[Dslayer]

Well, as Little Big Man recounted the night he serviced his three Cheyenne wives, ..."the Great Spirit was with me, and I survived," which pretty well describes the past two weeks spent with 12 kids and 6 chaperones in Montana. I tuned up in the higher elevation with hikes up to Glacier Lake and Moon Lake in the Rock Creek drainage (The Red Lodge version of Rock Creek). I've chronicled adventure to these places in the past so I won't belabor with another account, but suffice it to say that these two spots are worthy of many return visits-Glacier Lake is an annual for me. Simply said Yellowstone is the living, beating heart of the continent. We traveled to most of the tourist 'got to' sites as well as got a taste of the Yellowstone back country making the Fairy Falls hike from Midway Geyser Basin to Biscuit Basin a 13.5 mile walk-about 800 foot elevation gain. A huge bull elk walked through the morning mist of the Great Prismatic Spring and later in the hike we walked up on 3 big bulls resting in a shady glade above Little Firehole meadows-somehow 22 people didn't bother them-(we had a few other people at this stage of the trip) and they slowly sauntered off through the forest. We walked Bunsen Peak, Natural Bridge, and got an interesting ranger guided hike from a Washingtonian named Harlan Kredit at Indian Pond and Storm Point. Outside the Park, we walked the Continental Divide Trail from Targhee Pass to Lionshead Rock then made the trip the following day to the Clark's Fork Trailhead east of Cooke City, MT to begin the Beartooth Adventure. We traveled a 26 mile trail from Cooke City, MT to East Rosebud Lake, Mt euphamistically known as the Beaten Path, at any point in time hundreds of people are in the back country across the trail, but if you choose to, you can be by yourself any or all of the time-we never felt crowded at any point in time until the last night we spent at Rainbow Lake on the Rosebud drainage but only because of the people draining out of the high country when we got hit by about 2 days of rain- a rarity for the Beartooths in summer-afternoon and evening thunderstorms are the norm, but prolonged rain, i.e. Western WA is not but that's more or less what we encountered the last two days in the Beartooths. One of my roles in the logistics of this adventure was to drop the kids off at the Clark's Fork Trailhead, then lead a van caravan over the Beartooth Highway to the East Rosebud Trailhead. The following day, I hiked 19.5 miles up the East Rosebud, an elevation gain of about 3700 feet then down about 1000 to Russel Lake where I met up with out hard traveling crew (they had traveled 7 very easy miles in two days) with news of a 'bad bear' at the lake that I had garnered from a wilderness ranger on the hike that day. Watching 18 people trying to hang food and garbage from a single bear pole was mildly entertaining. In the middle of this, one of parent volunteers, a hunter and serious outdoorsman from our neck of the woods offered his opinion that we were "overdoing it" with the hole bear precautions thing. Dandy. (One of the things we learned from this experience is NO PARENT CHAPERONES EVER AGAIN) At any rate, we were not savaged by this bear that night and traveled the next day to Fossil Lake on top of the East Rosebud drainage, a blistering 3.5 miles and 1300 elevation gain highlighted by another of our overweight, out of shape parent chaps bitching all the way up-basically the same way she had behaved on every pre-hike she participated in. We spent the next two nights on a bench above Fossil Lake at around 10,000 feet. Some kids participated in the fishing adventures or the limited peak climbing adventures. I caught my first fish on a fly rod-one of my teaching colleagues is a big time fly fisherman evidenced by the fact that he got me to casting and catching in a single afternoon. He later caught a 21 cutthroat out of nearby Mermaid Lake-One characteristic of this area in the thousands of lakes in the Beartooth-Absaroka, over 400 of which have fish. Three of the five nights we were out, I was able to cook fish for the kids, many of whom had never eaten a fresh caught fish before. Some caught their first fish. On Monday afternoon, we experienced the famous Beartooth rolling thunder and hurried back to camp for shelter, but the rains set in by Tuesday noon and plagued us through Wednesday night. The kids really pulled together and we got through it in fine shape and had fun, their finished product is going to be a 20 plus page portfolio, a ten page narrative, plus pictures and research reviews of environmentally related articles which we will then get bound into a book. They get an elective science and PE credit for their participation. In all, we had 0 serious owies, a few blisters, burned finger by a chaperone turning over a foil rapped fish (me) and a great time was had by all. Thanks to you who offered advice leading student groups.

[ActionBetty]

Sounds like an adventourous trip.... bless you for having patience with 12 children.. and a few whining parents..I would have brought extra rolls of duct tape for them

[frankm3]

Hey there Gabe; Welcome back from your adventure in education! Hopefully some of the wilderness those kids experience will help this generation of future adults to admire and respect the outdoors. It's easy to tell that you are from William O. Douglas' old stomping grounds given the incredible amount of miles you can put away in one day!!! 19+ miles in one day? That's covering some ground! How were the temperatures there? Hot? Did you get to stop into the Cooke City Bike Shack? That's a neat little place and the owner is full of great local knowledge too. If you're not too busy we ought to plan another hike, etc. it would be great to catch up, especially now that I'm reading "Of Men and Mountains" and everyplace he goes is right in your neck of the woods! Frank

[Dslayer]

