I am writing this last post from Glacier Montana. That last two weeks have flown by. My hitch started off with a few day trips with little excitement to relay. The last four days of my hitch were some of the best days of the summer. Me and one other crew member headed out into the plateau country with the goal of hiking trails and looking for bear rub trees. Every trail needs to be hiked so that rub trees can be recorded so we decided to take out a 40 mile section of trail. The trail left from Red Lodge (6,000 feet) and climbed to the top of the plateau (10,000 feet). From there we dropped into canyons then climbed back to the plateau about 4 more times, gaining about 5000 feet in elevation a day. We had some spectacular views, but unfortunately those pictures are on the camera I left in Gardiner. 

As soon as I returned from my hitch I turned around and left for Glacier National Park. From the time we got to Glacier we have seen very little blue sky and most of the scenery has been covered by fog. We have let the weather be what is though and have made the best of our time. We have taken advantage of the few clear moments and have been able to see some cool things still. Tomorrow morning we will drive out through the park and hopefully be able to get some last spectacular views in before we leave. We will take some time in Missoula and then stay in Bozeman. I fly out of Bozeman to return home on Tuesday. Therefore this is my last post and I hope to see everyone soon

St Mary's lake, an iconic picture of Glacier National Park.

A black bear eating berries, taken from the window of the car.

Josephine lake dock at Many Glacier. 

Appistoki Falls. For this picture I had to cross a small stream and climb an ridge off trail in order to see the whole falls which was hidden behind a rock wall from the trail.

I am back from yet another hitch. This was a random hitch filled with short day trips and data collection which I will not describe in detail so that I do not put you to sleep. The exception to this was a three day backpacking trip across the Beartooth Plateau on a trail called the East Rosebud Trail. The trail is 28 miles and almost all of it is above 10,000 feet. Every mile or so there is a lake with a different hue ranging from clear bright blue to milky green. Just about every lake also had a large waterfall coming into it or leaving it or both. I saw so many waterfalls that I had to stop taking pictures of them or I would never be able to remember which was which. The weather was not as spectacular as the views but dealing with wet feet and cold hands is much easier when you are looking down a canyon with thousand foot rock walls rising straight up on both sides. The trail was busy since it is the most popular trail around so we did not see much wildlife. The day after I returned I was able to see a black bear from about 100 yards away. I now only have a few days of recovery time and then I am off on my last hitch and then to Glacier right before coming home. 

I was not able to post all my pictures since I took more on this trip than I have all summer. Here are a few of my favorites.

Sunrise over the mountains at Fossil Lake.

Impasse Falls, a 100-150 foot water fall directly next to the trail falling into Impasse Lake.

Two waterfalls falling off a cliff the rises over the aptly named Lake at the Falls, the mist is covering the top half of the cliff.

The canyon the trail switch backed through near the end of the trail. 

For my last hitch I went back to Hellroaring, this time for 8 days. The trip was physically demanding. Many days we hiked for 12 to 14 miles. Two 0f the days were 16 mile days with many trees to be cleared each day. Most nights we were camped near streams and lakes so I was able to do a lot of fly fishing. The mosquitos were absolutely impossible to hide from. At points walking down the trail the mosquitos were so thick that you could not help but breath them in. My record is killing ten mosquitos with one slap.

This hitchbreak has been pretty uneventful. I went on a day hike and climbed the top of rams horn peak which is a ten thousand foot peak but was a pretty easy climb. The last two days of the hitch I went on a solo hike. I left on Monday and had a ten mile hike through the mountains to Fawn Lake. The hike was mostly above treeline with great views and many small mountain lakes. I stayed the night at Fawn Lake cooking dinner over the fire and fishing. In the morning I woke up fished some more and then hiked out 5 miles. I saw no other people for 18 hours.

I am leaving for my second to last hitch tomorrow. I am finally going to the Beartooth Plateau to see some of the most beautiful country in our district. Here are some pictures from some of my lastest adventures.


This is a waterfall I found on my solo hike that was not too far off the trail.

This is a cairn on the trail that marked to path across the meadows. This one is in front of one of the many mountain ponds.

This is the sign that marked the trail I was on. The trail was mostly meadow with little to no tread. I had to use cairns and a compass to make sure I stayed on the trail.

