The Bighorn Mountains

 

Wherein Moominmama discovers the glories of the Bighorn National Forest and has it mostly to herself...

The Bighorn Mountains turn out to be a national gem, largely unrecognized outside this area of Wyoming. There's enough beauty and history here to make it a national park -- but then crowds would come, and Moominmama wouldn't feel like she had it to herself!

It's an area about 150 miles long and 30 miles wide with the Cloud Peak Wilderness in its center, a set of snowy peaks centered around the 13,000-foot Cloud Peak holding the range's last surviving Pleistocene glacier.

This whole area has been a holy place for dozens of Native American tribes, and the Medicine Wheel, at almost 10,000 feet of elevation, is a place of pilgrimage to this day. These stones are believed to have been laid in the pattern at left at least 250 years ago. 

When Moominmama arrived at the trailhead, she was met by two young Crow women working for the Forest Service, asked to treat the ground with reverence and to walk clockwise around the wheel. The rope fencing around the stones are covered in ribbons that mark individual pilgrimages, along with gifts of polished rocks, feathers, braided sweetgrass and packets of tobacco left on the fence posts or on the ground.

The compression and uplift that tipped the rocks of this mountain range brought up some of the oldest bedrock in North America, per the Forest Service. The peaks themselves feature the old stone while layers of younger sedimentary rock slide down the sides, creating rolling hills around the base.

There are an immense variety of hikes, of which Moominmama only touched on a half dozen, all in the northern end of the mountain range near Route 14. This photo is from the top of Black Mountain where a defunct fire tower remains, though not visible here.

Moominmama is eager to return again to explore the southern side of the Bighorns. Overall, they appear much like the Rockies and are considered a "sister" range. 

There are marmots in the alpine habitats, brook, rainbow and brown trout in the cold streams, moose everywhere, (Moominmama saw six of them in one day) and deer and birds too numerous to mention.

There are multiple waterfall hikes like this one to Porcupine Falls. There are also mountain lakes, including one where Moominmama took a very cold dip after a strenuous hike. There are rolling grassland hikes at the base of the mountains. But the best hike was to Tongue River Canyon, (photo at the bottom.)

Unlike so many other picturesque locations, the campgrounds and campsites around here are plentiful and uncrowded even on weekends -- at least in the parts of the Bighorn Mountains I visited. I met many Wyoming campers but not many from out of state. There's also a rich Native American heritage here, with many sites of significance to multiple tribes.

If folks here are keeping this location to themselves, I don't blame them! It probably helps them keep the secret by not having internet or cell service, or when they do, no bandwidth for photos! 

I am writing/updating this at a library in South Dakota, on my way to the Black Hills after giving up on the WiFi and cell in rural northern Wyoming. Photos coming next week of Devil's Tower National Monument and Wind Cave National Park, assuming rural South Dakota has some connectivity!







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