Tales From Yellowstone

There have been several publicized questionable incidents in Yellowstone National Park this year. It seems that far too many of the visitors have been behaving as if the park's animals are pets. I came across several videos of human interaction with bison and bears while researching my fourth Yellowstone visit. Although I believe it is impossible for me to act foolishly and put myself or the animals in danger, I did enter the Yellowstone this year with clear intentions of not ending up going viral on the YouTube.

Yellowstone is huge. It encompasses almost 3500 square miles of diverse and uniquely beautiful landscapes. Most of the park's millions of visitors choose to "see" the park while driving around the Grand Loop road system. This figure eight road provides access to all of Yellowstone's primary features: geysers, waterfalls, lakes, canyons, visitor center/museums, and campgrounds. Trailheads for 1100 miles of trails are also found along the roads. Those trailheads were my destinations along the Grand Loop for this visit as I sought vistas and solitude.

My visit lasted three days. I was entered in a half marathon out of the city of West Yellowstone, MT on the west side of the park. My first hike up Bunsen Peak made me annoyingly aware of the fact that my right hamstring would not allow more than a brisk walking stride. A twenty two mile hike to the top of Mt. Holmes would serve as the alternative activity.

Mt. Holmes is, at 10,336 feet, one of the tallest hiking destinations in Yellowstone. The hike to the peak would be picturesque. The view from the top would make the effort worthwhile. A solo hike in grizzly country would require caution. In fact, the signs at all the trailheads recommended hiking parties of three or more: Me, Myself, and I probably wasn't what park officials had in mind. Bear spray was also recommended and I had a $55 canister of said deterrent was strapped to my vest.

I purposefully ate a hearty breakfast in order to avoid carrying odorous food with me on the hike (I made Me and Myself leave theirs behind also:). Salty water filled my bottles. The camera was at the ready.

Two bison greeted me at the trailhead. Both were lying down, but one stood up as I parked. I reached for the fob and my sunglasses before grabbing the door handle. An expletive and a gush of fear sweat poured out of me when I realized that bison had its nose inches from the driver side window. Relax and get a grip on that bladder. After a long minute the huge beast sauntered into the nearby meadow to graze. It seemed like ten thousand cars pulled into the pullout to take pictures of the other bison while I applied sunscreen with the car between me and the curious bison. Only after that bison moved further into the meadow to the south did I put on the vest and walk onto the trail in the meadow to the north.

The trail crossed that huge meadow before climbing onto a steep hillside and rounding into a long valley leading to Mt. Holmes. I whistled and sang as I moved along. Too bad I don't have my flute. I sang loudly. Sneak up on a grizzly bear? Me? No way, man!

And, as if on cue, there was a medium sized (300 lbs?) grizzly standing on the trail a mere fifty feet away. Really?! I froze. We stared at each other for several seconds. In the Appalachians I would start talking loudly to black bears in this situation. Facing a grizzly - I stood silently for awhile before taking a few short strides backward. I was trying to recall the training I'd received before solo backpacking in Denali back in 1997. No fast or agressive movements. No direct eye contact. Do NOT run.

The bear eventually took a few steps upslope before stopping to look at me again. I took a few more steps backward. The spray canister, still lashed to the vest, was firmly in my right hand with the nozzle pointed at the bear. This stuff better work or I'll be part of a spicy hot meal. Fear swept through me causing goosebumps to swell on my arms. Why are you smiling? Stop smiling? The bear moved further upslope and into the valley before disappearing into the thin pine forest. I turned and walked the 1.3 miles back to the car. I was not going to push my luck by following a grizzly deeper into that valley. Maybe next time, Holmes.

With that hair raising experience creating "what if" scenarios in my mind I drove further down to road. I decided to hike near Bunsen Peak in a meadow - a big meadow where I could see omnivorous animals before they were within one hundred feet of me.

Once again, I shouldered the vest and walked onto the trail after starting my Polar V800 GPS. I planned to walk 3-4 miles along the Fawn Pass Trail and then turn back. The rolling meadow provided extensive views of the surrounding landscape. The path rounded earthen berms and climbed over ridges forged by glaciers as it meandered across and up the long valley.

