August has brought a bit of frenzy to Bozeman. Tourist season is still in full swing, the college kids are starting to drift back in, and that summer-is-ending-we-better-play mode is prevalent. While this means we have legit traffic and it’s hazardous to drive downtown at times, it also provides questionable entertainment. Eating lunch with a friend downtown last week, we counted twelve cowboy hats paired with footwear other than cowboy boots in about an hour’s time. You can imagine how that particular conversation went.
In a happy excuse to get out of town, Jake, Kaitlyn, and I spent last weekend up in the Crazy Mountains counting mountain goats in a survey for the Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance. The plan was pretty straightforward: backpack in, spend the night, and then backpack out, glassing for and mapping mountain goat sightings along the way.
We stopped for a fishing break midway up, allowing both Jake and Kaitlyn to land some eager trout before we made it up to our destination and pitched camp under the watchful eye of pup Foxy. It was hot — high elevation, summer sunshine hot — and we all promptly collapsed for a bit of dozing.
Imagine our surprise when, a few hours later, a group of nine chose to camp less than a 100 yards away from our campsite. There were quite literally hundreds of acres around us, and these gems chose to camp right next to us. Even worse? It was a “guide” from a local outdoor outfit. He’d just taught eight other folks it was okay to break the basic rules of wilderness etiquette. To our astonishment and for reasons none of us can make sense of even now, they didn’t move when we inquired if they really were setting up camp.
Epic fail all around, made worse by the fact this was a “course” taught by a supposed professional.
After we cooled off, refusing to be pushed from our site, we settled into an evening of poker, goat-spotting and fishing, before being pushed into our tents by a hail-wind-rain thunderstorm. It’s a established fact that big, boomer thunderstorms in the mountains are always better than those in the low country, and we settled in to ride out the storm.
The next morning we were up early, a little damp but none the worse for wear, glassing the surrounding mountains for goats. We saw several and then, spurred on by ominous-looking clouds and that pre-rain feeling, broke camp and headed out. No more than five minutes down the trail, a chilly, autumn-like rain began to fall, accompanying us for nearly the entirety of the hike out. Needless to say, we made it back to town wet, a bit chilly, and with that feel-good-tired feeling in our bones.
A couple thoughts on the trip:
- mountains will always, always make everything better
- a storm in the mountains is simply bonus points
- trail etiquette is ignored all too frequently
- just because you label yourself a “guide” doesn’t mean you should be leading
- mixing powdered milk with hot water results in a questionable beverage
- those nut butter packets are perfect trail food
- good rain gear is worth every penny
