Mount Blackmore Ascent

For the first time ever, I am actually making a post about something I did today. But it was awesome!

Wifey's mom is here so they went down to spend the weekend in Yellowstone. With a whole day all to myself, I made a plan for a cool adventure I have wanted to do for a long time. Anyone who has visited my house or lives in the Gallatin Valley has seen the giant pyramidal peak that dominiates the skyline to the south - Mt.Blackmore. I had been thinking about it for a long time, and today was the day I would go to the top.

In the morning I was glad to see good weather up on the mountain as it had rained and thundered on Friday:

It's the big pyramind just to the left of the tree.

By about 9:15 I was up at the trailhead at Hyalite Reservoir. It was about 38 degrees and there was lots of mist:

I set out on the trail. I had been up that way several times, both in the summer and snowshoeing in the winter, but not very far. Not even to Blackmore Lake, which is about 1.25 miles up the trail. The lake is nothing special, really just an oversized pond. However from the meadow there I was able to see my goal - the summit. The distance and the height of it kind of illuminated the enormity of the challenge ahead:

From my car back down at the reservior, it's about 5.5 miles to the summit. Not So bad? Yeah, there's also 3500' of elevation to gain. And after the lake/pond, it would start in earnest. The next 3 or so miles were just constant uphill in the forest, where the air was very humid from the rain the night before. Still, it was only in the upper 40s at this point, so not so bad. But the constant uphill at a 30-40 degree slope was a real huff.

After several miles of this I came to some switchbacks, which went up at an even steeper rate. But eventually you go up over a sort of headwall and into a big bowl, rounded by peaks and a steep ridge. On my way up to the ridge I could look back and catch a sweet view of the Bridger Range: Up and up the trail continued to the rim of the bowl, to a saddle which I eventually reached. From there it's a jaunt up the ridge to the top of Mt.Blackmore (the peak on the right): I followed the trail and after about 20 minutes reached, finally, the summit of Mt.Blackmore! The views in every direction were insane. Here is the ridge I followed to the peak, looking southeast over the Gallatin Range and sort of down toward Yellowstone:North towards Bozeman and the Bridger Range:

The pictures in no way do it any justice, but I took a little summit picture too - this is looking southwest:

I swear you can see 150 miles in every direction.

At 10,180' I was very close to the few clouds there were. The wind was only about 20mph, but you could really see it working on the clouds:

After a good 45 mins on the summit and some lunch, I started the trip back down. It was much faster. What took me 3:15 to get up barely took me 2 hours to get back down. All in all it was an AWESOME adventure and a really good time. Now it's time to dull some of the pain with a Poochie;s Summer Ale!

Grebe Lake Labor Day Backpack

For Labor Day weekend my beautiful wife and I planned to take a 3-day backpack trip into Yellowstone National Park's southwest corner to see Union Falls, a trip she had heard about from one of her coworkers. This would be an exciting 7.5 mile hike in to the falls, which are beautiful, as well as a near by natural hot pool that you can swim in and some good flyfishing in nearby Mountain Ash Creek. We were joined on our trip by our friend Shelley and her son Colter.

Shelley and Colter got Friday off, so they went down early to secure our camp site for Friday night at the Grant Village campground and our backcountry permit for Saturday and Sunday night from the ranger station. Well, Shelley texts later on our way down to inform us the ranger said all the backcountry sites in the south end of the park (that we could get to in one day of hiking, anyway) were taken! Now we weren't sure what we were going to be doing that weekend, but decided to spend Friday night camping at Grant Village anyway and deal with it in the morning.

First thing in the morning we went to the backcountry office, and wound up getting a permit for 2 nites at a campsite on Grebe Lake, which is about a 3.5 mile hike in from the road near Canyon. While disappointed we wouldn't be able to go to Union Falls, this was cool as it was an area I had always wondered about and it would be an interesting trip in that we had no idea what to expect. So, expecting the unexpected we drove up there Saturday morning and hit the trail.

Me and wifey are ready to go:

After about an hour and fifteen minutes of hiking through meadows and some burned and rejuvenating forest we came to Grebe Lake:

The lake was really beautiful and we had a great campsite. We set up our tents and had some lunch, and then decided to give the fishing a try. The ranger at the backcountry office had assured me of the good fishing and had even told me exactly where to go to try to catch a grayling (one of my unrealized goals in life). Unfortunately by this time the wind had become horrendously strong and the fishing was a real challenge. Colter and I got a couple bites but had no real luck catching anything, and after about 45 minutes of flailing against the 25mph wind we decided to give it up and head back to camp. Eventually we set ourselves to making some dinner and having some wine, scotch, and cheese and crackers:

There was a beautiful sunset over the lake that night:

The next day we decided to take a long day hike (about 10 miles) over to Cascade Lake and then up to the top of a mountain called Observation Peak. It was an exciting challenge, but we were all looking forward to seeing more of the park scenery and maybe some critter. Wifey and I take a break on the approach to Cascade Lake:

Since it is practically fall in this part of the world, the temperatures were cool (60s) but not cold, at least not yet. However the wind was really something, and we knew that night some kind of storm was blowing in. As we climbed higher and higher up the mountain the views got better and better, but the wind also got fiercer and fiercer.About halfway up is my beautiful wife, with Cascade Lake below and to the left:

Eventually the wind was so strong that we had to put on some jackets. Almost near the top we take a break:
Eventually we reached the summit, just a bit over 9000'. There was an old fire lookout cabin up there, and from the top you could even see back down to Grebe Lake from where we had hiked. The wind was gusting to almost 50mph up there.

We made the hike back to camp in time for more wind and the signs of some inclement weather blowing in. We had just enough time to make dinner and get everything packed up and hung on the bear pole and dive into our tents before....it started to snow! It was a long night but we were warm and dry inside the GoLite Shangri-La 2 and Marmot sleeping bags. Other than the sounds of bugling elk occasionally waking us up, we slept pretty good.

The next morning the scenery was very different indeed!:

On the hike back out to the trailhead that morning we even discovered some signs of nocturnal critter visitation:

Cool!! (That's a bear footprint, by the way...probably a black bear)

It was much, much cooler now - probably in the 40s - so we were more bundled up for the hike back:

But the hike was uneventful, and with the sun coming out it was warming up a little and melting off some of the snow. Soon enough we were back at the cars and headed over to Canyon Village to get some cheeseburgers - a great end to a great weeeknd!