Granite Peak - Part 2

And finally, at long last, I edited together Part 2: wherein giant cuttthroat trout are caught out of Upper Aero Lake and mountain goats invade our camp.

Enjoy!

Granite Peak - Part 1

In the second week of September, Ghetto-C and I decided to make a go of it and attempt to summit Montana's highest mountin, Granite Peak, on a four-day adventure into the Beartooth high country.

Enjoy the action-filled video:

Union Falls - Yellowstone Nat'l Park

Over Labor Day weekend we took a backpack trip with friends to Union Falls in Yellowstone National Park!

Go straight to the video:

Electric Peak Summit Attempt!

Ok, let's do this right. Herein we will have the quintessentially late blog post with pics, but I will also embed the YouTube video of our adventure.

First off, straight to the vid:

And now, the long-winded format.

In early August, me and Ghetto-C decided to try a fast and light summit attempt of Electric Peak in the northwest corner of Yellowstone, near Gardiner.  We decided to come in via the National Forest side (Beattie Gulch) to obviate the Nat'l Park camping permits. The plan was to head up as far as we could Friday after work, camp/bivy (I used my awesome new Marmot Alpinist Bivy from 3point5.com), then hit the peak in the morning and head back down Saturday afternoon. This made for the most efficient use of time, as Ghetto-C had to work on Sunday and so no vacation time needed to be used. Also with the lightweight bivy (and one pound Marmot Pounder sleeping bag!) I would only have to stuff a daypack and spare myself the weight of a full pack on the grueling uphill.

The first part of the approach involves a heinous mountain bike ride (read: walk) up an old forest service road. Total: about 5.5 miles with almost 3000' of elevation gain. Needless to say, this SUCKED and took us the better part of 4 hours. It was hot and dry at the Beattie Gulch trailhead, and only slowly cooled off as we gained elevation and the sun set. We're headed up to the top of the ridge to the left of the telephone pole:

The old road passes by a dilapitated cabin, and eventually some other cabins at the top of the ridge on private land.

It was almost dark by the time we passed the private land and we set up our bivy camp in a field and pretty much crashed (after a little scotch, of course). It had been a tiring uphill climb with the bikes.

In the morning we packed up our stuff to go and stashed the bikes, as from here on there would only be a faint trail and no more road.

The trail was not too difficult to find, following the obvious east ridgeline through varying degrees of forest and meadow. Still, it continued its unrelenting uphill ascent.

Eventually the "trail" peters out above the treeline at the base of an obvious, large rampart leading up to the north/east false summit (the true summit is across a saddle to the left of the snow):

A little further on, at just over 9,000', we spooked a large herd of elk.

Heading up the grassy rampart looked easy, but once again the constant uphill grade made progress slow. Here you see the view up the rampart to the false summit, with the real summit on the left of the snow.

The plan was to head up to the false summit, go across the saddle, and scramble to the peak. What we didn't know, however, was that the false summit was an 800' pile of talus and loose rock. Getting up it was slow and treacherous. It continued getting steeper and steeper, until at one point some rocks gave way and I took a little spill, cutting my finger on some rock. It could have been worse (broken ankle, etc), but as it was I left some blood on the mountain and considered myself lucky.

At this point we were looking at the clock, and were already almost 2 hours behind our self-imposed schedule with at least another hour to the peak and no sure bet we could make the scramble on the other side of the saddle. In fact, it looked a little sketchy. With more time, perhaps. But, we decided to head back down after almost reaching the top of the false summit (made it to just above the snow fields in the pic above) and call it a day. There was still a 5 mile hike back to the bikes before the glory of an easy ride down the last 5 miles. That's 10.5 miles (each way, meaning over 20 total!) with an elevation gain of 5,200' from the trailhead. Good times!

Here's Ghetto-C near our turnaround point atop the Talus Pile from Hell, with the summit in the distance on the left:

I think I will get up there again sometime, only next time perhaps from the Nat'l Park side via the standard route. We'll see.

All in all, an awesome weekend adventure for a Friday evening and most of a Saturday!

Sylvan Lake, Beartooths - July 2011

Well it's a little after the fact, but I had some work and learning to do with the new VIDEO FORMAT!!!

So please, sit back and enjoy the launch of the new video blog: Man v MT!!

Fishing Nez Perce Creek in YNP

So this Saturday seemed like the time to make the most of July 4 weekend by cruising down to Yellowstone and hiking up Nez Perce Creek several miles to flyfish for some YNP trout in the midst of some awesome backcountry. Joined by Ghetto-C, the much anticipated dayhike adventure was underway.

