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!