Montana Hiking: Day 3

We began our final day in Montana with a breakfast at Feed Cafe on Main Street, where I had two of the best slabs of bacon I’ve ever tasted. The food helped erase the effects of the Montana-made Bourbon that I imbibed the night before.

After breakfast and a short nap we ventured to a different mountain range for the final hike of the trip. This was arguably the most challenging hike; it took us several hours to complete. The trek took us several thousand feet up in elevation and the temperature dropped more than twenty degrees from the start to the trail’s apex. The views were breathtaking. We almost didn’t make it to the trail due to ice and snow covering the ground near the trail’s entrance, which our rental car’s tires struggled to grip.

Though I entered Montana in the best physical condition of my life, the high altitude still taxed my lungs and the steep inclines strained my glutes. I was plenty sore and fatigued by trip’s end.

I was told to bring bear spray with me on each hike, but I forgot to buy any. Luckily we did not encounter any bears. It’s my understanding that the region has a mixture of black bears and grizzlies. You obviously don’t want to cross paths with either, but you really don’t want to cross paths with a grizzly. A male grizzly will eat its own child without remorse; it therefore would have no qualms having a human for dinner.

We finished our final day with a walk through downtown. We ventured through a few apparel stores (I just window shopped) and ate one final meal. Each of us had an “elk burger” and for each of us it was the first time eating elk meat. When in Montana, you just gotta try Elk. It’s a very lean meat and frankly I find it almost indistinguishable from bison. Maybe my tastebuds just aren’t refined enough.

I’ll miss Bozeman. The people are friendly and welcoming, and the pace of life is objectively much slower than big city life. I prefer that. My time spent in cities has convinced me that despite their conveniences, they are not natural for people to inhabit. In fact they may be detrimental to the human psyche. Murder exists almost everywhere, but it’s most prevalent in cities and extremely rare in many rural areas. Many people in cities, especially these days, have a certain angst and anxiety about them that troubles me.

I’ve read before (but cannot cite the source) that growing up in the city doubles your risk of developing schizophrenia when compared to growing up in the countryside. This does not surprise me. Nor does the detrimental mental effect that being amassed by tall buildings must have. I enjoy the conveniences of city life and have good friends that live in cities prosperously, but every convenience has its set of consequences.

I’ll conclude this blog with a dream I recently had. I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s loosely linked to my mountain trip and a cynical feeling that suffused me upon returning to the city.

In the dream, I made one last return to my old high school swimming pool. Somehow, inexplicably, there was a swimming competition being held and I was competing in it. My coach announced to a packed crowd via microphone: “We’ve managed to bring Matt back for one final race! This is your last chance to support the guy who broke every record we ever had.” I nervously prepared for a race behind the starting blocks and broke my goggles from my nervousness. Someone gave me a spare pair and I quickly broke those as well. When I finally adjusted my third pair of goggles, I realized that the pool, which was supposed to be indoors, had the opposite wall removed. The pool seemed to extend to eternity. Behind the normal length of the pool, I saw obstacle courses such as climbing ropes and white water rapids. “Obstacles courses!?” I yelled at one of my brothers. “Yeah, you didn’t know?” He said. “That’s what you have to compete with now.” I woke from the dream as I frantically tried to prep myself for a new challenge.

Montana Hiking: Day 1

I flew into Bozeman, Montana on Friday afternoon. Sheets of falling rain and sleet greeted me.

Bozeman is a small but rapidly growing city in the Rocky Mountains. As I drove upwards in elevation, the snow stuck more to the roads and terrain. Snow-capped mountains loomed in each direction.

I traveled with my two brothers and we rented a house near the Bridger Mountain Range. The purpose of our trip was simply to escape the city and enjoy some challenging mountain hikes. It’s common, I guess, for a city dweller to yearn for vacations that are “near nature.”

To be “near nature” is a sort of odd yearning because everything is nature. A city is nature. Wildlife creeps into the cities just as wildlife finds its way into everything. There are rats in the sewers, squirrels in the yards, trees in the parks, and insects in the alleyways. Maybe it is more appropriate to just say one wants to be “away from man-made cities.” I don’t particularly like cities, aside from their conveniences.

Saturday morning the snow continued to pile on and we attempted a hike along Drinking Horse Mountain Trail. The hike up this mountain was already vertiginous and was all the more brutal due to the icy conditions. There was a breathtaking beauty though, even amongst the frozen tundra.

I was constantly slipping, as even my hiking-specific boots were not equipped for the weather. However, the view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking.

After this hike, some delicious breakfast burritos, and a little recovery, we embarked for the “M Trail,” a slightly more difficult hike along a neighboring mountain. The snowfall stopped by our arrival at the trail, but the mountains remains snow-capped. Some mountain areas had upwards of twelve inches of snow on the ground to trudge through. I believe the snow and ice doubled our time to completion.

On the way down the M Trail we took a wrong turn. In fact, we took several wrong turns and ended up crossing into an intersecting trail. It’s difficult to say where exactly our hike went wrong because the snow hid a lot of trail demarcations.

We accidentally took a much more difficult climb down this mountain (and it was a climb by that point, not a hike). I often skidded and slid, and mostly just hoped I wouldn’t re-injure my right foot. Luckily, I made it.

The extremely high altitude taxed my lungs and the added challenge of walking over snow and ice exhausted my body. I knew quickly that I’d wake up with sore glutes.

So, after these two hikes and some excellent barbecue, I relaxed with my brothers at our house’s outdoor hot tub, which also provided an incredible view of the mountains. I could see several prairie dogs poke out of holes in the ground all through the valley.

The next day would involve a drive to Yellowstone National Park.