Sacagawea Peak Hike

After dropping off Chelsea, Laurie and I drove east then north into Bridger Canyon. Unbelievably, in all my years of visiting Montana, I have never been to this fabled canyon, not even for skiing at Bridger Bowl. The canyon is quite beautiful as you might expect. I had picked out a popular hike in the Bridger Range, Sacagawea Peak. This is the highest point in this range at a modest 9,666 feet ASL and since the trail was only 2.2 miles (one way) I thought it would be a reasonable afternoon hike.

View of Saddle between Sacagawea Peak and Hardscrabble Peak

Within 30 minutes, we were at the turnoff to Fairy Lake Campground. This 6.1-mile gravel road from H - E - double hockey sticks (!!) took another half an hour!! It's a good thing we had a vehicle with decent clearance because this was a tricky road with washboard and large cobbles and boulders to maneuver around and over. It was also extremely dusty since there has not been any rain here in quite some time.

But, driving at such a slow speed allowed us ample opportunity to see wildflowers with some clarity, and what an incredible display of wildflowers there was to see (see upcoming blog entry).

Within minutes after parking the car and strapping on our packs, we were hiking switchbacks and emerged into the alpine zone with fantastic vistas all around. About 1/4 of the way up the trail a large cirque is visible that reminds me of Tuckerman's Ravine on Mt. Washington in NH. In the first photo above you can see the resemblance to Tuckerman's. The geology in every direction smacks you in the face and you can't help but be astounded by the impressive folding and visible uplift.

Sacagawea Peak (late afternoon)

As we hiked up into the cirque, Laurie spotted the first mountain goat toward the summit of Sacagawea. For over half an hour we wound our way back and forth up the steep cirque face. I was taking dozens of photographs of the wildflowers so that I could look them up later in the Montana Wildflower book I had just purchased. I have never in my life seen such an impressive array of flowers. The diversity was what was astounding. As you will see from a future blog entry, there were so many varieties. I probably photographed 20+ species but there were easily several dozen plants flowering on this first day of July.

We reached the saddle at about 4:45pm (1.25 hours of hiking). The altitude was not severe but you could still tell that you were not at sea level. We rested briefly at the saddle and a mountain goat surprised us as he walked within 50 feet of us (much like the experience of seeing the mountain goats at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park). Clearly, these guys are used to seeing hikers on their home turf.

In the photograph below of Hardscrabble Peak, note the trail winding back and forth up to the saddle at the far left of the photo. Hardscrabble is slightly lower than Sacagawea at 9,561 feet.

Hardscrabble Peak

We made it to the summit of Sacagawea just before 5:30pm nearly a full two hours after leaving the parking lot. They say this trail is only 2.2 miles one way but it sure felt a lot longer. Maybe it was due to the steepness and the altitude and that we are not used to this lower level of O2.

But all the hard work hiking up gave us this incredible view of the Bridgers. The photo below is looking south along the ridge. As you can see, there were more mountain goats up here giving me quite the photo-op. The hike reminded me a bit of the Parker Ridge hike Colin, Chelsea and I took last summer in Jasper National Park. It was similarly in the alpine zone with endless switchbacks leading to endless views in all directions. Jasper's hike had some major waterfalls and glaciers to see in the distance but the views here are stupendous as well.

Mountain Goat at Summit of Sacagawea (Bridger Range)

Summit Portrait with Tripod

Forgive the tilted photo above but I was balancing my mini-tripod on the summit rock cairn. Just behind us (out of view) is that photogenic mountain goat.

The hike down was far quicker of course and we made it back to the car by about 6:30pm. The lighting was getting better and better for photographs as we descended so some of the above photos were actually taken on the way down rather than on the way up. All in all, this was a hike to remember. We were quite famished by the time we reached the car and unfortunately we knew we had almost an hour drive back into Bozeman for dinner.

We had dinner at a great little wine bar/restaurant on Main Street called PLONK. We had a flight of Chilean wines (all Carmenere) accompanied by a cheese board (6 varieties of cheese) and warm fresh bread, and it was all wonderfully delicious. My stuffed Relleno pepper was unusual and scrumptious. Laurie had some spring rolls that unfortunately were not as good but the ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery made up for it (I hope).

By the time we made it back to Big Sky, we were exhausted in a good way. I fell asleep in a matter of minutes with visions of wildflowers dancing in my head...