Alaska Journal

[1911Nut]

George:

As always, thanks for sharing with the P-F family.

Your adventures and life with Charlie and Astro are a constant reminder that there are wonderful people in this country who refuse to capitulate to the insanity, debauchery, and daily temptation to even consider living life in any way except to its fullest, on their terms.

Ken

[1911Nut]

Starting five years ago, my wife and I have made it a fall tradition to try to visit Red Lodge, Montana and hike in the Beartooth Mountains. Our preferred itinerary is to drive over, stop and hike the East Rosebud trail near Roscoe, overnight in Red Lodge, then hike up onto the Silver Run Plateau. In June of 2022, there was a major flood event that significantly impacted this area, along with Yellowstone National Park, causing us to not visit in 2022.

Between Charlie breaking her humerus, having surgery and then PT, Astro getting stitches and the cone of shame, and schedule, we were worried it might not happen again this year, but things came together for the trip. Astro's advancing age also had us worried if she could do the Silver Run hike, as it is steep with 5,000 of vertical, up and down. With modest expectations, we decided to hike as much of it as she was able.

The East Rosebud trail is epic, and the road in just opened in August, after a year plus closure due to flood damage.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/custe...04th%2C%202023.

Friday afternoon was gorgeous weather, and we decided to hike forty minutes out and reverse course, to keep Astro rested for Saturday. If you get the chance, hike (and fish) this amazing trail.

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Red Lodge is a quirky town, that we always enjoy. Businesses are pretty much open, but flood damage is still visible. At our hotel, the bottom floor rooms are still out of commission.

Saturday morning was clear and cool, with temps in the 40's, perfect hiking uphill weather. We were the only vehicle at the trailhead, and soon we were under way, starting with Astro on a leash, to keep her from running too much.

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The trail is quite steep, and soon we were up two miles at a trail junction, and peeling off our jackets.

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Astro was doing amazingly well, and we all just put our heads down and grunted up the last half to the plateau, at about 9,500 feet. The view was awesome, and we layered up in the wind, to have a snack and enjoy a beautiful day.

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Charlie pulled out some jerky for Astro, which made for a happy Vizsla.

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Astro is hard of hearing, so we started her down back on the leash, to make sure she didn't go AWOL chasing a squirrel, so far from the vehicle.

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On a steep trail, going down can be harder than going up. Half way down, Astro was still doing great, and we let her off leash. She ran like crazy, scouting ahead, checking back, and making off trail forays after squirrels.

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Pretty soon we were down, 3.5 hours round trip with our stop on top, and about 5,000 vertical round trip. Astro really out performed our expectation. Last night, here is what her Whistle app said about her day. Given that she will be 15 on her next birthday, no idea how many of these she has in the future, but today was a good one.

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We decided to head back the long way, taking the amazing Beartooth Highway down into Cooke City, Yellowstone National Park, exiting by Gardiner. The Beartooth was closing at 3pm, due to forecast winter weather, so we scooted right along. The Beartooth section is maybe the most impressive road we have driven.

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In YNP, we saw a wolf, many bison, pronghorn, and many construction vehicles still working to repair the flood damage from June 2022. As we entered the park, we heard a continuing resolution was headed for the Senate, keeping the park open. As we exited the park by Gardiner, there were a bunch of cow elk mingling on the road in the middle of town.

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George:

As always, thanks for sharing with the P-F family.

Your adventures and life with Charlie and Astro are a constant reminder that there are wonderful people in this country who refuse to capitulate to the insanity, debauchery, and daily temptation to even consider living life in any way except to its fullest, on their terms.

Ken

[entropy]

Glad to hear everyone is doing well, did fine, and enjoyed themselves. Life is truly short.

Thanks much for sharing.

Jim

[GJM]

We had some excitement this morning. Astro did so well on her hike in Red Lodge, that we decided to take her on a challenging hike in the Bridger Mountains near our place here.

Before we left, Charlie glassing from the living room, spotted a black bear feeding on the hillside near where our trail followed the shoulder of the peaks. Just a black bear. We started on a familiar trail that Astro regularly does, then took a cross trail that climbed to the shoulder of the peaks and traverses the Bridgers south towards another canyon, that we planned to descend. We hadn't done this route before, but we were estimating 3.5-4 hours with plenty of up and down.

Conditions were excellent, no bears were spotted, but about 2.5 hours into the hike, Astro found a bunch of grouse. Unusual for her, she disappeared, apparently to go do a grouse hunt on her own. We expected her to show shortly but she was AWOL. We got her Whistle GPS tracking active on the phone, and she was really far away. Near deaf, we knew shouting wasn't going to get her attention, so we continued on the trail. She was traversing the steep side of the canyon, which had a number of cliff bands. She went in and out of coverage, generally going down terrain.

Charlie was pretty freaked that the last chapter of Astro might be lost on the mountain, but Astro probably thought hunting grouse on a great mountain wasn't so bad. Eventually, we ran into a mountain biker who had seen her where the trail crossed the stream well below us. About sixty minutes after she went on her adventure, she was waiting on out trail, as if nothing unusual happened. Here are her tracks coming down the mountain side.



And her activity tracker, when she finished the hike.

[Doc_Glock]

5000' of vert in a little over four miles is no joke steep!

[GJM]

Astro was super tired today, and spent most of the day like this.



Around 6pm she rallied, and wanted to go for a walk in the neighborhood. We are guessing she will be back to normal by tomorrow.

[Coyotesfan97]

That was a heck of a solo jaunt. No wonder she was tired.

[GJM]

We decided to take an Astro out in the helicopter today, for a desert hike. Strapped her in the back, with her ear pro on.



Flew about 25 miles into a remote area, and landed on one of my wife's Cub strips.



It was a two hour hike, an out and back, and we kept Astro on a long leash.



We stopped a few times to give Astro water.





Like a pack horse heading back to the corral, she seemed to go twice as fast heading back to the helicopter! Gorgeous hike and flying weather. 40's at night, 70's in the day, hard to beat AZ in the winter.

[GJM]

It was a beautiful morning out, flying in the desert. Calm wind, great air, and even some cloud cover to keep the sun out of your eyes. I decided to go find some new spots, and ended up with this really cool landing spot. 300 feet with obstacles on each end. Fun enough, after I went in and out a few times that I called Charlie over. Here she is landing and taking off.

[GJM]

We ended up having an interesting morning.

It rained hard yesterday evening and overnight, and there was lots of residual moisture around. Typical for Alaska, but uncommon in Arizona. We headed down to fly Cubs but running into fog and low clouds, decided to stop for breakfast to give things a chance to improve.

We had to over fly some low clouds to get into one of our areas, but the air was great and we were having a ball hitting our spots. I landed at a one way strip we call "Dead End" which is 200 something feet long with a bluff in the far end and a ditch on the approach end. Once you get on short final, you are committed to a landing as a go around isn't likely to be successful. Charlie came over and landed and I took this vid of her doing that.



And here she is departing:



After taking some pictures, we decided to leave.



Unfortunately, my Cub wouldn't start. We tried our booster battery, hand propping and were unsuccessful. Called some resources, and still were unsuccessful hand propping. For those that haven't done it, hand propping a plane on 31 inch Bushwheels is absolutely no fun, and a good way to lose body parts or worse.

We finally gave up and decided we would drive duck bill anchors, secure the plane and try to come back in the helicopter with maintenance. As we started to do that, Charlie tried one more time and it started. She set the brakes, we transferred control and she led me out. I gave it full power on takeoff before releasing the brakes as the strip was short enough, and engine issue would put me into the cactus. The flight back to the airport was uneventful.