Journey I

Before I forget.

Going up Sawtooth base saw many wildflowers on the left side were small blue and yellow flowers in the middle predominantly bunches of white clusters and violet drooping small babies. On the right were yellow flowers halfway up. I found some massive droppings and it led me to the caves to the left. I saw two bears and maybe three. The first two actually looked to be black bear and the third a grizzly. I wasn’t doing anything to hide myself from the bears so naturally I figured if I could see them they could see me. Although the wind was blowing from them to me I figured I ought to steer clear and keep moving up. This was a courageous decision that marks me as having a brave character for the decision was before me to turn back but it was about as repulsive of an option as flinging myself off the cliffs of Sawtooth. More on that later.

Walking horizontally across state mountain rather than ascending it’s peak I found some less threatening wildlife. First among the rocks I found a Uinta chipmunk which has the size and features of a common tree squirrel but the colorization of a least chipmunk. It’s defense was to be silent, still, watchful and wary. Since I was between a cluster of pines and a cluster of rocks I found myself in the Uinta chipmunks pristine habitat since they forage in both. Also the only part of Montana they inhabit is the small area I tromp around in: Paradise Valley, Emigrant Gulch, Tom Miner Basin and Yellowstone.

Another chipmunk caught my attention by barking loudly. This would be the yellow-pine chipmunk. Moving on I tromped through a cluster of pines with a couple feet of snow and a cluster of burnt trees after that. Starting my ascent to the ridge that leads from the summit of state mountain to Sawtooth I got the opportunity to use the rope I brought along. The pass was simple enough but with its greenery and directness being caused by it being a waterway it was a little slippery, steep and unstable.

Happy for the opportunity to do a little bouldering I swung my rope onto a stable boulder and began my fifteen feet semi-vertical climb. Cresting the ridge I saw something running along it ahead of me towards Sawtooth. Looking like a brown squirrel I was puzzled because our common brown squirrel does not inhabit these parts although robins do. Turning to my right disappointed I was unable to classify the mammal was a marmot looking me right in the eye, five feet away on my eye level. This was a yellow-bellied marmot that goes by the nickname of rock chuck.

I reached for my phone to snap a picture and he disappeared before I could reach for my holster. I text Jeff. I let him know my location, ambition and return route. He is the only other person to my knowledge to have first hand knowledge of the area besides me in our group. My phone dies after I send him the message.

Cresting the ridge I continued beneath the cliff that made the ridge, or rather the ridge that made the cliff. On the other side of my ridge I find another opportunity for amateur bouldering with rope. In the cliff was a round hole so I swung my rope up and climbed up into the hole. What I found was not surprising since the caves in the rock are common in the area and my friend Jeff already told me the contents found therein is sheep poop.

In my shallow five foot and ten foot caves I find sheep poop as well as petrified wood deposits. These were not a surprise either since I found them last time I was in the area. The discovery of them being in the caves made my mind make an amateur hypothesis. The caves are formed by the eroding petrified wood trunks in the cliff.

Thinking I may have made a bad tactical decision by hiking along the base of the cliff I was relieved to find a rockslide pass back up onto the ridge.

Continuing along the crest I am pleased to find myself ascending Sawtooth. 

Highlights from Sawtooth include the immense feelings of vertigo as a pica makes its echoing warning chirp from the other side of Sawtooth which makes me look in that direction only to the immense bowl of pine trees miles beneath. It’s mass and density is dizzying. Calling out to me to spread my wings and soar down like a bird of prey and find a prize amongst its boughs. The scripture verse of Satan tempting Jesus to put His Lord God to the test comes to mind and I feel the gravity of my situation. The pica’s chirp continues to add to the sharpness of my senses.

I straddle the rock like a saddle and decide to fall to the right rather than the left if I lose balance or the sediment of the ridge gives way. Then a swallow swoops over my head and begins to circle me twittering all the while. My courage returns to me with this birds hospitality. Adding some levity to my journey rather than the disparate chirps of the lone pica echoing through the bowl. 

I continue and find mountain goat wool and big horn sheep sheds. Big horn sheep have hair like the deer while the mountain goat produces wool. Only at the top of my ascent at a peak made of sharp drop offs and a linear ridge do I find this prize. The goats only inhabit the roughest and most dangerous rock ridges so as to stay out of harms way of aggressive predators.

The Sawtooth ridge is shaped similar to holding up your five fingers together and putting the middle one down into a knuckle with your palm facing away from one’s self. Finding myself atop the pointer finger with no where to go but back the way I came I put myself into a stable sitting position and take in the harvest. The best way to create what I saw up there would be to put our illustrious hand fingers Sawtooth ridge-line between two kitchen bowls of broccoli and imagine your eyes would be on your the crest of your pointer fingernail. 

The swallows number half a dozen to a dozen and come around to visit me as they make the rounds of snatching insects out of the high clean air. These are migratory birds from Mexico. There backs suddenly shimmer in my eye and I realize they are violet-green which makes perfect sense since they are violet-green swallows.

I descend knowing it’s the hardest part of my hike. I take it in stride. Keeping a steady pace I stay wary making sure I do not become over-confident or clumsy after reaching my goal of the summit. There are treacherous rockslides that I traverse that if I walked across like it was a sidewalk I would find myself heading down a laundry shoot that dumps into our precious broccoli kitchen bowl. Twenty feet of rockslide separates me from the edge of the cliff. The drop off would kill me. I choose my steps wisely, slowly and with extreme caution.

The way back was uneventful. On top of state mountain peak I found my beautiful collection of petrified rocks undisturbed and added a couple I had found in the shallow caves. Four elk grazed on a hill on the ridge line below. 

We kept our eyes on each other for the better part of an hour as a bird chimed in to warn the area of my descent. Finally upon the elk they continued to stare at me while one was so comfortable sitting in the grass it took all three of the others to trot away before it decided to get up. I gesticulated wildly with my two walking sticks until they cleared out.

On the path back I saw some dusk strollers from the TREK group that was at B Bar Ranch and pondered my appearance. Untied shoe, large walking stick, mountain weather jacket, skinny jeans, construction worker shoe, no hat, no glasses, sunburnt face, unwashed, fistful of wildflowers and an eagle feather, coat puffed out because of water bottle and rope in inner pockets. No bag. The prophet returns from the mountain. 

A skunk runs up to me as I am down the road from my cabin. I yell at him as though he is my own dog to stay away. He lifts himself up aggressively on his front shoulders looking right at me and I bolt like the true coward I am over a fence and into the neighboring field as he runs off in the opposite direction with his tail lifted showing off his superior stink hole.