After cresting one of the ridges I stopped to take a picture. While looking through the view finder I noticed movement about three hundred meters away. I zoomed in, but I saw nothing. Holding the camera focus on that area I tried to construct a photo. There it was again. What the hell?!! Really? Another bear. I was getting glimpses of a golden brown bear with a big hump behind its head. It was walking in the brush (on this trail?) and seemed in search of something. Head up, head down, it looked all around as it moved. I shot two photos but missed a full shoulder/head shot.  I realized from the review screen that I didn't have a good photo so I started to hoist the camera for another shot.

Wait. Wait a minute. Seeing only its head I could clearly see that its nose was turned up into the wind. I was upwind from it and now it knew where I was. And then it was gone. Where the hell did you go? I used the camera to search the area. I could only see brush blowing in the wind. What a gorgeous sight. After several seconds of searching for the bear I decided that it was time to go. I was 2.32 miles away from the trailhead.

Moving slowly at first, I walked until just before the trail dropped sharply from that last ridge. Once again I scanned the valley. Nothing. You're probably in the creek foraging or snacking on fish. Still, I dropped off of that ridge out of view and jogged as fast as my leg would allow. I jogged uncomfortably for about one hundred meters before stopping to look back. Again, nothing but waving meadow: plants blowing in a stiff wind. It would have normally been an incredibly relaxing scene, but I felt an urge to escape from it.

I walked briskly to the next ridge where I once again stopped and looked back. No bear. No panic. So, I dropped off of that ridge and jogged even faster. My hamstring seemed to be loosening up. I repeatedly ran for a bit and stopped to look back. When I finally reached the next ridge I had traveled  1.21 miles back toward the road. I looked back again. Dammit! No way! Not only was the bear dropping down from that last ridge, it was jogging along the trail and it had made up ground since our initial encounter. I was running seven minute pace!

Sure, I knew the bear could run four times faster than me, but I did not expect it to pursue me for such a great distance. I dropped off of that last ridge where it couldn't see me and once again began to run at what was likely 5:30 pace. My hamstring started hurting and I told it to shut the hell up and do its part or get digested. After running hard for about a minute I reached an earthen berm around which the trail would curve out of sight from the last ridge. A quick glance back let me know that the bear was not near me.

Rounding the curve also provided direct line sight of the many cars in the lots near Bunsen Peak. Almost there! I continually looked back as I sprinted, then jogged, then walked to the trailhead at the roadway. When I arrived there I bent over, hands on knees, to catch my breath in the thin air while keeping an eye on the meadow. That stupid grin was still on my face. Part of me wanted to claim victory. Part of me knew that I had not been participating in a game.

Before driving away I read from my list of possible hikes. I was looking for the short ones in open meadows. Within minutes I came upon one of those typical roadside Yellowstone scenes where a ranger was trying to monitor a large crowd of people who had abandoned their cars to get pictures of a grizzly. This one was on the edge of a lake a quarter mile away in a meadow. The ranger was making sure none of the gawkers foolishly moved toward the bear. I spoke with him briefly through my open window when I paused to take a few pictures of the crowd.

I didn't need a ranger to tell me to stay away from that bear.

Within minutes I came across another crowd of tourists being monitored by a ranger while they were hoping for grizzly pictures. My fourth visit to Yellowstone yielded four grizzly sightings within three hours while I had only seen one grizzly (and three black bears) during my previous visits. I wonder what experiences future visits will provide for me. Hopefully, I've reached my life quota for backcountry grizzly encounters.

That was an awesome and memorable day. And, I must acknowledge, a very lucky day. Maybe that message, subconsciously, kept that smile on my face.

Here are a few of the scenes from that day. Enjoy! ST

First bear encounter in those distant trees

No, I can't see the second bear there either, but it is just left of center
where the meadow drops off

Got most of that right 

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument: Greasy Grass Victory

As with Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Little Bighorn Battlefield has long been on my Life Goal List. Getting there turned out to be interesting. A long day of meandering across Montana along Scenic Highway 2 provided a close up study of a segment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The day's mission changed from Glacier National Park, near the west end of Route 2, to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument after I learned that eleven miles of the Road to the Sun over the top of Glacier were still snow covered. My quest to ride in national parks included a ride over and back on that road. I also planned to hike out to quickly disappearing remnants of the park's namesake glaciers in that upper section of the park.

