September 2015 Share It! Quarterly Summer 2015 1312 Share It! Quarterly Summer 2015 September 2015

rode by Bull of the Woods Pass and down to Wolverine Pass. Ryan and I reminisced about our many snowmobile rides in the Cooke city area over the years since we were kids. Just to the north was Horseshoe Mountain. A year prior, Wendy and I had packed into there starting in the same place we had just left.

After a sharp drop off, and a couple of switchbacks, we had an easy three mile downhill, by Wolverine Creek, through the old burn from the 1988 fires. We rode into an old hunting camp where the trail stopped. We backed tracked until we finally found the trail hidden under a bunch of buck brush and downed timber. We heading up the other side of the creek, which, before the 1988 fires was referred to as the “mile of mud”. But with the timber gone that was no longer an issue. A one mile, 500-ft elevation climb to the next drainage, with direct views of Cutoff Mountain, and a nearly 2000-ft vertical cliff on the north side, gave us an awesome landscape!

We proceeded into the Slough Creek drainage and came in the lower end of the

mile and a half by half mile wide Frenchy’s Meadow. Frenchy’s Meadow is private property, along with the Silvertip Ranch bordering Yellowstone Park to the south, and completely surrounded by the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

In 1909 Frenchy Duret homesteaded the meadows where he ranched for the next 13 years. Frenchy was also a hunting guide, poacher and personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt. The two shared many hunting trips together. In 1922, Frenchy was killed while trying to dispatch a large grizzly bear caught in his trap. A park ranger and another man came on the bloody scene a day later to find Frenchy dead, his rifle stock chewed in half, and the bear and the trap gone. The trap was found a year later on Slough Creek. A sign over Frenchy’s grave on the northwest side of the meadows, along

with numerous pieces of old equipment including old buck rakes and a square baler serve as a tribute to a past era. Today, Slough Creek is one of the top destinations in the lower 48 for many fishermen.

We camped on the north end of the meadows, along Slough Creek, at an abandoned, old hunting camp. This camp hadn’t been used in years due to the decline of ungulate populations within the Absaroka-Beartooth and the increase of wolf and grizzly populations. With camp made, horses grazed on mountain grasses and we enjoyed a fine meal of big rib eye steaks, mashed potatoes and beans. This seemed fitting fare for such a historic place!

The next morning we turned the horses out to graze and made a breakfast of eggs, bacon and dehydrated hash browns to get us

It was August 27, 2012, 4:30am, I’d been awake for 24 hours and was just finishing up a customer’s welding project. I grabbed breakfast, an hour nap in the recliner and

then started vacation at 6:00 am. The plan was a pack trip on the horses from Cooke City to Jardine in 4 days. My good friend Wendy showed up about 6:30 and we finished loading a few things, my three horses

Brandy, Dot, and Taz, and Myla, my border collie cross.

With the sun rising over the mountains in Paradise Valley we met at our friend Ryan’s place at the mouth of Mill creek. He was able to pull away from a few ranch duties to make this trip, but mostly because his wife wanted him out of the house. Whiskey and Doc and my three horses were loaded up in

Ryan’s big Wilson trailer. Harley another border collie, Myla and the rest of the gear went on the flatbed truck. Ryan’s father-in-law, Gary, came along to bring the truck back, and was also tasked with picking us up in four days.

Our next stop was the Yellowstone Park entrance where we bought our pass and

had the ranger check our brand inspections and Coggins tests, and to make sure we weren’t packing hay. Then the ranger asked us if we need maps to find Cooke City and issued us bear pamphlets.

As usual, the Lamar Valley had busloads of foreign tourists, with telescopes attached to their cameras, taking pictures of anything and everything. And there were those stopping their cars in the middle of the road taking pictures of gophers while backing up traffic 300 yards! Eventually, we rolled through Silvergate stopping at the Exxon in Cooke City for a last minute break and then up Cooke Pass and on to Lulu road. We managed to take a wrong turn finding the Daisy Pass road, which had recently been redone, without any new signage in place. Five miles later we were over the 9700-ft Daisy Pass and down to the trailhead at the bottom directly under Crown Butte.

Three horses were saddled up, packs tied on two and we started across the upper end of the basin that feeds snowpack to both the Stillwater River and Slough Creek. We

Cooke City to Jardine to Pine Creek!Continued on page 14

Cuttoff Mountain

Four Day Horseback Trip: Cooke City to Jardine to Pine Creek

All Photos Courtesy Of Stacy Bragg