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.