We left the Bozone around 6:30am and headed down to the Park. Once there we rigged up at the Mary Mountain trailhead and headed upstream. When you see steam coming up from the ground, you know you're in YNP yo!

The first 1.5-2 miles of the trail goes around an area of thermal features called the Culex Basin. Due to the water from these features, the fishing here is non-existant. Once above the Basin however, the water cools and the fishing improves greatly. If there was a trout-stream designer, this is what he would dream about:

The trail passes by many small backcountry thermal features. Don't fall in Ghetto!

Eventually we hike up a few more miles and look for a place to begin fishing. There was so much snow this winter (200% of normal) and rain in June that water is everywhere. Eventually we find a nice meadow where we can make it out to the stream's edge. Ghetto-C gives it a go and starts hooking up on small 8" browns on a Prince Nymph.

The trout are mostly small (6-10") but beautiful, and on a light 3-wt flyrod plenty of fun. I have some good success on the surface with a #16 PMD Sparkle Dun, which is surprising considering how bright it is out.

Eventually we are reminded we are not alone by a couple of bison passing through:

Better than a bear, I say! Considering that they don't even open this trail until June 15 due to grizzly activity and the fact we could easily find claw marks on the trees.  And, of course, bones:

We passed  through several more lage meadows, with similar fishing throughout. We missed alot of strikes, but landed a few small browns before it was time to hike the 3-4 miles back to the car.

Not epic catching, but epic fishing!

Early June Canoe Trip to Cliff Lake

Late as always, here is the tale of an awesome 3 day canoe trip to Cliff Lake with Poochie and Ghetto-C!

We took off on a Friday morning with the car loaded up and everything ready to go. Our plan was to spend 3 days (2 nights) camping out on an island at the back of Cliff Lake. On Sat we were going to try hiking over to Hidden Lake, about a 4 mile round trip on a trail from the back of the lake. It was quite cool and there was the threat of thunderstorms, but we figured what the heck. After all, with the canoe it was possible to take a cooler of beer.

Spring was almost in the air as we pulled off 287 and through the old homestead on the way to Cliff Lake:

Once at the lake we loaded up the canoe and set out on our awesome adventure. Many trout would fall this weekend.

We paddled the length of the lake and set up a quick camp on the island so we could set about to fishing.

We had an afternoon of good fishing, with several good rainbows caught, mostly on wooly buggers with a sinking line or in Chris' case (gasp) a spinner. Most of the fish were about 12-13", but we did get a few 15-16" fish too.  After the fishing it was time to retire to camp for some dinner and some fine beer:

The next morning we decided to try to find the trail to Hidden Lake at the back of Cliff Lake and give it a go. There was about a 50% chance of thunderstorms so we weren't sure what would happen. Poochie guides us to our destination:

We found the trail, but the weather was very on again/off again so rather than try an ambitious 3-4 hour adventure into the woods, we stuck with the canoe. We managed to paddle all the way to the back of that arm of the lake and saw many kinds of crazy birds and even some moose and bear tracks in the mud. Eventually we set about to more fishing, letting the breeze gently push the canoe down the shoreline back towards camp. More woolly bugger success produced several nice rainbow trout, and some fine single malt scotch sealed the deal.

He we are almost back to camp for lunch. You can see the cone-shaped island on the right side, and barely make out our tents at the bottom on the left side of the island. Note the crazy color of the Cliff Lake waters:

After lunch we decided to hike up to the top of our cone-shaped island to take in the view. It was worth it!  Here you can see 2 of the arms in the back of the lake, the SE arm and the Antelope Prong:

That evening we had some smashing success fishing out there at the mouth of the Antelope Prong when the wind was dead calm and the sky cloudy. Nice fat rainbows were crushing #14 Parachute Adams on the surface, with some single malt to boot. Good times!

That evening we chilled at camp and managed to escape the worst possible weather, although we did get rained on a couple times. Noble Poochie at camp, a more handsome dog you will not find:

The next day was blustery, with intermittent rain. It was time to bundle up and head back to the car. Here I am in full raingear mode:

Of course, just because it was raining didn't mean we couldn't fish! Ghetto-C hooks up on another nice rainbow on the way back:

And so it went. We pretty much drifted the shoreline all the way back to the car and caught several more nice trout. All in all good times and a pretty awesome canoe trip!

