Last Summer: Driving, Hiking, Fishing the Beartooths

The Beartooth Highway is probably the prettiest drive I’ve ever been on and it’s not for lack of trying. This is the best photo I have, but it’s not that communicative of the vast excellence of the drive.

So there was that. The Beartooth Mountains are in southwestern Montana, south of Bozeman a ways, a little northeast of Yellowstone. Sort of also in northwestern Wyoming.

I ended up going on a couple of overnighters, one solo and one with my brother.

The solo one came first and I wanted to do something in sort of the south part of the Beartooths since the previous time out there I’d spent in the area around Red Lodge, hiking to Keyser Brown Lake for a few nights, and then a day trip with a different brother up to Glacier Lake.

Ended up hiking to Fox Lake. The most notable things about this hike were (1) mosquitoes and (2) tree prison. Eventually I got to the lake and it started raining. I just wish the mosquitoes would stay out of my ears.

Look how eager I was!

I caught a few fish. They were all the same size. It may have been the same fish every time.

And this is what my tent looked like (after being rained on).

Next morning…:

There were a couple of other guys who were also camped there and were trying to fish, but I didn’t see them pull in anything. Ergo, I am better than them. Whoever they were. I’m sure their families like them.

Also, I have a hard time sleeping to the sound of rain hitting a rainfly. I don’t get how rain sounds are always included in white noise apps. Seems counter-productive.

Right on. So then I was sleepy and hiked back through the mosquitoes.

The next day (I think), I kind of talked my brother into going up to Red Lodge and Glacier Lake (we’d had something else planned), since that area was more bona fide and I knew I wouldn’t have so much of the tree prison problem. We ended up camping on Emerald Lake (in Wyoming!), which was pretty and offered an extra mile or so buffer between us in civilization. We didn’t see anyone else at Emerald while we were there (we did at Glacier) and, for whatever it’s worth, most of the fishing success came at Little Glacier Lake (between Glacier and Emerald).

Now you know. Also: this all happened last summer. On some road trip. Because I was homeless and my job didn’t start till the middle of August.

Glacier Lake:

The nearby Emerald Lake:

And, since everyone loves reflections:

And then I woke up.

bkd