Absaroka | Yellowstone Treasures

Dec

Pilot Peak, Wyoming

Tags: Absaroka, Beartooth, mountains, roads, videos, Wyoming

Comments Off

View of Pilot and Index Peaks, accompanying the guidebook section on the Beartooth Highway.

Just outside the Park’s Northeast Entrance are a prominent pair of peaks in the northern Absaroka Range known as Pilot and Index. You can get a great view of them from a short side road off the Beartooth Scenic Byway, which covers the 70 miles (113 km) from Red Lodge, Montana to the entrance. “Pilot, the pointed one, is a glacial horn; four glaciers carved its pyramidal shape” (Yellowstone Treasures, page 195). Read more about the beautiful Beartooth Highway in the guidebook, pages 190-195.

The first ascent of Pilot Peak was on August 12, 1932, by Hollis Mees and Robert McKenzie. They amazingly did the climb without climbing gear. It’s now known as a difficult climb because of the loose rock. You can see footage of Mees and McKenzie’s ascent in this video:

By the way, we have been collecting some interesting Yellowstone videos, mostly of geysers, on our YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF0XW_RT5rtr4vJ3MVoaDoQ/feed

–Beth Chapple, Editor

Feb

Montana’s wolves on National Public Radio

Categories: News, Wildlife

Tags: Absaroka, mountains, ranches, wolves

Comments Off

Since wolves were delisted from the Endangered Species list in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, all three states have developed plans to drastically cut back their wolf populations. Idaho wants to eliminate 60% of theirs, and the other states have large quotas, too.

Last Saturday I heard a short segment on Weekend Edition, where the voices and the scenes described took me back to my Montana childhood—even though I always lived in town. It began with the news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claims the scientific research is insufficient to make a national decision about wolf delisting. Take a listen and note a great idea near the end. Can you really teach cattle to herd or group up like bison?

I have one small complaint: the Native American Indian name still used for the beautiful mountain range to the east of Yellowstone should be pronounced ab-SAR-o-kas, not ab-sa-ROKE-as.

Nov

Dead Indian Pass

Categories: History

Tags: Absaroka, passes

Comments Off

Yellowstone Treasures tells you a lot about the history of the Yellowstone area. If you ever travel to the Northeast Entrance via the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, you’ll drive over Dead Indian Pass. You may wonder,

Why Was This Route Named Dead Indian Pass?

The marker at the summit of the Chief Joseph Highway attributes the name Dead Indian Pass to an incident in 1877 involving the Nez Perce tribe and the U.S. Army. Chief Joseph led his people that year from their home in Idaho, across Yellowstone and the Absaroka Range, then down through Clarks Fork Canyon, a route considered impassable by the pursuing army. One Nez Perce was killed in the area, but about seven hundred members of the tribe successfully evaded the troops. The group attempted to flee to Canada but was eventually forced to surrender to the army not far short of the Montana-Canada border. Where their route is known, an occasional marker now points out the Nez Perce National Historic Trail.

The Nez Perce story is commonly accepted as the source of the old name for this pass, but another conflict occurred near here the following year. Col. Nelson A. Miles surprised a camp of Bannock Indians, killing and capturing many of them. Also, one of the Bannocks was killed and buried here by Crow scouts. 1878 was the last year of troubles between Native American Indians and the U.S. government in and around the national park.

—from Yellowstone Treasures, updated fourth edition, pages 195–96

Oct

High pass road to Yellowstone much improved

Categories: News, Park environs

Tags: Absaroka, mountains, ranches

Comments Off

I’ve only been over the Togwotee Pass between Dubois, Wyoming and Moran Junction a couple of times on my way to Yellowstone, but I know it’s a beautiful way to approach either Yellowstone or Grand Teton National Park. Now they’ve just [in 2012] opened a completely reconstructed stretch of U.S. Highway 26/287, and I’m eager to see it again. Construction work involved 38 miles of the road for seven years, but of course winters are long near a 9,544-foot pass, so they could not work all year.

Dubois is a western town, less than a thousand souls but an inexpensive place to stay, and they used to have a superb restaurant called The Yellowstone Garage (named for its predecessor in that piece of real estate).

The road over the pass, first built in 1921, helped open up the southern entrance to Yellowstone to visitors from Wyoming. Now there are several guest ranches nearby and places to camp and picnic. Road improvements have added wildlife and snowmobile underpasses and scenic overlooks with interpretive signs.
Besides mountains on both sides—the towering Absarokas on your north and Gros Ventres to the south—I point out in Yellowstone Treasures: “Spectacular striped hills, composed of alternating red clay stone and white tephra layers [rock erupted from volcanoes], line the road west of town.” Maybe I’ll get to go back there next summer.

Mar

Let’s save the Absaroka-Beartooth Front

Categories: Flora and Fauna, News, Park environs, Wildlife

Tags: Absaroka, bears, Beartooth, elk, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, grizzlies, mountains, trout

Comments Off

When my husband Bruno and I accepted an invitation to a downtown San Francisco reception given by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, we thought it would be fun to meet some people involved with this organization and learn more about what they do. Walking into The Matrix one evening last week—the only rainy week we’ve had this winter in the Bay Area—we were greeted by friendly people, not just by barkeeps but by GYC board member Charlotte Vaughan Winton and very tall, bearded Executive Director Mike Clark.

The Matrix is a Marina District jazz club owned by Judge William Newsom, father of the former mayor of San Francisco and present Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom. We were in good hands, and Judge Newsom was most generous with free drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

The serious part of this gathering was to explain to us what and where the Absaroka-Beartooth Front is and why it needs protection. The slide show given by Northwest Wyoming Director Barbara Cozzens did not provide a map but did include interesting pictures of the rare high-elevation meadows, mountain views, bighorn sheep, and unspoiled terrain. The area is roughly defined as the area of public lands just east of Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, a good deal of which is on the Shoshone National Forest.

Shoshone National Forest is in the process of updating its management plan this year. They need to find a balance between the pressures of interests advocating industrial and motorized use of the area and people and organizations who believe in trying to manage the land and wildlife with the long view toward conservation for future generations.

Threatened by rural land development and oil and gas drilling projects, the Shoshone and nearby lands are “one of the wildest places remaining in the lower 48 states,” according to the GYC website,

The Front hosts the full complement of native Yellowstone wildlife, including large herds of all of North America’s big-game species—pronghorn, elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat—as well some of the highest concentrations of grizzly bears and wolves outside of a national park. Genetically pure populations of Yellowstone cutthroat trout inhabit the region’s pristine, free-flowing rivers and streams.
This area also supports a number of significant big game migration routes, including one of the longest-known elk migration routes in North America, with animals migrating over 60 miles from the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park to the region’s public and private lands.

A map and much more information is at: http://greateryellowstone.org/issues/lands/Feature.php?id=300.

2012

All posts tagged Absaroka

Pilot Peak, Wyoming

Montana’s wolves on National Public Radio

Dead Indian Pass

Why Was This Route Named Dead Indian Pass?

High pass road to Yellowstone much improved

Let’s save the Absaroka-Beartooth Front