Backpacking SW Montana

Jolie and I backpacked in the Snowcrest Range (south of Ennis) in early July. It really was the end of the road, if you could really call it a road - took us 1-1/2 hours to travel the last 10 miles to this point -- a rough and hard to follow road. We had been warned about mosquitos, but for the most part we didnt have many problems over the next three days.

This was our camp for the first night - wildflowers and great views all to ourselves.

Neither of us remember what Jolie was doing here - dancing, stepping on a bug, trying a new pee method, too much Jagermeister?????

As I said the wildflowers (mostly prarie smoke in this picture) were great. Sunny skies the whole trip too.

Within the first mile of the hike we started seeing bear prints (not sure if a grizzly or black bear), but other than this section we didn't see much evidence of bears.

The view from our first lunch spot as we first got onto the spine of the Snowcrest Range, which we would hike along for the next two days. After this picture the wind picked up and didnt stop till we got off the ridge two days later.

The trail along the crest is marked by these huge cairns (Jolie for scale). Some are just piles of rock like this - others are more elaborate to look like sculptures or small shelters to help get out of the wind.

A view of the Snowcrests - the trail follows the ridge on the left side of the picture.

why are we smiling? Well, besides the beer, we're happy we found a spot to camp - there werent many flat spots around that weren't covered with a pond. We sort of found a flat spot for our tent...

.....Ok, so the picture makes it looks worse than it was - but thanks to my keen sense of  the horizon we wound up sleeping on sideslope instead of our feet facing downhill. I had to sleep in a position where my body didnt want to start rolling downhill. Jolie is happy because she found a prize in the freeze dried dinner (dont tell her it wasnt a prize, just a bag of dessicant to keep the food dry).

Our sunset that night.

On our last morning we woke again to beautiful blue skies and .....

...ICE! Got pretty cold that night. Our water froze and our water filters that are ruined when they freeze also froze (dang). During the trip we saw lots of wildflowers and one fast elk running away or towards something.