God Bless Montana! a TR

“Keep it coming! I love reading good TRs and yours is a great one!

I'll be in that area of the country myself in less than two weeks. This is really whetting my appetite.”

“What were the temps like at night and during the day?
What camera do you use again mike?”

“Camera: Canon G5, I forgot my filters at home.

High temps ranged from 70's to upper 80's maybe pockets of the 90's when in the sun at low elevations.
Low temps ranged from 40's to 50's. I used a 30deg bag and was never cold at night. Great sleeping temps.

I spent the whole time in long sleeves and pants and was comfy.”

“PIC 1217 sure is purty. lol”

“Yeah can you see the hiker funk vapors?”

“The caption below that one should be from Austin Powers. "Do I make you horney baby, do I?"”

“LOL!”

“funk vapors... makes me think about reading stuff about the late 1800's. The evil vapors will get you. You must be bled.

TB - I could just picture him saying that to you. It seems that the grungier I am when I get home that the more I want to harass my wife by rubbing whiskers on her cheeks.”

“Funny you should mention that Dayhiker.
All of us do the Austin Powers photo session thing.

You know the whole "Yes Yes Yes, NO NO NO!", "You've made me love it now make me hate it" and "You're an animal baby! GROWWWWL!" thing.”

“That's hilarious.

Back in the early days of email my computer would chime "Yeah Baby, Yeah!!!" each time one came in. Doesn't work so well when you get about 100 per day.”

“Day 5

We woke up with no place to go today. Gotta love that. The mosquitos were thick but not as bad as Dewey Lake and when the wind kicked up it kept them down. Mark sr. and Bob decided to head over to Skull and Fizzle lakes to fish and the rest of us decided to climb a nearby peak.

For the most part it was a walk up with a couple of short hand over hand scrambles (that could have been easily avoided if we wanted). We hit the top and there was a little cairn up there. We hung out for a while and Mark Jr, as always, breaks out the cell phone to see if he has signal. Sure enough, full signal and he proceeds to call all his buddies. So here he is on top of a 10,500 peak in the beartooths trying to help a friend back in Valdosta find a lost ipod. Good grief. LOL!

We headed toward another peak and generally spent the morning roaming the high spots and taking cat naps when we reach them. At one point we hit a nice snow field and we had a snowball fight and made snow angels. Another was boot skied down. Lots of fun. By this time it had hit about 1pm and I was ready to get out of the sun so we headed back to camp and ate another dinner for lunch. I retired to the bug and sun free shelter of my tent until the late afternoon.

Madman and the guys tried to head to the other side of the lake to hit a peak but got ambushed by a hoard of mosquitos and retreated. So pretty much we all wandered around Fossil Lake all day climbing and fishing. Madman and Andrew (Noodle) climbed another peak and found a nice long snow field to boot ski down. They got going pretty fast and then realized that the snow ended in a mud hole. They both got pretty heavily mudded up boots. As Madman was recounting the story and displaying the thick coating of mud on his boots, Andrew wandered up, completely mud free. Mr. GQ strikes again. Lol.

Mark jr. tried to build an antenna out of trekking poles and duct tape so he could get cell phone signal down low. It didn’t work but it was pretty funny to watch him carry around this contraption. We were joking that lightning would strike off in the distance and scare to poop out of him but no dice.

When night fell we had another great moonrise over the lake and some nice color on the clouds.

It was a good day.
last edited: 7/28/05 10:41:29 AM”

“That's a great spot up there, despite the mosquitos. We camped over at Fizzle lake on montanapalooza and got hit by a big storm that night--you feel pretty exposed up there at 10,000'! That's good you could spend some time up there and look around.”

“Day 6

Today we really wanted more fish baked in foil so we resolved to camp below the no fires line at Dual Outlet Lake. So somewhere near Impasse Falls. We headed back down and shortly reached Impasse Falls. We ended up spending the rest of the day there. Mark Sr. and Bob, the fish killers, were fishing as they headed down from Fossil so they were way behind us.

As you can tell from Opie kindly pointing out the photo of nasty ‘ole me, we could use a swim or something, anything. So I decided to wash up a bit at the falls. Man that water was cold. We all ended up using some of Lightin Rod’s Doc Bronner soap to wash off our heads and get ice cream headaches as we did it. (No soap got in the water) That was quite refreshing. We lounged at the top of the falls for a bit and then Madman and Lightnin Rod head down to the bottom of the falls at Duggin Lake.

After a while I heard them yelling up to us so I decided to head down too. Down at Duggin there was a couple hanging out. I said hi as I passed by and found a nice little campsite (maybe 2 tents max, maybe) at the base of the falls in a copse of trees. It took a little bit of bushwacking to get to the campsite and the falls but it was worth it. Madman and Lightnin Rod told me that when they rounded a corner they came upon an attractive young lady skinny dipping in the lake not 20 feet from them. She seemed cool with it and they were certainly cool with it. I’m guessing it made their day.

