I’ve never been particularly keen on horses. I’ve seen way too many clips of riders being tossed like rag dolls from the backs of their equine pals to ever feel truly comfortable on one.
Needless to say I was a little nervous about our impending expedition. It seemed cool in the abstract…Shauna and I riding cowboy style through the world’s first national park…the reality of it suddenly didn’t seem like so much fun as we sat through our pre-ride safety meeting, though.
If I was nervous before, I was positively concerned when one of our guides introduced me to what had to be the single biggest saddle horse on this or any other planet. It was twice as wide, and several hands taller than any of the other horses in our group. I was told that this monstrous thing was some sort of “half draft” (half Belgian draft horse, half quarter horse), and that his name was “Ugg”. I was assured that despite his freakish size, he was the tamest horse of the lot, and that if we ran into a grizzly he’d be the horse I wanted to be riding (apparently he never spooked, and bears would often turn tail and run at the very sight of him).
It was another perfect morning, and soon we were making our way through some of the most pristine country in the park. It took a few minutes to get used to the idea of being there, astride a behemoth, but the scenery seemed to take the edge off. We rode across lush meadows, and through impressive stands of Douglas fir. There’s no doubt we’d have seen all kinds of wildlife if it hadn’t been for one of our guides…this girl let her mouth run the entire 2 hours we were on the trail. She went on and on about horses and dogs and bears and her boyfriend and her girlfriends and her hometown…good hell! I felt like I had to feign interest to avoid being rude, but I was probably only encouraging her. I should have just told her to shut it.
That was my only complaint, though. Ugg was brilliant (what a big, gentle, flatulent animal) and the scenery around Tower and Roosevelt was classic. I’ll never visit the Yellowstone area again without doing something like this. It’s the best way for a lot of people to leave the crowds and the traffic behind…actually get into the back country. A google search brings up links to guide services both inside and outside of the park. We plan on taking a multi-day tour next time.
From Roosevelt we headed south, for Yellowstone Lake. The road climbed gently along Antelope Creek, then followed a long ridge across the western flank of Mt. Washburn. Views of the Antelope Creek drainage opened up, and people were parked along the road with binoculars and spotting scopes, peering into the valley below.
We stopped and asked one gentleman what they were all looking at. “Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing right now, anyway”. He explained that he and his friends had been there since before dawn, watching members of the Agate Creek Wolf Pack come and go from a den site somewhere below.
My interest was piqued. Wolves had always been among my favorite animals, but they were probably the only large North American mammal I’d never seen in the wild. We decided to hang out and glass the valley for awhile...see what we could see. I’d never done this in a place like Yellowstone before, and neither of us could believe what we had been missing. In 20 minutes we saw more large game animals than the entire rest of the trip to that point…Bison, Elk, Mule Deer, Coyote…amazing. I’d never seen that kind of wildlife density before. I had no idea there were so many animals around.
No wolves, though. The diehards said we probably wouldn’t see them again until dusk, or even the following morning when the pack set off to hunt. So, we hopped back into the truck and started south again.
Shauna thumbed through one of our trail books as we drove and decided the short hike along Pelican Creek to Yellowstone Lake sounded cool. Pelican Creek is said to be prime grizzly habitat, so we made a mess of our gear looking for our bear spray. Finally, and with two giant cans of liquid fire in hand, we hit the trail. It was only a few hundred yards along the creek, through thick stands of lodge pole pine to the shore.
The breeze coming off the water was ideal, and we hung out for awhile on the beach. A few minutes later we were back in the truck, wishing the loop had been a little longer.
Suddenly, we were feeling recovered, ambitious again...and Shauna reminded me how cool Shoshone Lake sounded.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Shoshone is the largest back country lake in the lower 48. Our guide book described the scenery along its northern approach, via the DeLacy Creek Trail, as being “what many of the park’s forests looked like prior to the dramatic changes brought about by the 1988 fires”. These are the oldest stands of lodge pole pine in the park…400+ years old. Best of all it was only six miles roundtrip.
Sounded good to me…
From West Thumb we took the Old Faithful-West Thumb road to the Delacy Creek trailhead. We threw on our day packs, tossed a couple granola bars in the pockets and made south.
It felt good to be out of the car, and we covered a lot of ground in a really short time. The path wandered through a dark, cool old growth pine forest for the first mile and a half or so. Then it burst into some of the greenest, widest alpine meadows I’ve ever seen. Butterflies and wildflowers were thick across floor, and I expected some sort of huge ungulate to wander through momentarily.
A mother duck and her brood...
The meadows turned marshy, and the air felt tangibly cooler as we approached Shoshone. Then, all at once we were there, on the shores of a huge sapphire gem of a lake surrounded on all sides by dark timber. We were completely alone, and for just a moment I understood what those early explorers of the Yellowstone Country must have felt as they gazed across this ancient landscape for the first time.
Shoshone Lake...
We wandered down the beach for awhile, snapping photos as we went, hoping the camera would capture even a poor facsimile of what we were seeing. Finally, we found a nice piece of shade and stretched out for a moment to gather our strength for the looming hike out. Two hours later we awoke to the sound of something big crashing through the forest behind us. A massive bull elk threw his head back as he sprinted away through the trees. The cool breeze coming off the lake had acted like chloroform, knocking us out for what was left of the afternoon. The shadows were getting long across the lake, and the temperature had dropped several degrees. I knew sunset couldn’t be more than a couple hours away. It would be a race to get back to the truck before dark.
I wasn’t particularly comfortable with our present circumstances. I usually try to avoid hiking in places like Yellowstone during the early morning, and at dusk; the chances of bumping into something big and nasty on the trail increases exponentially during these hours. And suddenly the park seemed alive with sounds...a rustling of bushes next to the trail caused me to draw my can of whoop-ass from its holster, but it was just a grouse. Feeling very vulnerable as dark approached, we jogged the rest of the 3 miles back to the trailhead, arriving only minutes before nightfall.
Pulling into West Yellowstone we could scarcely believe that it was the same day that we had woken up pre-dawn do go horseback riding. It would be tough to top Day 2, but day 3 would prove every bit as cool.
