Update, 12/15/03; we've since learned more about the history of the Moonlight Basin development, and softened our stance.  If you're interested, click here.

Well, the forbidden fruit along the trip in, for starters. The first five miles of trail are through private property; Moonlight Basin. Around Big Sky, the business plan du jour seems to be clearcutting a big chunk of gorgeous remote country, and then subdividing it! It’s kind of odd that such an immense portion of the Jack Creek drainage never wound up in public ownership, but anyway…. As capitalist real estate tycoon ventures go, it could be worse, though. It’s still pretty in there, on the back side of Lone Mountain, with the Spanish Peaks looming to the north. Real pretty, in fact, for a recovering clearcut! And there aren’t much for houses in there (yet). The signs at the trailhead are only a minor distraction, but they make it clear that it’s only through the good graces of Moonlight Basin, Inc., that little people like us are even permitted to use that trail easement, and don’t forget it’s only eight feet wide and don’t even think about stepping off the trail, cause it’s patrolled by guys with CB radios and handguns so don't tarry much less fish or hunt and try not to breathe more than necessary, OK?  (And the only thing I'm exaggerating there is the breathing part!)  But it is private property, and certainly theirs to do as they see fit with, I suppose. There are some holes along Jack Creek that would just be so much fun to float a fly through, though. Inadvisable, I’m sure. Those dudes with the CB radios, you know….

So we stayed on our horses and kept going. The trail is undergoing reconstruction, and the three contract workers we encountered, while bearing resemblance to the Rainbow People, aren’t afraid of hard work, that’s for sure. They’re building up the trail through a lot of the boggy spots, installing culverts and drainage ditches, and generally working their hienies off. Unfortunately, their labors ended at the wilderness boundary, and we hit some moderately serious down timber from that point on. Not a big problem for backpackers, but if you take horses through there early in the season, you’re going to be spending some time powering an axe. We finally dropped down into Cedar Creek, passed a couple of beautiful meadows with great campsite potential, and headed up toward the lake. My son was all for going for the lake that night. That’s another three miles, though, it was 6:00 PM already, and we shortly hit a massive miasma of deadfall. We got around that with only moderate difficulty, but it caused my confidence in making the lake that evening, much less finding a horse-compatible campsite, to waver. A quick perusal of the topos confirmed that the trail henceforth stayed in the timber, with no meadows until the basin below the headwall, so we retreated and set up camp in one of the meadows we’d passed earlier. Definitely a wise idea, as it turned out.

The next morning we headed out for the lake on foot. The lake sits at roughly 9400’, and I knew we were probably rushing the season a bit. Sure enough, as we got higher up the canyon the abundant deadfall was compounded by some fairly serious remaining snowpack. Fortunately, in most places it was solid enough to support our weight. Eventually the trail, which was only intermittently visible at that point, crossed the creek. Cedar Creek in mid-June is not exactly a placid mountain brook. There weren’t any handy down logs over it, and I knew we’d have to cross it again higher up, and since the trail was only a hypothetical concept buried under several feet of snow, we abandoned it and started bushwhacking through the timber. That seemed to take a long time. I’d figured "OK, three miles, that should take about an hour and a half". We started hiking at 8:00 AM. It was now noon, and we were still out there in the deep snow and deadfall, and kinda starting to feel the strain. But still, every now and then we could glimpse the back of the canyon, and knew it just couldn’t be much further. From the topo map I knew there was a headwall below the lake, but at times we’d had glimpses through the timber of something that might pass for a headwall, that we were about on a level with. We’d veered a fair ways west, and I was hoping we’d somehow circumvented that wall and as the trees began to thin we were both optimistic that at any moment we were going to step out on the pristine banks of fabulous Cedar Lake.

Instead, we finally popped out of the timber at the base of a truly imposing near-cliff. Our enthusiasm for the whole project hit a low point at that moment, I must say. According to the map, there’s a trail up that cliff, but it was apparent that much of it was under snow. Venturing out on that steep snow without an ice axe is all but suicidal. So, we sat down, had a bite to eat, and studied the situation from below through the binoculars. By gosh, it appeared there might be a feasible route after all, with only a couple of minor snow spots to cross, and indeed, about 2/3 of the way up we did hit what passes for a "trail". It’s definitely no horse trail, and in fact I’m sure its primary users are mountain goats, but it was still a welcome sight. Some of the switchbacks still disappeared under snowbanks, but by that point we knew we had it made, and headed straight up where necessary to avoid risking a rapid and very fatal slide down, and in fairly short order topped out!

And yes, it was very much worth the trouble! Even if the lake was still about 2/3 iced over!! Realize that in some misguided fit of lunacy, we’d packed a float tube and related paraphernalia up there, expecting to find the most bodacious flyfishing ever, but finding the lake still largely frozen was only a minor setback, I must say. Well, except that for the fish, if indeed they do exist, weren’t biting! Fortunately, fishing does not make my world go round, and the mind-boggling scenery, not to mention just having successfully made it to the lake, provided abundant satisfaction.