We explored a bit, took some photos and rock hounded for a while and headed on back up to the top of the falls. It was getting on in the day and Mark Sr. and Bob showed up with some fish. They determined that they didn’t have enough fish so they headed back out to fish some more. We decided that we would just crash that night at the top of the falls. It was too close to the trail but so far most of our campsites had been that way so we just kept everything on the rocks. Sometime later the skinny dipper and her boyfriend hiked on by us.

Mark and Bob showed up with some more trout and got to prepping them while the rest of us went off to find a suitable fire site. Before too long we were all gathered around the fish eating off the foil. Two trout were stuff with Italian breadcrumbs and crushed pecans, two more with redfish seasoning, two more with lemon pepper. We agreed that the pecan stuffed trout was the best.

Sometime after dinner a Forest service fire spotter plane flew very low overhead. We were hoping for alpineglow but didn’t see too much. I stargazed until I fell asleep.
last edited: 7/28/05 11:05:43 AM”

“Now THAT'S what I call a trip report and photos! AWESOME! That is gorgeous country.”

“Oh sure, the old "But the water was cold" excuse!”

“"Twinkle Toes-- I was doing some reports on the K/T boundary here in Montana in the Hell Creek Formation for the Lewis and Clark monument at Pompey's Pillar..."

--Aero

Did you accidentally excavate that little part of the pillar with the "William Clark" signature on it? Oops!”

“Day 7

We packed up and headed down towards Rainbow lake. Along the way we began to see hoards of people on the trail with expensive fly fishing gear. Well it was Friday and the hike to Rainbow isn’t that big, and we had see folks every day on the trail but dang, we rather liked it a little more spread out. We made very good time down and admired the reverse view of our trip. At Rainbow Lake we pitched camp in the field.

I decided it was time to go for a swim. Knowing the water would be cold I figured it would be a brief swim. So Madman, Mark Jr. , Lightnin Rod Andrew and I headed down to the lake. Once we got our feet in the water most of the gang decided that I was nuts for wanting to go all the way in. Lightnin Rod announced that he’d go in too so we waded out to the deeper area and by the time we hit knee deep our feet were numb. Yikes that was cold. So in we dove and resurfaced with yells and shouts. We were now so numb we almost had to crawl out of the lake. Insert BRRRRRR here. Once out of the water LR and I stood there shivering and drying off. Madman went in and the same thing. Andrew and Mark weren’t having any of it so we did what guys always do in situations where someone doesn’t want to do what the group has done. We made fun of them. Lol.

To prove it wasn’t that bad LR and I went back in. It really didn’t seem so bad the second time but perhaps we had less neurons firing because of the cold water. Andrew apparently had to psych himself up to go in and before we knew it he marched right past us and flung himself into the water. Mark was now the lone holdout and finally jumped in. He had the bright idea that he would swim back but that was kinda hard when your muscles don’t cooperate with your brain. We all greed that we did feel better after taking a dip.

We lounged around in the sun to warm up and I decided to go fishing. So here I am minding my own business with my $25 wally world telescoping spincast outfit and some dude with an expensive fly rod shows up and starts fishing next to me. Ummm ok, I’m not territorial by any means but that is kinda close. He’s casting way out in the water and me, well frankly I’m not very good at all and I’m using cheap gear so there is now way I can cast that far out but it’s obvious the guy is being rude and trying to budge me off of where I am. Ok fine, I’ll play the stooge.