The change in plans resulted in a late arrival at the Little Bighorn Battlefield on the Crow Agency land. A few hours of restless napping preceded a wait in a long line of visitors at the gate to the property. My visit lasted almost four hours as I took part in every facet of the experience: listening to ranger presentations, watching films, touring the museum, visiting the battlefields, and reading the separate military and native monuments.

This emotional visit was the culmination of many readings about the battle. Lee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee awakened me to the "other" perspective of the battle. Brown's version, representing both U.S. Military and Native American "first hand" accounts, created in me an interest that kept me looking for information for over thirty years. Listening to an energetic and thought provoking ranger presentation and then standing, watery eyed, on that hallowed ground took me back to those chaotic and vicious minutes in 1876.

That ranger talk, which included powerful exclamations and well timed pauses, followed my visit to the visitor center bookstore where I read pages from dozens of new to me books on the battle. Years of study created numerous questions. Reading from those books and listening to the talk answered some of those questions while creating new questions.

We have a foundation or outline of what occurred on June 25-26, 1876. General Custer searched for the "hostile" and nonconforming Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne indians (most know of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse) who were trying to maintain their traditional plains lifestyle. When he realized that his troops had been detected, Custer immediately split his troops and attacked an encampment of roughly 8,000 natives.

Custer ordered Major Reno's 140 troops to cross the Little Bighorn River to attack the encampment almost two miles southwest of the camp with assurance that Reno would be fully supported. Custer ordered Captain Bentene's 125 troops to move further left of the camp to stop dispersed and fleeing natives. Meanwhile, Custer moved to the northeast or right of the camp. All of these movements took place in valleys behind hills and out of sight of the indian encampment.

It is believed that Custer expected the women and children to flee Reno's attack while the warriors fought Reno. As in previous battles, Custer expected to capture women and children to force the warriors to lay down their arms. In a sense, Custer expected to route the warriors by outsmarting them and taking advantage of their honor to their families. It did not work out as he planned.

Reno retreated again and again as hundreds of warriors unleashed a steady flow of deadly bullets and arrows. He received no back up. Bentene stayed several miles away from the encampment, supposedly waiting to meet up with the fourth division, the supply train, of the Custer force.

That left Custer and his 210 men alone and moving fast through a valley on the northeast side of the encampment. Custer was miles away from the hill that Reno would hold until the next day when the warriors moved south and backup arrived. The dust storm created by the "last stand" was seen from that hill and from another hill further away where Bentene was.

Custer and his 210 men were met with the fury of hundreds of warriors. Greatly outnumbered, Custer ordered retreat to high ground just as Reno had. It was reported by surviving indians that those 7th Calvary soldiers eventually shot their horses in order to hide behind them. A barrage of arrows and bullets made that effort futile as the warriors eventually moved in and killed every soldier. Custer took two bullets, one of them to the temple.

There is an incredible amount of hearsay and legend about this battle. Did the warriors recognize Custer, a well known enemy even though he had cut his hair just before the battle? Did Custer and other soldiers use their last bullets on themselves instead of meeting brutal battlefield deaths? Did Bentene stay out of the fight due to a known disagreement he had with Custer? These and many other unanswerable questions keep the interest high. There are so many discordant accounts of the battle that we will never know all of the details.

We do know these facts. Custer and his 210 men were killed and mutilated. (Mutilation was carried out to impact future life) Four of General Custer's family members died with him at the Little Bighorn. Bentene went to trial, was found innocent, and then saw his life go to hell. Within a decade of the battle the bison were slaughtered almost to extinction. As in Sitting Bull's vision, the mutilation of the troops was followed by the demise of the American Indian. The indian victory at the stream the Lakota Sioux called the Greasy Grass created a powerful response by the U.S. military that brought an end to the traditional life of the American Indian.

