Distinctly Montana Magazine

Horse Packing Yellowstone Park By Connie Myslik-McFadden O ur guide saw it first: a hunk of silvery hair caught in the bark of the tall spruce where our food, toiletries, and everything else with a fragrance that might attract a bear had been hung the night before. Ten feet up, and far enough from the trunk that a black bear couldn���t reach it. Black bears climb trees; grizzlies don���t, except very young ones. But this wasn���t black bear hair. ���Griz,��� he said calmly, passing the coarse hair Angie mangels around the group. We gazed up at our gear, large bright orange boxes filled with food and our toiletries bags, the wranglers��� clothing that smelled of steak and cook stove oil, and assorted supplies. We shivered a little and exchanged nervous glances, knowing a grizzly bear had prowled through our campsite while we slept. We were grateful that our wranglers followed Park rules and had us pitch our tents a hundred yards from that tree. photos By We were on a horse pack trip in Yellowstone National Park, in a primitive, leave-no-trace backcountry campsite miles from the nearest trailhead. For six days and five nights the men and women on this journey would be riding through some of the most beautiful, pristine mountains, forests, and meadows imaginable. We chose to zip ourselves into sleeping bags on the ground instead of snuggling into our familiar beds, to clamber over small streams and logs and through wet grass, to squat over a toilet seat placed carefully on a freshly dug hole, and to gather our personal items and watch them disappear high up into a tree morning and night. We had deliberately left the comforts of home behind to immerse ourselves in the vast and unique Yellowstone Park wilderness. And on horseback! Even though some of the group had little riding experience, or had enjoyed lessons as children many years ago and not ridden since, we shared a deep love of horses ��� their power and beauty, their scent, the feeling of moving in rhythm with their gaits. We met our guides, Jake and Cliff, at the Specimen Creek Trailhead, in the northwest corner of the Park, where each person was assigned a horse matched to his or her level of riding skill and experience. The wranglers carefully balanced large loads on the pack mules, secured w w w. d i s t i n c t ly mo nt a na .co m them with mysterious knots, and led us single file down the beckoning trail. Our plan was to spend three nights at Sportsman Lake, then ride up and over Electric Pass to Gardner���s Hole, where we would camp two nights before packing out at the Glen Creek Trailhead. Ordinary concerns fell away as each day we basked in the wild beauty of the Park and the almost meditative experience of being in the saddle for several hours a day. Mostly we walked or trotted; but after a couple of days, when Jake signaled and yelled, ���Yee Haw!��� we let loose and cantered along flat trails through long meadows. Such a sense of freedom and exhilaration! As the hours passed, our senses awakened: we listened eagerly for the skree of red-tailed hawks and were awed by a magnificent Bald Eagle soaring overhead. We caught whiffs of muskrat along streams, the perfume of wildflowers, and the dizzying scent of sage in the meadows. 21

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