Fly guy: Ya know the fish are out deeper this time of day.
Me: Really? Huh, well I can’t cast that far. Heck I’ve only been fishing like twice.
Fly guy: What are you using?
Me: Mepps lures, got ‘em cheap at Walmart.
Fly guy: ~snort~ this area requires flys.
~~~~~Insert a bite on my line~~~~~~
Me: Ya don’t say? ~~~I reel in a 12 inch rainbow trout~~~ Thanks for the tip
Fly guy: Well, the really big ones do anyway.
Me: ~~~casting~~~ Yeah, you’re probably right
Fly guy: ~~grunt~~
~~~~~Insert a bite on my line~~~~~~
Me: Well lookie there. ~~~I reel in a cutthroat trout about the same size~~~
Fly guy: ~~~~~silence~~~~~~
Me: Such a lovely day.
Fly guy: ~~nods~~
~~~~~Insert a bite on my line~~~~~~
Me: Goodness me these fish are stupid! Don’t they know they should be chasing flies! ~~~another cutthroat~~~
Fly guy: ~~~~~stony silence~~~~~~
Me: These Mepps lures are pretty nice. I’m glad I only spent like $30 total for this rig. Man, what a value.
~~~~~Insert a bite on my line~~~~~~
Me: ~~~reels in a 10 inch rainbow~~~ Hmmm, looks a little small I think I’ll throw him back.
Fly guy: ~~~~~sound of grinding teeth~~~~~~
~~~~~Insert a bite on my line~~~~~~
Me: ~~~I reeled in the biggest fish I had caught so far this trip a 14” –ish cutthroat~~~
Fly guy: ~~~~~sound of cracking teeth~~~~~~
Me: ~snort~ huh, this area requires mepps lures. My I suggest something with a lot of white or silver? Good luck!

Later that evening we ate dinner and also baked a bunch of fish over the coals. Today was Mark Sr. 50th birthday and we had nothing for a cake and no pudding so I decided to make birthday jello. I figured it would chill in the shallow part of the lake so I stuck it out there with a rock on the lid. We destroyed the fish and lounged around the fire and yucked it up. Hours passed and the guys were ruthless in ribbing me that the jello wouldn’t set. Hell, I don’t know it’s an experiment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. After many hours of ribbing I went to check on the jello and sure enough it had jelled. We got a good laugh at that. To personalize it I took a packet of sugar and wrote “OLD” on the jello. We sang happy birthday to Mark and we all proceeded to eat. Mark Sr. was wearing his red bandanna and one of the cowboy hats he got us so we started making jokes about Gay Cowboys eating jello. (See South Park and cartmans comments about independent films.) After a bit a brief sprinkling of rain sent us to our tents for the night.”

“Day 8

Today was it. Down and out to the cars.

The hike out was uneventful except when I got to Elk Lake I would have expected to see the guys ahead of me waiting so we could regroup. No dice. When they got in front of my they were just flying.

When I reached the parking lot I discovered that Madman and Lightnin Rod were racing to the bottom. They were trying to cover 7 miles in 2 hours and they succedded. It was pretty funny to hear as they were checking their watches on the way down and yelling to time to each other as the dayhikers hustled to get out of their way. When they hit the Wilderness area sign they were at a full run. FIVE MINUTES GO GO GO GO !!!! They were pretty much bushed at the cars.

Finally everyone regrouped at the parking lot and we headed out for half pound burgers at the Grizzly Bar in Roscoe. Bob had to fly out the next day and the rest of us had another full day in Montana so we said our goodbyes to Bob and headed over to Yellowstone. After the long drive on two lane roads we were very glad that we decided to no shuttle a car around. The Chief Joseph highway was indeed a beautiful drive but yikes, it was long.

We headed into Yellowstone at the northeast entrance and drove down the Lamar Valley and observed the herds of Buffalo. We made camp at Slough creek and were lucky enough to get the last campsite for the night. The campground appeared to be full but when we were looking around a couple informed us that they were just occupying a campsite to cook dinner and that we could have it when they left. Part of me is glad they gave us the site because there were two other groups looking for a site and part of me was annoyed that they should have gone to one of several picnic areas nearby instead of occupying a campsite they had no intention of staying at.

Oh, and while we are at it. WTF is with all the A-holes in RVs hogging up campsites in a TENT CAMPGROUND!!!! I thought this area was for tents only. Am I wrong? Take that crap to the KOA!

We ate dinner at Roosevelt and on the way back to camp we saw an awesome sunset. We looked across the road and off in the distance I spotted a black bear. Back at camp there were a couple of deer hanging out. We made plans for the next day and crashed.”

“Day 9 (Final)

We got up early and headed over to Mammoth hot springs to look around.
The springs were nowhere as active as when I visited as a child. There were only a few of them flowing. I remember the whole hillside flowing last I was there. I was disappointed but hey, geology happens and like everything else I expect it to be cyclical. Someday I suppose it will flow again like it once did. Hopefully my daughter will get to see it like that.

We did the tourist thing and shopped and Mark Sr and I visited the backcountry office at got some info for a later trip. I thinking the throughofare area would make and awesome trip.

We headed off to Billings to the hotel and an uneventful evening and only one delay on our flights home. No biggie.

Great trip, great time.

So what’s next?
I’m thinking Canadian Rockies.”

“Thanks for sharing. You're TR's are great.”

“that was a great tr hpm!! i really liked the wally world fishing story. i will be getting my cheapo rod out for our trip.”

“Cool trip! Your pics are great! Thanks for sharing.”

“Andrews photos:
http://home.comcast.net/~aobar/montana/index.html”

“great report and pics-”

“Madman's Photos:
http://66.177.97.204:8080/beartooth05/album0.html”

“Not to horn in on your trip report, HPM, but we just got back from a quick trip up in the Beartooths to Moon Lake (10,400') this weekend (up the Rock Creek drainage). We caught some nice cutts there and had a nice, early evening lightning storm! I'll do a TR and some pic after I get my pack dumped out.”

“cool”