Wednesday, March 17, 2021

A Spring Break Trip to the Mountains

We thought Itasca would be our last ski because warm temperatures in Fargo completely melted what little snow we had received this winter, but then we decided to make the journey to the mountains for our university's spring break. While I drove from Fargo to Billings on Saturday, Enrico graded almost a whole class set of papers. We stopped in Glendive to go for an hour walk in Makoshika State Park to stretch our legs.
On Sunday, March 13th we drove from Billings to West Yellowstone, Montana. We stopped at the Co-op in Bozeman for groceries and sandwiches. There was no one sitting in the eating area, so we removed our masks and ate our sandwiches there before resuming our drive. Enrico was trying to finish grading papers, but once we entered the Gallatin Forest, I suggested he stop and just enjoy the sights. It was a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures in the 50s, a clear road, but lots of snow everywhere else. Last week, they got a couple of feet of snow, and we could see the berm from the last snowplow. As we reached the stretch of Highway 191 that falls within the Yellowstone Park boundary, we saw an animal on the riverbed to our right. I asked Enrico to pull over at the next turnout, so we could take a look. It appeared to be a wolf! Or maybe a coyote? We watched the animal for awhile and took a few photos. Our friends, Barb and Mike, who are avid Yellowstone wolf watchers, took a look at the photo and confirmed that it was a coyote.
As we continued on our drive, we saw several pullouts where skiers’ cars were parked. We could see trails wending through the woods and made a note that it might be fun to come back and explore one of these trails. After checking in at our hotel in West Yellowstone, we walked down the extremely snowy and slushy streets to Free Heel Ski and Bike shop to buy trail passes for cross-country skiing (Cost: $15/day or $30 for a three-day pass—we bought the latter). We also got a trail map. We decided to check out Riverside Trail, which started just a couple of blocks from the ski shop. After clambering over a big berm of snow, we found the trail, groomed with a single track on one side and room for snowshoeing on the other. We followed this straight, flat cut through the forest until we got on to a rambling trail that headed toward the Madison river. We chose to take the downriver loop because it was longer.
Once the trail dipped down into the river area, it was no longer set by machine, just by other skiers. We enjoyed seeing the beautiful pine trees, whose needles seemed extra bright green against the backdrop of a clear blue sky—maybe it was the altitude? West Yellowstone is at 6800 feet above sea level. Enrico said, “See that trail on the opposite side of the river? I wonder what trail that is.” “I don’t know,” I replied. I had my “near” contacts lenses in—the better to see the trail in front of me. As we rounded a corner and came upon a new vista of the river, I saw two white blobs bobbing in the running water. Had some snow broken off of the river’s edge or were these birds? It was too far away to see, and unfortunately, I had not taken the binoculars. Following the progress of the white blobs, my eye was drawn to a large brown lump on the opposite bank—it was a bison! He was just resting in some open dirt near the river. Now we knew what kind of trail we had seen earlier. As we got closer, Enrico took this photo:
All good things come to an end, and soon after this we got to the point where the trail headed back, but we saw some tracks continuing. Clearly, some other skier felt as we did—that they wanted to continue following the river. We chose not to—we hadn’t brought much water with us, and we had been working up a good sweat this whole time. It was over 60 degrees! We were glad we were using waxless skis because these conditions would have been impossible to wax for. Nevertheless, some parts of the trail that were in the open sun the whole time were very mushy. We were glad to get back in the forest on the set tracks on the way back, but sad to leave beautiful views like this behind.
That night we had pizza delivered to our hotel room, washed down by Alaskan beers that we had brought along. Our room had a jacuzzi tub, so we sat in there for a long while, soothing our muscles, so we could ski again the next day.

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