm pitch.
The view out of my Enlightened Equipment Recon bivy was looking pretty dang good before the storms moved in! Granite Peak, Montana’s high point, is in the back ground.
The sounds of me moving for a view were seemingly deafening. The wind had disappeared for a while and although there were clouds overhead, there was almost a hint of a calm day ahead. The sun was flooding through a small gap between the clouds and the mountains painting them with incredibly bright yellows and soft oranges. My watch read 5:45 am. The sun had only set 8 hours ago but the extreme northern latitudes cause some very long days.
I preform the not so elegant task of getting out of a low pitched tarp stacked on top of top entry bivy, it’s a nightmare. Once out a cold, stiff breeze stings my face. I look over to check on the others. No sign of life yet in their tents so I went to a perch to photograph the crazy lighting conditions on the opposite side of the valley.
Large puffy clouds were being violently thrashed about by strong winds causing shadows to sweep across entire landscapes in just a few seconds. Chunks of clouds were wisped in to circulating towers hundreds of feet tall before seeming to vanish in to nothing. The sun was still very low in the sky and mountain shadows were near horizontal and offered great dark contrast against the brightly lit clouds.
Granite Peak being obscured by the vibrant colors of a stormy sunrise.
It really isn’t long before one too many gusts of frigid air chills me to the core and I decide to dive back in to my quilt. I had expected at least a few hours to pass before Oil Can, Jet Fighter, Caveman, Rusty, and Batman to reach us so I dozed off again. What seems like 30 minutes goes by and I’m woken up to the sound of them strolling in to our camp.
They had a rough night camped out on a boulder field at the base of the mountain. Oil Can had gotten far too sick to even go down the mountain for better camping the evening before. After a night of storms they decided to get an early start and were in our site rather early, which caught us all of guard. The four that made it over the night before quickly packed and we were off down the valley.
The attitude was positive and hopes were high even as a steady sleet moved in. We were just all happy to be back together in one group. The next several hours were spent trying to navigate canyon with slopes so steep and tall a slip could send you hundreds of feet down in to a raging creek. Luckily the forests on this side are much less dense and we can make quick work of the uneven terrain. At some point going down the mountain we lost enough altitude for the sleet to turn in to a light rain. We were all frozen to the core and soaked. The high morale we had earlier was almost entirely crushed.
Another shot of Granite Peak on the third morning. The rest of the day was wet and subsequently I had my camera packed away for many memorable moments, sorry for the lack of photographs on this chapter!
Trail. I honestly didn’t think finding a trail would ever mean so much to me. Shouts of joy rang throughout the valley we had climbed down in to. It had been two and a half days without any trail, two and a half days to get to where we had planned to be on the first night. We knew what we had to do. There was no way that we were going to make it 45 miles down the rough trail to Cooke City with our food rations. We were going to have to reroute.
The valley we had dropped in to was another massive glacial valley with a string of glacial lakes flowing out of it. The trail we had stumbled on to would lead us straight to the closest exit point at the Mystic Lake trail head. From where we reached trail it would be just a simple downhill stroll a couple of miles on a well maintained trail. Or so we thought.
It was the very end of June at this point. As someone who has lived their entire life in Atlanta, Georgia this means it is ridiculously hot and the effects of winter are long forgotten. In the high country of Montana though, the effects of winter never really go away. In fact we were still catching the end of the spring melt, a troubling realization since the only obstacle between us and getting warm in town was an “easy” crossing at the drainage point of a lake. In reality though the lake was filled past its equilibrium from all the melted snow, and all that water was draining out, fast. Like ridiculously deep and fast. We take one look at it and say “Hell no” and quickly try to find another crossing point.
The next hour or two were kind of a blur. Our crew walked up and down the section of raging river between two lakes but there is just no feasible way to cross. At this point we have walked several extra miles just to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to cross. The idea of us having to back track those three long brutal days before just about sickened me. We stumbled on to an established campsite and sat down for a break and just starred in to the woods for a bit. It was incredibly quiet out here. Only the soft patter of the 40 degree rain and the chattering of frozen teeth were making noise.
We were tired, cold, soaked, I was starting to run low on food, and now cut off from our hopes of a dry bed in a hotel room that night. Things were looking about as bad as they could get. If memory serves me right it was Jet Fighter who made the realization that suddenly lifted my spirits. The campsite we were breaking in had a fire pit. In that fire pit were coals that couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old, meaning someone had made it to this side of the valley this year despite the raging river. There must be another way around! Cheese Beard pulls out his phone to look at the maps and we are able to pick out a route that maybe, just maybe, could get us around.
The sun was struggling to break through the clouds at the end of day three.
Our only real hope is to head in the opposite direction of our intentions and head up the valley along the trail past two lakes and try to ford it much higher up. Sitting around during the break left me frozen. As I tried to stand my legs began to buckle from shivering so hard. I immediately takeoff up the trail to get some warmth flowing again. My rain jacket had been soaked through for hours at this point and every brush against the undergrowth makes me colder. Soon the trail has disappeared in to barely a track and we are forced to push the undergrowth out of the “trail”. Over the next couple of miles there are many stream crossings but none of us even blink an eye as we cross with our shoes on. It’s not like they can get any more soaked.
We pop out from the woods to find ourselves in a very inviting campsite on the shore of another glacial lake. It is early afternoon and at this point the persistent cold rain has mostly stopped. Hell we can even see where the sun should be now! The clouds have thinned out and gained some altitude so we can see the now snowcapped mountains.
Looking around at the rest of the crew I can see what is about to happen. Basically no one looks thrilled to hike further up the valley and cross a stream today. We talk about it and very quickly decide to cut our losses for the day and set up camp, maybe even get a fire going if anything is dry enough to burn.
If you have ever hiked with me you should know how much I love making fires. I immediately get to work harvesting sap off a nearby tree to use as a fire starter and collect some dry twigs from under a large pine, maybe the only place on the forest floor with dry kindling. Others pitch in with some bigger pieces of wood and I help them collect that too. In almost no time we have a small fire going with a bird nest of wet wood stacked around it, trying to dry it out.
@cheesebeard_hikes took this shot of the best find of the trip, a bottle of whiskey!
While searching for firewood near the campsite, Pebbles looks behind a log and makes an incredible discovery, whiskey. Sure it might have been a 6 month old, ¾ full bottle of Fireball but I have never seen eight hardened faces brighten up so quickly! A phone starts playing music in a titanium pot to amplify it and the good times start to flow!
The scene for the rest of the night is a familiar sight to backpackers around the world. A tent city tucked in to the trees with everyone circled around a fire passing a bottle of whiskey. The smell of socks drying by the fire fills the air but no one seems to notice or care, just having anything dry is worth much more than some bad smells.
Cheese Beard, Water Boy, and Oil Can brought “fishing tackle” on the trip so the head to the shore to give it a shot, after all a couple trout could be the perfect thing to add to dinner and make our night that much better. When I say they have tackle it’s honestly a stretch of a statement. A dozen feet of fishing line tied to a Gatorade bottle and a heavy lure is what they brought. It is simple, cheap, and as light as it gets. Unfortunately it isn’t all that effective due to the very short cast distance. No luck for the boys that night.
Before night even fully sets in the 9 of us are holed up in our tents as a sprinkle of rain moves back in. The pitter-patter on our tents and tarps soon lulls me in to sleep. Not once did I stir that night, exhaustion had its grip on me.