Wilderness Trekking III ~ October 2007

Photo documentary of Backpacking Light's Wilderness Trekking III Course, October 9-15, 2007 Montana & Wyoming.

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Don Wilson takes a first glance at the expedition map the night before the trek in a remote hunting lodge near Cody, Wyoming.
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Kevin Sawchuk tries to discover terrain weaknesses in the 1:100k map.
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Jorgen Johanssen, Mike Clelland, Don Wilson, and Brian Doble invest collective mind energy into finding a route through a seemingly impenetrable wilderness.
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The Beach Boys watch the landscape unfold at dawn on Day 1.
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Navigating around Frozen Lake, towards the Beartooth Plateau (horizon line).
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Looking backward, thinking forward, routefinding on the Beartooth Plateau.
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Backpacking Light's Wilderness Trekking III, October 2007. Copyright (C) Ryan Jordan.
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Seldom carrying water, we were able to drink directly from streams and ponds high on the plateau.
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There is a difference between mapping your route and navigating. In the latter, one finds there way forward. In the former, one marks where they've been - an essential skill in fixing your position en route.
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Climbing up to the plateau required us to weave our way through cliff bands choked with verglas and ice formed in the freeze-thaw cycles of recent days.
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The main plateau is a vast expanse of 11,500+ foot snowfields that cap the hydrologic divide of the Beartooth Range. The Plateau makes for wonderful walking - until it runs out and turns into a dragona's tail of technical ridgeline that would force our trekkers south to easier ground.
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Don Wilson of Tucson, AZ gazes back along the Plateau at our route.
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Pilot Peak, the "Matterhorn of the Absaroka Range", is the most obvious landmark viewed from the Beartooth Plateau. It's a critical triangulation point, and failure of both groups to accuratel map its location (it was not marked on our maps) proved costly in terms of their ability to fix a position after Day 2.
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Climbing knolls, ridges, and peaks were essential to navigating in the beartooths, where jumbled terrain hides features. Don Wilson and Mike Clelland try to reconcile a low-detail (> 100k) map with terrain normally traversed with 24k topographic maps.
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Snowshoes became essential at elevations over 9,000 feet. We donned them early on Day 1. Our snowshoes of choice: the Atlas Race - titanium crampons and only 1 lb/foot.
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The Beartooth Highway, our starting point about 10 miles south from where this photo was taken, is nicknamed "Top of the World Highway". At a crest of 10,900+ feet, it's one of the highest scenic roads in the United States. Here, our crew is trekking near 12,000 feet on the Beartooth Plateau, with dramatic drops to both sides, giving the feeling that one really is on top of the world.
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After several miles of travel on the crest, we made the decision to descend here, motivated primarily by Brian's AMS and the fact that the south side of the divide offered terrain we know we could walk through, while the north side offered terrain accentuated by steep peaks, avalanche slopes, and the unknown prospects of technical scrambling.
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Making the decision to descend the south side of the divide came with the known realit that we'd now be traveling off our maps. Mike and Don try to sort out minor fractures in a seemingl random arrangement of granite that would allow efficient walking.
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Mike Clelland of Driggs, ID, begins the steep descent down avalanche terrain across from the massive north face of Lonesome Peak, which would prove to be a key landmark for maintaining a back bearing as we traveled across the Beartooths for the next 36 hours.
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Brian Doble rests after descending from the Plateau, in the throes of suffering from nausea and a severe headache as a result of living in Maine - and trekking at 12,000 feet - in the span of only a few days.
Photos: Ryan Jordan / Olympus E-400 / Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5