Backpacking the Pintler: American Wilderness

I'm still seeing everything through Chinese eyes. My students in Chongqing were mystified by the American concept of "wilderness"--untrammeled natural places where people are just visitors. Many, many people have been living in a highly advanced state in China for thousands of years, and there are few places that have not been intensively exploited and developed. The United States, on the other hand, has held a dense, resource-intensive population for less than 200 years. This unique American cultural geography, created in part by the European diseases that wiped out 90% of the First Peoples, helped Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and others craft ways to preserve wild, uninhabited places. That effort was expanded through the 1964 Wilderness Act and is now a widely accepted (if not fully secure--cf. the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge oil drilling controversy) part of our environmental legacy.

As part of re-immersion into life in the Northern Rockies, I headed off to the Pintler Wilderness for a few days. I can see many of the Pintler mountain peaks from my home in Walkerville/Butte, making this "backyard wilderness" especially important (and intimately familiar) to me. I'm not quite re-acclimated to high altitude, so the 8 miles to my campsite in this Alpine basin seemed especially long:

I stumble onto this basin about 8 years ago. Technically there is a "trail" there, as evidenced by a dotted line on U.S. Forest Service maps and by this relic of a trail sign:

I smiled to set out on a path with no other human footprints--only the sign of deer, elk, and other critters were evident on the trail:

I was not always smiling after losing the sometimes-faint trail and having to cast about for blazes where the bark had largely grown over the blaze scar:

In the river valleys of Montana, summer is well underway. At 9,000+ feet, however, it is still late spring/early summer, with flowering Bear Grass (Xerophyllum tenax):

 And even some early spring flowers such as Pretty Shooting Star (Dodecatheon spp.):

In the evening, several large bull elk fed in a meadow near camp. Unlike the well-habituated elk in places like Yellowstone National Park, these are truly wild animals in an area where they see many hunters. Though too dark for a photo, I walked up on these guys the next day, and one of them (the smaller of the two) stood up from his bed and looked back at me for a photo opportunity:

Where's Waldo? Oh yeah! There he is:

Nearby, they had a mud wallow (reeking with their musk) to fend off flies during the heat of the afternoon (GOOD DOG, for staying out of that):

The moose in a lower meadow were much bolder, and though mid-day my presence did not seem to bother mother moose and her calf (luckily, MollyTheDog is rock solid about not chasing critters--though squirrels are exempted):

There was smaller game around too, including this frog (Columbia Spotted Frog, Rana luteiventris?) at the outlet of a small lake:

Once in the wilderness, I like to find a high basin, make camp, and then (usually the next day) go climb a mountain peak. For this trip, the destination was Fish Peak. As we proceeded up the steep ridge leading to the peak, we crossed a bench (probably a glacial moraine) with a lovely, miniature Alpine Larch (Larix lyalli) forest:

Closer to the peak, MollyTheDog sought out the snowfields for some cool-down otter-sliding:

Once on top, the view down to Hick's Lake and the nearby mountain peaks was breathtaking:

With an early start, we had plenty of time for a leisurely lunch on Fish Peak and a nap (on a rock ledge just below the peak) before heading back to camp:

There were plenty of wildflowers to enjoy, ranging from the tiny Moss Campion ( Silene acaulis):

To showy penstemon and arnica:

And stinky Sky Pilot (Polemonium viscosum):

In the high meadows between camp and the peak, I was pleased to log a new (to me) flowering shrub species, White-flowered Rhododendron (Rhododendron albiflorum):

After a sound night's sleep under clear, star-studded skies, it was time for one last breakfast fire (oatmeal course shown here) and the hike out:

The meadows along the lower (7,500-8,000 feet) creek valleys were dotted with Sego Lillies (Calochortus eurycarpus ): 

On the way out, I had to pause for this photo of a ranch gate. I didn't know you could train horses to do that!