2017 Yellowstone Backpacking Highlights: Northern Yellowstone in June

The June 2017 Northern Yellowstone Wildlife and Wildflower extravaganza lived up to its name, as it almost always does! The six day adventure began by hiking down a beautiful wide-open drainage with an exploratory side trip up an adjacent valley where the group was caught in a sudden storm. Directed by guide Bob Clark, they hunkered down in the trees to wait out the strong winds and sideways rain that tested everyone’s rain-gear. The rain-suits all passed!

The wide-open creek valley empties into the Yellowstone River, where a pair of ospreys occupied a nest above the pack-bridge. The group then backpacked upstream (east) on the north side of the Yellowstone River enjoying beautiful spring wildflowers such as arrowleaf balsamroot and bitterroots. The route eventually took the group north up into a beautiful mountain river valley that begins in the adjacent Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. A coyote and a couple bison were spotted along the way as well as sand hill cranes. Across from the camp next to this raging river, Bob spotted two black bears in the evening, and on day four, the group spotted a pair of grizzly bears and later watched another griz, this one alone, from a safe vantage point at a bit over 100 yards. It was a fantastic week for viewing wild bears in wild country!

The final camp was a bit higher in a tributary creek, and on the layover day, our hikers enjoyed an off-trail trek through open grassy forest up to the edge of the Buffalo Plateau – an amazing wild place where they crossed from Wyoming into Montana near the northern boundary of the Park. The final day is a great hike through green meadows with scattered groves of spruce, Douglas-fir and aspen that featured big views of much of northern Yellowstone. At last they crossed back over the tumbling and churning Yellowstone River on another pack-bridge. The Yellowstone is the longest un-dammed river in the lower 48 states. The final mile is an uphill back to a trail-head where the Big Wild van awaited. Bob later told us that it was a great group (as is usually the case), and everyone went home with wonderful and wild trip memories!

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