A Montana Adventure: Hiking in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness and Fly Fishing on the North Fork of Spanish Creek

The plethora of wildflowers blanketed the mountain meadows. Flower buds were bursting open and a lightshow of colors surrounded Annemarie, my youngest daughter, and me. The mountain snow had melted a few weeks earlier and the landscape has become a rainbow of purple, blue, red, orange, and yellow. The hillsides were aglow with rocky mountain iris, alpine gold, mountain lupine, pink mallow, blue bell, Indian paintbrush, hairy clematis, western columbine, cow parsnip, penstemon, monkshood, and western coneflower. Butterflies and various pollinators were dancing about collecting nectar. Penny, Annemarie’s new rescue dog, a red healer, was prancing about, trying to catch the flying creatures. The air was alive with the scents of early summer in the Rocky Mountains.

We were hiking in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wildness, attempting to summit Livingston Peak (9,134 feet). The mountain sits just south of the small railroad town of Livingston, Montana, at the northern end of the Absaroka Range. As with many of the mountains in the Absoroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Livingston Peak has few visitors due to its remoteness (a 10-mile drive on deeply rutted forest road) and ascent of 1,000 feet the last quarter mile to the summit.

The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness is made up of two different mountain ranges that stretch 150 miles from southern Montana to northern Wyoming. The Absarokas are composed mostly of volcanic, metamorphic rock, noted for their dark craggy peaks and lush, heavily forested valleys and a variety of wildlife, while the Beartooths are primarily granite with treeless plateaus and alpine lakes. The highest mountain in Montana, Granite Peak at 12,799 feet, lies among several other mountains over 12,000 feet in the Beartooth Range. They have the largest unbroken area of land of over 10,000 feet in the continental United States. The wilderness was created in 1978 and is part of the Yellowstone ecosystem. “The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area is one of the crown jewels of the entire Wilderness Preservation system," according to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation. "Together the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges make up a sublime roadless wilderness that fully deserves its status as ‘wilderness,’ this country’s highest level of protection for our shared public lands.”

When Nancy and I were in Bozeman, Montana, visiting Annemarie, her husband Derek and our grandson Daxton, Annemarie and I always make it a point to hike at least one peak over 9,000 feet. The choices are many and the trails innumerable. When planning for this particular hike we had several options in mind: Mount Blackmore on the rim of Hylite Canyon, Ross Peak in the Bridger Range or Lava Lake and Table Mountain in the Spanish Peaks. We chose Livingston Peak due to its proximity to Bozeman, the wildflower display described in several publications and the challenge of summiting a rarely climbed mountain.

Livingston Peak towers above the small town of Livingston, population 7,044, and Annemarie, Penny and I started the day driving to Livingston from Bozeman, and through Bozeman Pass on Route 90. From Livingston we turned onto a U.S. Forest Service Road and began the rough drive to the trail head. We traveled though spectacular fields stretching along the base of the mountain range. The road was rough, interspersed with deep mud holes, dotted with small boulders and rutted by heavy farm vehicles that use this road to reach the upper meadows where ranchers graze their cattle.

Arriving at the trailhead we began our hike along on a well-worn jeep trail and climbed gradually through mountain meadows, past rock cliffs to the col between Livingston Ridge and the summit of Livingston Peak. From the col we scrambled over rock strewn cliffs, through muddy snow melt and talus slopes until we reached the peak and looked out over the barren summits of the wilderness to the south. In contrast, the land to our north was flat. It was as if a huge beast had arisen from the belly of the earth and flung mountains of rock and earth 10,000 feet upward forming the mountains of the A-B Wilderness.

With the wind howling and the cool temperatures seeping into our lightly covered bodies, we scurried down the trail, back to the col to begin our leisurely hike through fields of wildflowers, and back to the trailhead. Neither Annemarie nor I regretted the decision to hike Livingston Peak, and opting out of the other options. There are so many possibilities available in the Bozeman area, I look forward to returning to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness on my next trip the Bozeman.

Two days later I found myself back on another “trail”, but this was no trail. It was the South Fork of Spanish Creek in the Spanish Peaks of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness in southwestern Montana. This massive wilderness area ranges from roughly 4,500 feet in elevation up to 11,316 feet on Hilgard Peak. The landscape is filled with rugged terrain, vast meadows, thick forests, alpine lakes, and towering peaks. I was on a fly-fishing expedition with my son-in-law Derek, a fly fisherman extraordinaire. He lives to fly fish and is rarely denied a catch of either rainbow, brook, or cutthroat trout. I have fly fished with Derek before, without much success, while he continually reels in beautiful native trout. Today was no different than any other day with one exception: I survived this fishing foray by paddling my way across a beaver pond. I have fished with Derek on the Gallatin River, the Ruby River and Hell Roaring Creek and I’m lucky if I can catch one fish, while Derek is busy with catch and release. My daughter Annemarie labels Derek’s style of fishing as, “Full Contact Fishing.”

We began our venture by leaving Bozeman and driving to Gallatin Gate, continuing on Route 191 south, heading to Yellowstone National Park. We turned onto Spanish Creek Road which took us through Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch, one of many ranches he owns across the country. Turner is the second largest single landowner in the United States. This 113,613 acre ranch supports a wide variety of wildlife including mule deer, white-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain elk, Rocky Mountain gray wolf, Shiras moose, pronghorn antelope, black bear, mountain lions and badgers. A large herd of bison roam across hundreds of acres of mountain meadows. While driving through Ted’s Flying D property we were watched closely by a large herd of bison. While in Yellowstone a few years ago, I was amazed at the sight of dozens of people stopped in the middle of the road to gawk at a few Bison. While here, on Ted’s Flying D Ranch, Derek and I were alone with hundreds of bison, which were observing us as we drove by.

We finally came to the trailhead, parked the car and took out our fly rods. We began our fishing excursion by hiking the Spanish Creek Trail until we found an opening in the woods where we could begin to fish the creek. I stepped into the water and immediately took a head-first dive into the water (an auspicious start). While heading up stream, I continually threw my line out with not a hit. I lost flies, got my line tangled and stumbled along, while Derek calmly went about finding the still water and deep holes where he reeled in the “brookies.”

Following Derek (he keeps me behind because he knows with all my splashing and flapping the fish will dart off) we came to a large beaver dam. I was ready to turn back, but the “Full Contact Fisherman” climbed up and over the dam and sank into the water up to his arm pits. I questioned his sanity, but knowing Derek, when it comes to fly fishing, there are no limits. Since we were in grizzly country I was not about to turn back and hike out alone, so I took the plunge. A beaver swam by, surprised by my entry into his domain as I was equally surprised by his presence. I began paddling, my fly rod held high above my head and my pack containing fishing gear and my camera filling with water. I was hoping I would find terra firma before I was lost in the deep.

I looked across the pond and Derek was throwing his line while swimming. I could hardly keep my head above water, but he continued to fish. I’m sure the brook trout we saw breaking water had long fled up stream. Finally reaching shallow water, we continued our journey until we realized that we had gone far enough and it was time to return to Bozeman for a cold beer. We found the trail and walked back to our car. It was another fishing extravaganza in Montana and maybe on my next sortie into the wild rivers of Montana I will net a trophy brook trout (oh really?).

For comments or questions, contact Gordon at forestpd@metrocast.net.