Dear friends-
It’s been quite some time since I last posted, but the project is not dead!
I spent the first week of October in a cabin near Livingston Peak, at the north-east corner of the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness area. This is the area known to Dave as the Crow Mountains - the location of his third hike. The wilderness area was officially declared in 1978, the year after “In the Shining Mountains” was released.
It’s a strikingly beautiful area. In October, the valleys and low lands are bone-dry grasses and dust surrounded by rocky mountain peaks already bearing patches of snow. Separating the two is a thick band of conifers, dense and dark. It’s a spectacular but terribly wild area.
Looking north near Livingston Peak towards the Crazy Mountains
Dave’s third hike began at Slough Creek trailhead in Yellowstone, and ended somewhere in the Boulder River drainage. Despite my research I’m not confident about his exact path for the last days of the hike - much of his time was spent off-trail, and the details he gives will be impossible to verify except by a hiker on the ground. However, the exact route is probably unimportant as long as I follow the path of least resistance north along the ridges above the Boulder River. The fact that the route crosses a number of deep drainages helps explain why Dave didn’t move too fast through the area.
Some light reading…