This is a view from the top of the divide during a clearing day on my last hitch. This is halfway through our longest day. 16 miles, 217 trees, 13 hours.

This is a waterfall near the forest service cabin in Hellroaring. I went fishing there and jumped in the water. The water was cold so that as soon as I got in a had to swim as fast as I could to get out.

On our last hitch I headed into Hellroaring drainage in the Absaroka Wilderness. We hiked in twelve miles over a ridge that seperates Hellroaring from Gardiner with long views over Yellowstone and nearby mountain ranges. We stayed in a backcountry cabin for four nights and cleared trails during the day. We had quite a few long days and cleared up to 90 trees off the trail in one day. The mosquito numbers are steadily rising, especially in the wet meadows where we spent most of our time.

For the past many days I have been on break. I spent two days in Cody and cooke city. In Cody we went to a musuem which had exhibits on natural history, western art, native americans, and one of the largest gun collections in the world. We watched fireworks in Cooke City in front of the mountains on the night of the 4th. For the past two days I have been in Bozeman and in a nearby canyon where I did some rock climbing. I am off again to hellroaring and further for my next hitch which will be 8 days, the longest I have been out yet.


Hellroaring meadow with the cabin along the tree line.

The edge of the National Forest where it meets Yellowstone.

A mountain range near Cooke City at dusk.

Fireworks at Cooke City

The past week has been a bit slower than usual. We are in a transition from 5 day hitches to 9 day hitches and so we had a 4 day weekend last wekend so that we could switch. I went climbing again on Monday and I climbed an even harder route than before, rated at 11b. Tuesday was another exiciting day. Four of us climbed Emmigrant mountain. It is 10,900 feet, not the tallest in the area, but the area around it is low, so the gain in the climb is 6000 feet of elevation in only 3 miles distance. Below are pictures from the climb.

The first half of the current hitch is training, so for the past three days we have been going through many different training introductions. We have had speakers who are wildlife managers in the area come in to talk and we are learning the basics of all the projects we will be doing this summer. Sunday we will head out into the backcountry again for the next 5 days.


This is Emmigrant from part way up the trail. The real summit can barely be seen sticking out from behind what appears to be the summit.

This is me on the summit with the Gallatin mountain range in the background.

This is a view to the south. Far in the background Pilot and Index mountains can be seen. Pilot is the needle sharp point on the right with index the stubbier point on the left. There is a picture of these two from closer in my last post and they are a 2 and a half hour drive away.

It has been another two weeks and I have been out on a few more hitches as well as done some white water rafting and some climbing on my breaks. My hitches so far have been mostly simple trail clearing. We hike a trail, each of us carrying either a crosscut saw or an axe, and when we come upon a tree across the trail we remove it. We have also done a trail re-route where we cut everything out to make a new trail because the previous one went through a swamp. The snow is still high in the higher elevations which means we cannot cross passes and therefore much of our district is still closed off. Once the snow melts, which should be in the next few weeks, we will be able to get out to the more remote spots.

We were able to go on a whitewater rafting trip as a test group so that the company could work out a new overnight trip they wanted to do. We rafter the yellowstone through some pretty intense rapids to a spot on the river where they had a camp set up. They cooked us dinner and we all hung out around a campfire. We then woke up in the morning and rafted a rather calm section of river to our pick up. They then drove us to a resort hot springs where we ate lunch and swam in the hot-spring-fed-pool for a few hours.

Here are some of my favorite pictures.


This is Lake Vernon, a lake at the end of one of the trails we cleared.

These peaks are mount index and pilot. They can be seen from many different places in the area.

This is me rock climbing at Allenspur. It is the highest rated climb I have done at 5.10a.

This flower is Mission Bell.

I have arrived in Gardiner MT and I have already returned from my first Hitch. On Wednesay a group of 7 of us left for Slough Creek. We drove to the trailhead which started in Yellowstone and me and two others starting hiking in while the other 4 rode in on horse. It was a 12 mile hike and ended at a small Forest Service cabin on the banks of Slough Creek. 

On Thursday the three of us who hiked in went out to starting clearing the trails. We moved 43 trees out of the trail, many of them to large to put my arms all the way around. We used a cross cut saw and a double bit axe to do the clearing. We saw to Grizzly bears on the trail. Friday morning we woe up and hiked out. This was a short hitch but most of them will be similar in nature.