Took a spin just before sunset last night to one of the more or less hidden gems of the area – Hyalite Canyon. Literally just south of the community of Bozeman a series of canyons penetrate the nearby Gallatin national forest, one of those – Hyalite – has a paved road that just opened on Friday after the seasonal spring closure due to mud and debris slides that cover a short section of the road during more wet springs.
Hyalite Creek below the reservoir is open though running high and dirty already, and the reservoir itself as you can see from the pictures is still frozen. Warm temps due this week (81 in Bozeman today – summer like weather) will change that of course, and send the lower creek into unfishable full-fledged runoff.
The reservoir is very fishable and many of us sneak off up there on an early summer’s evening to chase grayling – won’t be long now.
We were amazed at the amount of snow persisting even at the relatively low 6700 ft elevation of the reservoir. The sunlight was rapidly fleeting as we turned around on the dam, but you can easily see from the pics there’s a lot of snow to come down. Runoff will be a whopper this year…..