Graves from soldiers from the many battles were moved to Little Bighorn

The Last Stand Battlefield 

Native Monument Sculpture

Entrance to Native Monument

Markers where they died - Custer's in the black one.

Closer view of the Last Stand soldier graves
All warrior death sites also marked throughout the grounds

Museum display

Corresponding museum display

7th Calvary Monument - Horses buried across the road

Native Monument - informative and beautiful

Looking down the Last Stand ridge to the Visitor Center

Is this how it ended?

Now do you understand the photograph at the end of the last post?

Life is short and the roads are many and long.  ST

Theodore Roosevelt National Park - The North Dakota Badlands

A visit to Theodore Roosevelt (TR) National Park took its place on my Life Goal List back in 1986 when I learned of it while reading the Wilderness Society quarterly publication in the Purdue Library during a study break. Later, as I developed a fascination and profound respect for TR, I felt a connection with this unique landscape that I had never set foot in. Now that I have walked, slept, ridden, and driven through the oddly sculpted and seemingly broken land while trying to envision the "strenuous life" TR found so endearing I feel even more attracted to it. I also recognized and welcomed the healing and strengthening aura that TR often spoke and wrote of.

A young TR visited the area in 1883, killed a buffalo, and bought into the Maltese Cross Ranch. He returned in February 1884 as a broken man having lost both his mother and wife on the same day. TR started his own ranch, the Elkhorn, about thirty miles north of the Maltese Cross and the town of Medora, ND. Medora had been founded in 1883 by Frenchman Marquis de Mores with his elegant home, the Chateau de Mores (now a museum), and his meat packing plant as primary structures. While de Mores wanted to send meat to Chicago on refrigerated rail cars TR wanted to raise cattle to supply meat to a growing population of settlers and miners.

A bitterly cold 1887 winter killed almost all of TR's livestock, bringing an end to his ranch as an industry, but the event helped formulate and give momentum to his conservation philosophy because it coincided with the mass slaughter of the bison. The bison had been reduced from more than 5,000,000 in 1870 to less than 500 by 1889.

TR also noted the widespread destruction of the landscape as he traveled across the country. He felt that something had to be done. Yellowstone was already an established national park. TR wanted more lands protected:

“It is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals — not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening.”

TRNP was envisioned it its first form in 1919, was named the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park by Truman in 1947 and was officially named a national park in 1978. It is broken into three areas called units: South Unit, North Unit, and Elkhart Ranch Unit. They are accessed by separate entrances. The South Unit is entered through Medora and has 35 miles of paved, winding, and hilly roadway featuring a 24-mile loop. The North Unit paved road winds 14 miles to a turn around. I camped next the Little Missouri River in the South Unit Cottonwood Campground. Juniper Campground in the North Unit looked just as therapeutic.

The combination of Medora, the surrounding National Grasslands, and TRNP present a worthwhile reason for visiting the otherwise out of the way plains of North Dakota. The wonderful people I met from all over the world in this park included: elderly Jerry, who took my photo and discussed the Ever After with me - a 30-something couple from Banff, Canada who, like me, dodged the many massive piles of bison scat on their bikes while riding the park road - Lisa and Jenny, a couple from Seattle who were "just wandering," and Jeremy, a Trinity geology major from Ohio whose internship included working the Visitor Center information desk and presenting the ranger geology talk. And then there were the many animals I encountered. Not pictured below is the prairie dog who first played dead on the road and then attempted to run between my bike wheels. It failed, but managed to run away after the neck crush of my rear tire.

Below are some of the sights I captured during my three day visit.

The bison herd is expanding!

You Shall NOT Pass!

Wild horses might not keep me away, but they will cause me delay.

Applying insect repellent

It just happened . . .

The North Unit has a large bison herd and a longhorn herd

Ralph left a mess - I cleaned it up.

Family life in the grasslands

Teddy's writing table in his Maltese Cabin

TR's Maltese Cabin was a quality structure given the time and place

A gentle post race ride on a challenging loop

Steep climbs and descents kept it interesting when absorbing the scenery - and avoiding the bison scat!

Next stop on the tour . . .