There may still be fish up there. I have a fairly reliable report that there were, last summer, anyway. Reportedly some folks had caught a couple of fish and had them laying on the bank. A sow grizzly with two cubs appeared and appropriated their catch, which they wisely didn’t quibble over. The grizzlies were elsewhere during our visit, but there were a good number of mountain goats hanging about.

Interestingly, in the distant past somebody put just a frightful amount of work in up there. They dammed over the original outlet, and blasted a new outlet channel equipped with a headgate to control the flow. The headgate is still there, although very much non-functional, as are the remains of a wheelbarrow, and some wagon wheels. Mercy! I can’t imagine the effort that went into getting that wagon up there, let alone constructing the dam and channel. The wagon would have had to be hauled up in (quite small) pieces, and with the trail only really accessible for at most three months out of the year…. Doesn’t sound like a very convenient project to me! It must have been a CCC project to control irrigation water for the Madison Valley. Still, the lake isn’t really very big, and any benefit seems of dubious value, particularly considering the effort expended. But hey, spectacular exercises in futility are a specialty of mine, too, so who am I to wonder?

So now maybe you and I both know why very few people make it to Cedar Lake. It’s just not ever going to be popular with the Wall-Mart camper crowd, but that doesn’t diminish its appeal in any way as far as I’m concerned. Au contraire….

All the same, once might be enough. Next up are a whole selection of high lakes in the Spanish Peaks, but I think we might give it a bit and let some more snow melt out first. So, in the meanwhile, I believe the next spot to cross of my list might be Bacon Rind Creek, in the upper Gallatin. That’s adjacent to Yellowstone, and reportedly a veritable cornucopia of wildlife. I suspect we’ll have to go find out.

See you on the trail….

In Glacier Park, the Going-to-the-Sun road is now open. Road crews had no more than accomplished that feat, when reportedly several boulders fell onto the road, necessitating another closure. We’re talking big rocks, the size of Glacier’s famed red touring busses, but they were promptly removed and the road re-opened.

As Montana’s national park’s go, my preference clearly lies with Glacier, I suppose in no small part because a significant portion of my youth was spent there. Although Yellowstone is in no sense ugly, in my biased opinion Glacier’s rugged peaks handily come out ahead in the scenery department. For wildlife viewing and fishing opportunities, though, the nod goes to Yellowstone. Also, Yellowstone’s immense backcountry is slightly more user-friendly, at least from a regulatory standpoint, particularly regarding horse use. Glacier has a rule requiring that you pack along all your horse feed, which basically precludes much in the way of extensive backcountry exploration, at least via horseback. Personally, I’d love to take a packtrip through the Nyack/Coal Creek country, which is undoubtedly some of the most seldom-visited mountain wilderness country in the lower 48. I bet the human visitors to that country every year could be counted on the fingers of a careless butcher, and there’s no way that a horse party or three are going to overgraze the place! Besides, the area is never likely to see much visitation, since there is that nasty business of having to ford the Middle Fork Flathead, and/or follow long and difficult routes from east of the Divide.

Yellowstone prohibits stock usage prior to July 1, to minimize trail damage, and that makes good sense. You are expected to clean up around your picket areas, and generally minimize stock impact, but beyond that, as long as you’ve secured the necessary permits for backcountry camp sites, you are good to go. Once again, we know several top-notch outfitters who have openings for trips to the Thorofare, Slough Creek, and the wildlife-rich Lamar Valley, among other places, and let’s face it; you’re long overdue for a wilderness packtrip, so pick up the phone…. 1-877-613-0404.

But since it’s still early in the season, and available time precluded a backpack trip, we did the regular tourist thing and just did a car tour of Yellowstone. Was fun, too. Took off late Saturday and rented a cabin in West Yellowstone. It’s kind of remarkable that a town with 1746 motel rooms only graduated 17 high school seniors this spring. You can draw your own conclusions about the local population demographics based on that, but anyway….

We followed the Grand Loop route; past Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake, through the Hayden Valley to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The road on our intended route from Canyon to Tower Junction was closed (clearing fallen timber), so we veered west to Norris Junction and then north to Mammoth and Gardiner. Bison and elk were in abundance nearly the entire route, as were trumpeter swans and canada geese. Also saw nesting bald eagles and osprey, but the bear and wolves were keeping a low profile. The country throughout the route looked great; vivid green with lush plant growth, with the exception of around Gardiner, where many of the hillsides are surprisingly brown. They’ve clearly been missing out on the abundant rainfall the rest of the region has been enjoying.

The Yellowstone in the Gardiner area is still running pretty high and murky, although it’s dropped notably in recent days. I still wouldn’t get too excited about fishing it for a bit, but the Gallatin and Madison are clearing nicely. There were a few people fishing the Firehole and Madison in the Park, and reports are favorable. We were in road trip and wildlife viewing mode, and our rods stayed cased, though. High temperatures have dropped to the 70’s lately, and if we get a return to the 90’s we may see another surge of runoff. Based on the advancing stage of the snowmelt, though, I’d say the risk of that is not too high. In fact, this weekend or early next week I believe we’ll see if we can’t rush the season a bit and find out if it’s possible to make it up to Cedar Lake (without snowshoes). I suspect it is, or soon will be, and with any luck we’ll return with photos of some trophy trout.