It was the Saturday of the long weekend in February, and our plan was to snowshoe to Mystic Lake – a very popular hike in the warmer months that is located about 2 hours from Billings. There hadn't been a ton of snow but the mountains had recently received a fresh coat of powder, so we were eager to get out of the city. We woke up around 8am, made some coffee and breakfast to go, and packed up Pebble with all our winter essentials. The roads were clear and the skies were blue, right up until we were 8 miles from the trailhead. It was there that the wind began to really pick up and the snow drifts took over the one lane dirt road, so we ended up having to (very carefully) turn around.
Seeing Mystic Lake in all its winter wonderland glory just wasn't going to happen for us that day. It was just before noon, and we debated whether or not to drive over to Red Lodge and spend the afternoon there, but eventually decided that we'd do a bit of exploring via car to see if we could find an enticing area to snowshoe. After an hour or so of driving around (and Jordan analyzing his handy dandy hunting map – a GPS app with the accuracy of a wizard), we found a road that would get us closer to Custer National Forest access. We pulled off the road, parked, and got our gear on.
With Jordan's app as our guide, we starting making our way towards a trailhead. We ended up on a Jeep trail, so it was fairly wide and easy to follow. Most of the time we were in a big open valley, with views of the Beartooths surrounding us. It was sunny with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark, and it didn't take either of us long to break a sweat.
A few miles into our hike, after consulting the app, we realized that we had missed the turnoff for the trailhead. Forced to change our plans (again – what else is new?), we (Jordan) thought it would be fun to hike up the steep hill that was just ahead of us for a view of the valley from above. We stopped for a quick lunch break before making our way through the slightly eerie pine tree forest that stood between us and the hill.
So up we went, occasionally falling several feet through the snow or getting our snowshoes stuck on a hidden branch. It was a slow (especially for me) and steady climb but we eventually made it to the top.
We enjoyed some time overlooking the valley that we had just came through – we could actually still see our tracks from way up above – before heading back down.
Even though the day hadn't turned out as we had originally planned, we both agreed that the change of scenery (AKA hiking through a valley as opposed to just surrounded by trees the entire time) was a breath of fresh air – fresh, crisp, winter air...
At the end of the day,we had snowshoed about 5.2 miles, gained just over 1000 feet of elevation, and explored an area that I'm certain not many people have explored before, especially in the beauty, magic, and peacefulness that is a Montana winter.
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