Sunset over the high country
This place is just so crazy wild and beautiful. I sit on a overlook several miles outside of Cooke City and Silver Gate, Montana, staring at Pilot and Index peaks and the wilderness beyond, pondering what it is that captures my heart, year after year, visit after visit. 25 years I’ve been coming to the part of the world and it still moves me as much as it did the first time. This is where I always feel the stunning immensity of the landscape, impossibly steep, imposing, deep.
What captivates me so? I think it’s the promise of endless exploration that is the most addictive; all the wild places stretching from here to what feels like infinity (though I know it's finite, really); a vast wilderness I’ve just barely scratched the surface of. Places hidden in the draws and valleys and peaks out of view that I may never explore of see but can dream about. It’s like open range for my soul; the possibilities feel expansive.
I’ve come to the literal end of the road, Silver Gate, for a few days to myself to write, dream, and explore. I told myself I could wait a month until the roads open, but ever since my first job in neighboring Cooke City in 1997 running logistics for a citizen science program, it’s been part of my heart. I wanted to be here, now, and the pay-what-you-can offer from Silver Gate Lodging left me with few excuses. So, because the road through the park is still closed for repairs after the June 2022 flood, I drove about 6 hours around the park to get here.
After doing a quick field journal sketch of the gorgeous sunrise, I do the usual things I love to do outside Yellowstone's northeast entrance: hike a couple of favorite trails, drive up towards the Chief Joseph Highway for sunset, and meander through the mature spruce-fir forest.
E-Bikes and Thunderstorms
An old friend from my Yellowstone Association (now Yellowstone Forever days) joined me for a morning bike ride, my first time on an e-bike. We picked up the bikes (which you can rent at Silver Gate Lodging) at 8am and set off.
After a short jaunt into the park (I realized after I got here that you can only go a mile now because of construction, not 6 as has been the case most of the summer), we looped back through the backroads (actually road, singular) of Silver Gate, and on the highway to the Clark’s Fork trailhead on the national forest. In a normal summer I wouldn’t be caught dead on any kind of bike along these roads, humming with tourist traffic. But today, 7 miles on the highway and we see 4 vehicles. Total. It's quite literally the end of the road, and feels that way.
We get off at Clark’s Fork and walk the interpretive trail, admiring the narrow whitewater flume beneath the footbridge on the trail that would carry us across the heart of the Beartooths and the Absaroka/Beartooth Wilderness, should we so desire.
Instead, we eye the purple sky over the treetops and decide we’d better make haste back to town. After a long string of sunny days, what looks like a significant thunderstorm is moving in at 10 o'clock in the morning!
We put the bikes in the highest gear and switched to turbo mode, and biked the 7 ish miles back to Silver Gate as fast as our bikes and legs would carry us. Just as we pulled in to store the bikes, the deluge began.
I checked my messages with the store’s wifi while I waited for a long enough break in the soaking rain to run up to my cabin, where I spend the rest of the afternoon watching the lightning, and listening to the crashing thunder careening forcefully off the walls of the surrounding peaks like giants flinging iron kettles off a cliff.
Storms just keep rolling through one after another; lighting, crash pouring rain, hail, repeat. I just sit on the porch as the rain gets heavier and heavier.
There’s not much that’s quite like the intensity of the dance between thunder and lightning at high elevation in tall mountains. I attempted to catch the sound here, but of course the recording doesn't do it justice.
At one point the thunder and lightning was simultaneous, and so close that I screamed out loud. Fortunately the sound was so loud no-one heard me .
A Slow Walk Through a Wet Forest
Afterwards, I take a walk in the soggy forest. A slow walk, inches at a time, noticing patterns and textures and raindrops on leaves, the individual needles on spruce and fir. It's just as spectacular as a mountain view, in my opinion.
The smell of the forest after the rain is intoxicating. The birds and squirrels are busy, hurrying to complete their afternoon tasks sandwiched between the storms and oncoming dusk.
Autumn Arrives...
The last morning I sit on the porch and watch pink light illuminating the austere crags of Amphitheater Mountain before packing up to head home. It’s cold enough that the heater kicked on overnight, perhaps fall is really coming.
The air smells crisp, cold, earthen.
As I drive over the Beartooths, frost and clouds and light weave a tapestry that is as ephemeral as it is achingly beautiful. I realize that this is just a quick flash, a single moment in time. There is nothing in me but awe.
The play of light and shadow across the rocky plateau is nothing short of spectacular. I creep along as I inch toward the pass; the fog becoming so thick I can barely see the next car’s headlights before they are upon me. I am feeling pretty grateful the road is not snow or ice covered.
Sensing the changing mood of the morning, I'm loathe to descend; so I loop back a couple of times hoping for a break in the clouds, and finally it comes.
The air smells like skunk weed, tobacco, and the cool freshwater smell that I associate with the last snow that lingers in high alpine forests in summer, or fresh snow on green grass.
It feels as if autumn just dropped her bags on the doorstep and came in for tea, while summer sneaks out the back door with her sunscreen and blue-green river water, setting out for wherever snowbirds go.
Finally, it's time to go. I pack my camera away and begin the long drive home. I know that I'll never see this patch of ground in the same way again, in a summer with very few visitors.
Want to read more about Silver Gate, Cooke City, and the Beartooths? Check out:
Earth's Artwork: Autumn in the Beartooths and Why We Love Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance.
Images © Jenny Golding
