Backpacking the High and Mighty Beartooth Mountains

By Michael Lanza

“Big bull moose,” David calls to us over his shoulder, “just ahead of us.” Mark and I scan the forest, but we don’t catch even a glimpse of the moose—or for that matter, see David through the dense trees and brush, although he’s not more than 20 feet ahead of us. Then David, too, loses sight of the moose. Just a few hours into our first day backpacking in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains and moments after we started hiking off-trail, we’ve had our first close wildlife encounter—and two-thirds of us missed it.

Still, in a way, that moose foreshadows the surprises ahead of us for the rest of this day and the next four days in these mountains.

My friends David Gordon, Mark Fenton, and I plan to hike almost 50 miles over five days through the Beartooths, within the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a nearly 944,000-acre jumble of high, wild country encompassing the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains, hugging the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park along the Montana-Wyoming border.

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Tall and rugged even when compared to other ranges in the Rocky Mountains, the Beartooth Mountains are most uniquely characterized by high, rolling plateaus—the range possesses the largest contiguous area of land over 10,000 feet in the U.S. outside Alaska. It also has 28 peaks rising to over 12,000 feet, including Montana’s highest, 12,799-foot Granite Peak, hundreds of trout-filled alpine lakes, and deep, glacier-carved canyons with remnant patches of ancient ice still hanging on in high, northern aspects at the head of some canyons. Like other mountain ranges in the Northern Rockies, in addition to moose (like the one two of us almost saw), mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, bald eagles, marmots, pikas, lynx, gray wolves, black bears, and grizzlies all roam these mountains and canyons.

Despite its proximity to Yellowstone and covering an area nearly as large as Glacier National Park—and having about as many miles of trails as Glacier, roughly 700—the Absaroka-Beartooth exists in relative anonymity compared to its much more famous neighbors. That’s a good thing for backpackers.

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But of particular relevance to humans carrying all they need to survive for several days out here, these mountains are known for severe relief separating the creeks tumbling down canyon bottoms from passes that top 11,000 feet. Hiking gets hard out here.

This first morning on the trail introduced us to that stark topographical truth about the Beartooths. After a seven-mile, roughly 3,000-foot grind up the Spread Creek Trail, with steadily expanding views of the valley far below us where we’d begun this hike just a couple hours earlier, and the mountains and plateau beyond it, we reached Crow Lake, at 9,069 feet, nestled in pine forest at the foot of the cliffs of 11,936-foot Sylvan Peak.

We followed a use trail around the lake’s east shore—a pretty good path until it wasn’t—to the point where it abruptly disappeared into a boggy meadow beside the lake’s inlet creek. After tanking up on water, we struck out off-trail toward the alpine cirque above Crow Lake, navigating with a GPS app as the dense forest blocked any view of the terrain ahead.

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Now, not long after the brief moose encounter, we confront a slope of talus rearing up before us and begin stepping, scrambling, and hopping from one large boulder to the next, occasionally pushing through spiky picket fences of small trees stubbornly sprouting from narrow gaps between the boulders. Sweating through this granite cornfield maze, then hiking up steep, grassy slopes, we eventually land in the gentler terrain at the upper end of the glacial cirque above Crow Lake.

As the sun dips lower and our damp base layers begin to dry out, we reach a patch of grassy meadow a short walk from two tiny, shallow, but clear tarns—and just in time because dark clouds have been quickly massing overhead. Several deep and foreboding rumbles of thunder prompt us to swiftly pitch tents to spend the night here—saving the crossing of an unnamed, 10,000-foot pass ahead of us for morning.

The storm amounts to no more than a couple of passing, light showers. Then we watch the sky rapidly changing colors as the clouds break up, the show lasting well beyond sunset. After night falls and we retreat to our tents, strong winds begin stampeding through our camp, making sleep difficult for a few hours.

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Lake Mary to Sundance Pass

In the calm and crisp morning air of mid-August in the mountains, under the kind of ultra-blue Northern Rockies sky that can make anyone feel good about their world, we hike off-trail uphill over not-very-steep talus and across a treeless tundra of grass, scattered wildflowers, and lichen-stained rocks that comprise the upper cirque above Crow Lake. Cliffs loom over one side of the cirque; above them sprawls the rolling East Rosebud Plateau at well over 11,000 feet. On a shoulder at about 10,400 feet, just above an unnamed pass, we stop for a few minutes to take a big gulp of the 360 of mountains and plateau land stretching for miles in every direction.

Then we descend moderately steep slopes of grass and rocks to the partly forested shore of pretty little Lake Mary, at almost 10,000 feet—wishing we’d come this far yesterday and camped here. At the lake’s southern end, we pick up a trail descending into the magnificent canyon of the West Fork of Rock Creek, then walk the trail up that canyon, watching the creek shape-shift from calm pools to chortling swiftwater and yowling whitewater. On both sides, cliff bands and forested canyon walls rise to unseen high lakes and 12,000-foot peaks looming over plateaus.

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Several miles up the canyon, we cross a wooden hiker and stock footbridge over the West Fork of Rock Creek and commence a deceptively long ascent, through more than 50 switchbacks (lead photo at top of story), toward Sundance Pass, at just over 11,000 feet. With every other switchback, we’re looking at the head of the West Fork’s canyon, enclosed tightly within a horseshoe formed by the rock walls and remnant glaciers of the 11,000-footer Medicine Mountain and a pair of 12,000-footers, Castle and Sundance mountains.

As we near the pass, dark gray clouds and brief volleys of raindrops hint at potentially worse weather to come; we quicken our pace, hoping to get over the pass before any such weather arrives.

At Sundance Pass, the wind slams us hard, but thunderstorms don’t appear imminent. We hunker down in the lee of boulders to eat and chug water and take in our first look down the other side of the pass at the steep-walled canyon of the Lake Fork of Rock Creek and September Morn Lake—our planned camp for tonight. A sub-ridge on the canyon’s north wall, above September Morn Lake, obstructs our view of the off-trail route we plan to hike steeply some 2,000 feet uphill to cross the Silver Run Plateau tomorrow. But however you slice it, that wall looks steep and rough.

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Then we have the kind of conversation that sometimes arises in the backcountry, contemplating various possible scenarios if we continue on this itinerary—including that thunderstorms have threatened by early afternoon on both of our days so far out here and, on our original plan, we could be navigating off-trail across several miles of high plateau at that time tomorrow.

The Gear I Used See my reviews of the outstanding backpack, tent, sleeping bag, insulated jacket, air mattress, ultralight stove and pot, and headlamp I used on this trip. Plus, I used these trekking poles and a friend who’s a longtime, avid backpacker and dayhiker used these poles.

Find the best gear, expert buying tips, and best-in-category reviews at my Gear Reviews page.

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Not sure this is for you? See my stories “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be,” “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” and “5 Questions to Ask Before Trying a New Outdoors Adventure,” and this menu of all stories offering expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside, including these:

“Bear Essentials: How to Store Food When Backcountry Camping”
“How to Prevent Hypothermia While Hiking and Backpacking”
“8 Pro Tips for Preventing Blisters When Hiking”
“5 Tips For Staying Warm and Dry While Hiking”
“7 Pro Tips For Keeping Your Backpacking Gear Dry”

Want my help planning the details of this trip, including an itinerary appropriate for your group (such as an entirely on-trail route)? See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan this or any trip you read about at this blog.

Please join me and many other lovers of this wilderness in supporting trail maintenance and other vital stewardship of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness by donating to the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness Foundation, abwilderness.org.

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