Winter road trip through time and space

By Rick & Susie Graetz for the Three Rivers Edition - 02/19/2008

A recent 1,200-mile road trip across the state produced a mix of all that is Montana.

We passed through every manner of weather, landscape and a grand mix of time and space.

As readers of our books and columns know, we do not divorce geography and history — they go together well.

Here, as in earlier columns, we have corralled it in a trip form you can duplicate. Or you might use this as an example and consider pioneering your own route and chronicling it, researching the history as you go, or before leaving.

Knowing something of the landscape and it’s past and then exploring it can make for a fun occupation of a day or two or a vacation. Make sure and pack your maps, GPS and notes.

Well before first light, we left the Upper Gallatin Canyon in a snowstorm. The temperature was a very cozy (for a February morning) 14 degrees above zero.

It stayed warm as we pointed east through the Gallatin Valley and over Bozeman Pass.

Descending the east side of the pass to the valley of the Upper Yellowstone, we encountered the legendary winds that pour off the Northern Rockies and roar through the Paradise Valley.

These dawn gusts were sending streamers of snow off of the Absaroka and the Gallatin ranges and a crimson sunrise was carrying gold flares; the big sky was alive with mid-winter activity.

At Livingston and “the Big Bend” of the Yellowstone, the “Grande Dame” of the high country, the Yellowstone River, makes an abrupt turn toward the east and faces the morning sun.

From this point forward, the Yellowstone River was important to the Lewis & Clark Expedition. On the return leg of their journey in 1806, the captains split near Lolo, Montana.

Lewis investigated a new route to the Great Falls on the Missouri and Clark forged his way back to the Three Forks of the Missouri then set out across the future Bozeman Pass and into the Yellowstone Valley coming upon the river right about where we caught it that morning.

This is a good place to pause and consider all the site gathers in.

Clark’s journal entry of July 15, 1806 after leaving the Three Forks in part notes, “…proceeded up the branch (of the Gallatin) to the head thence over a low gap in the mountain thence across passing over a low dividing ridge (Bozeman Pass) to the head of a water course (Billman Creek) which runs into the Rochejhone, prosueing an old buffalow road keeping on the North Side of the branch to the River rochejhone at which place I arrived at 2 P M.”

Clark peered south into the Paradise Valley and later recorded, “The Roche passes out of a high rugid mountain (most likely he was referring to the Gallatins) covered with Snow…The mountains (Absarokas)…on the East side of the river is rocky rugid and on them are great quantities of Snow.”

In the mid 1700’s, French-Canadian trappers ventured an unknown distance up the Yellowstone from its confluence with the Missouri and named the river Le Roche Jaune (yellow stone) for the gold tint the river bottom rocks showed. The men of the Corps of Discovery were well aware of this.

With Livingston to her back, the widening river soon begins to realize the bulk of its 70,000-square mile drainage basin.

The late Mike Malone, historian and one-time president of Montana State University, sized it up well;

“The Yellowstone Basin embraces an enormous swath of the American West, a swath so large and so diverse in terrains and sub regions that it seems, in some respects to be a microcosm of the West itself.”

Very few cars were on the snow packed road in this early morning and so the bucking bronco that the car acted like in the strong wind blasts had plenty of space to wander back and forth across the asphalt trail. The air continued warm (unless the wind-chill was factored in) until a point just to the east of Mission Creek near Sheep Mountain, the prominent landmark on the north side of the Yellowstone, where the “warmer” air ran head on into the Arctic air mass that had been covering much of Montana east of the mountains. No zone of transition here - above zero, and the next minute, well below zero and no wind. It was as if we passed through a wall of weather.

Next week n The Yellowstone crossing and wild Montana skies

Rick & Susie Graetz are Montana publishers and photojournalists. Rick teaches four courses at The University of Montana. Their latest book is Montana’s Flathead and Glacier National Park. Their E mail is thisismontana@aol.com.

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