Skiing the Park

This past weekend my beautiful wife took me down to the Park (Yellowstone, that is) for a couple days of cross-country skiing before my birthday. We stayed in the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel on Saturday night and had a great time!

We got a late start getting to the Park on Saturday, so we decided that for that day we would just ski the loop around the Upper Terrace and see the hot springs and other thermal features there. We would save our big ski for Sunday when we had a full day to enjoy.

The snow was great although it had not really dumped a whole lot recently. However, the skies were darkening and promising a little more. It even snowed on us a little as we skied.

That evening we had a delightful dinner of appetizers at the hotel lounge, complete with the requisite wine and an early birthday dram of some Laphroig single malt scotch. Mmmm.

In the morning we got up early for breakfast and then caught our snowcoach shuttle which would take us into the interior of the park near the Indian Creek campground on the Mammoth-Norris road. Our plan was to take the Sheepeater Trail to the Bunsen Peak trail, and then maybe around Bunsen Peak to see Osprey Falls and then back out to the road. This would be at least 8-10 miles of skiing through the Yellowstone backcountry!

Here I am riding in the Bombardier - check out that awesome ride!

Soon enough the driver left, leaving us alone at the trailhead as we started our adventure. And I mean ALL ALONE!

We leisurely made our way along the trail the 5 miles towards Bunsen Peak. The tracks next to Marilyn here are from a snowshoe hare. We saw alot of these, as well as coyote tracks (the two go together!).

Along the way we spied a lone elk realxing in the snow.

Eventually we popped out into another large meadow, where we had to ski past 3 bison that were laying in the snow. They looked tired, like they were ready for winter to be over. Soon, bison, soon!

They weren't too bothered by our presence, and we moved on towards the base of Bunsen Peak. As we did so the views became even more expansive. This is looking back the way we came, towards the Gallatin Range and Bighorn and Fawn Passes.

Eventually we reached the Bunsen Peak Trail junction. Time to check the map!

Since we were running a little short on time, we decided to forego Osprey Falls (we'll have to hike back there in the spring, as they were highly recommended to us by photographer Tom Murphy!) and ski back towards the road, still some 2 more miles. Along the way we were able to do some backcountry turns on the lower slopes of Bunsen Peak. The snow was great! In front of me here you can make out some more rabbit and coyote tracks in the snow...must have been a good chase!

When we reached the road, we decided to go ahead and ski back down to the Upper Terraces (another 3 miles or so) rather than wait for the snowcoach. It was mostly downhill so it was a nice run.


We stopped for this self portrait at the area known as the Golden Gate.

About that time it really started to snow, but it was nice. We made it back in good shape and made the drive home to Bozeman in time for yet another 40-point blowout loss in the City basketball league. On the up side, we found out that the playoffs are double elimination so there is still one more loss to come!

Beaver Creek Cabin XC Ski

Last weekend my awesome wife and I went on another weekend ski trip to a Forest Service cabin, this time to the Beaver Creek Cabin in the southern Madison Range down by Hebgen and Quake Lakes. We parked at the Refuge Point parking area and packed up for the 3.5 mile ski into the cabin. Scott joined us for the ski in to the cabin, of course taking his own more difficult route off the the trail.

Here I am packed and ready, including my new backpacker guitar courtesy of my rockin' brother Dave:

Marilyn skis down towards the turnoff to Beaver Creek:

Once on the trail we proceeded to ski up the canyon. The scenery was great, although the trail was a little bit chewed up by snowmobiles. Marilyn on the trail:

There was a ton of fresh snow, as it had been snowing all week. With temps in the 20's and a good breeze it was great skiing weather. Here I am along the trail, looking up the West Fork Beaver Creek drainage. There are some sweet lakes up there awaiting a summer backpack trip.

After a long ski, we finally reached the Beaver Creek Cabin. Scott was already in there with the fire going. Check out the outhouse on the right - close the door carefully!

After Scott left, it was time to set about to some relaxin' and drinking some fine single malt Laphroig scotch and jammin some tunes:
There is a loft in the cabin, which is where we slept at night since hot air rises. Outside it was below zero at night but we were toasty warm inside the cabin with the wood stove going. In the morning it was time to melt some snow and make espresso!

We packed up our stuff and decided to go for a ski up behind the cabin. After a short climb through the forest it opens up into an awesome series of meadows that were full of knee-deep fresh snow, great for some backcountry turns!

Alas, and then it was time to go so I could make it home in time for our basketball team to get blown out again in another league game. But, the cabin was awesome and the skiing was great. Now we are on our way to Yellowstone Park for another ski weekend!