Hi Frank- The weather held up for us until the end-we didn't even get the typical Yellowstone/Beartooth thundershowers until the end, then we got about a day and a half deluge which is very atypical. We did stop at Silver Gate, but not in Cooke City-one thing about both Yellowstone and the Beartooths, you never reach the point that you've seen it all, if anything, I'm already plotting the places I want to see next time. The kids were great-if you have to make a 750 mile away from home journey with a bunch of kids these are the kids-about the only time we had to get after them was when they wouldn't get to sleep at night-not too bad. We'll have to work at planning another adventure-it's really hard for me to do what with going back to work today and hunting season coming up-the weekends are pretty full but I'll look for an opportunity. Gabe

[Quark]

Wow, I missed seeing this report last week for some reason (too busy fooling around with the skirt and tire-changing threads, I guess). It sounds like you got a lot of ground covered! Good for you. And thanks. Somebody's gotta mentor the kids. God knows I have tried - but I quickly become their buddy, and I don't last long as an authority figure. About 15 minutes is all.

[Dslayer]

I don't know how much of an authority figure I come off as except I will raise my voice if needed-It's interesting, there was a point somewhere in the Beartooth hike portion of the trip where there was a collective understanding that where we were and what we were doing was special. We had virtually none of the kinds of problems you sometimes have with kids-disregard for garbage or getting the catholes dug, senseless noise-no one wanted to be responsible for messing this place up. I'm sure that sort of followed from us, but I think it would have followed from anyone like yourself who has a respect for wilderness and wanting it to keep it looking like a wilderness. We've already decided to go back to the Beartooths with next year's group-we learned some things about doing this better next time plus we have 5 of this year's 12 who are eligible to go so we have some alumni returning if they want to go again. Another thing that was interesting was 2 girl 'mighty mites'-we had two girls who weighed right around 100 lbs who were concerned about being able to do this-neither is especially athletic but they were probably the hiking studs of the group-as opposed to one of our 200 lb football players who was a mess by the day we hiked out-his backpack on the last day looked like my 3 year old had packed it.

[salish]

Dslayer - I missed this trip report, too. Sorry I didn't post sooner. I knew this trip was in the offing, but I wasn't sure when it was going to happen. You are a brave soul taking all those children into the wilderness, but it sounds like the parents were the headaches. Kind of like "little league" parents I guess. Sounds like a beautiful place to be. One of my coworkers packs up his wife and two kids and goes to some backcountry spot in Yellowstone every August, for three weeks. I'd love to do that. My ancestors used to hunt and camp in what is now Yellowstone Park. At least you didn't have to sit high up on a tree limb and watch a grizzly ravage your food bag this year! Welcome back, Cliff

[Dslayer]

Hi Cliff- That was one of the alternately pleasing and dissappointing aspects of the trip-we didn't see a single bear in the park or otherwise-probably a good thing. I can see why your friend, or anyone, would make the Yellowstone back country an annual visit. I probably shouldn't snivel about our parents-if that's the worst thing we have to endure then I'll be pretty happy. One of the things that's apparent though is the different between us in education and some folks in the real world and our concern for 'modeling' proper behavior-we weren't going to just tell the kids about proper and no-trace practices then not do them , we did them ourselves and and were going to make them do them, too-not just because someone might be watching but because they're the right and smart things to do. I suspect that our good old boy, once out of sight, pretty much leaves his garbage wherever he wants. But-I can't complain too much, it was a great trip- I really like the two guy I do this with and the kids were great.

[Dslayer]

Hi Gary- I know there are schools doing various types of environmental/ecology ed., but we didn't find much of anything to model what we did, the trip, the pre-hikes, etc. Next month we're planting fish in a couple of lakes near White Pass and beginning to 'study' them over the next couple of years. We thought we needed to have some female chaperones because none of the teacher/chaps were women which was probably a good idea if no other reason than appearances. The wife of one of the guys I did this with is an excellent outdoorsperson and will go with us next year, this year she had to ride herd on their kids. One of the things we found out from our experience is that essentially we made 2 trips with a different set of logistics for each one-a problem that we conquered but we created the need for parent chaperones simply because of the logistics we created. Next year we'll go for a fewer number of days to either Yellowstone or the Beartooths and probably alternate them in the following years.

[Dslayer]

I hope you're right. We sort of imagine ourselves as pioneers, and might someday be able to 'sell' our program when we have enough experience doing it ourselves-there's lots of resources out there. In most school districts it'll take some administrators who have the balls to support this type of deal like we have in Zillah...As you alluded to previously, liability is a major issue for schools and it's safer to never take chances. You can do everything right and still get someone hurt or worse...and you're screwed in today's litigous atmosphere. We continued to learn how to do this better-like what we allow kids to pack. We thought we'd done a pretty good job specifying how to keep weight down, yet when we got to nut cutting time it was amazing what went into those packs-extra clothes, extra (and bad) food and other assorted crap. Our goals was packs of no more than 35 lbs-I was around 30 myself and less for a couple of our 'mighty mites.' So we keep learning-the good news is that it went according to plan..the kids had fun, they did some phenonemal writing about the experience and we're sorting through about 4,000 pictures so we can post them. I can't wait for next year.