Mountains

Having been born and raised in Michigan I a have, not too surprisingly, had very little experience with mountains. As a child our family drove through the Smokey Mountains on our way to Florida every Easter. I will date myself here. That drive took 4 days partly because the entire distance was done on the Dixie Highway, US 10, all the way on two lane blacktops, which went through every large city and every small town Between Detroit and Ft. Meyers. Now don't get me wrong, the Smokies are very scenic and the driving can still be torturous but those mountains do not have bald heads, they never get higher than tree line. My next experience deposited me on the tarmac of a small airport having just deplaned from a 6 seat commuter at the tiny Dubois Wyoming air port. I remember turning slowly in a complete circle or maybe two with my mouth hanging open, gaping at the rocky mountains which surrounded me. Now those were mountains. The tops that we hiked to were rocky and well above tree line. I remember a tiny cedar curled in a protective hollow about the diameter of a coffee cup but no deeper than a saucer. I was told by the Biologist that the tree was probably several hundred years old. Then were was a short visit to my brother's home near the Ozarks, which are much like the Smokies, beautiful and rugged but not breathtakingly high. Then in 1999 we visited Rocky Mountain National Park. Very high mountains with a very definite tree line, like someone had drawn a pencil line around the mountain and set a limit on where the trees were allowed to grow. As we drove up there were trees and then there were no trees, a sudden delineated change from forest to alpine meadows with no trees and snow in July. From the top you could see miles away to more mountains.

Our trip west has broadened my perception of mountains. Of course the Badlands are not mountains at all. They are severely weathered plains that have created surreal landscapes where it is HOT in the summer. The Black Hills are just what their name implies, very lovely but hills and it can be HOT in the summer. The Black Hills are an ancient upthrust weathered into fascinating fingers of rock. No glaciers were here in South Dakota so grind the tops off and smooth things over. Here the trees grow to the tops of the ridges and over. There is no tree line and no alpine habitat.

That Changed when we went north and farther west to Wyoming and Montana. The Bighorm Mountains of Wyoming are a small range of mountains that include Hazelton Pyramid which is 10,534 feet above sea level. Two miles high! What I found so amazing about these mountains was that although they were very high and there was a tree line it was not as marked as in Rocky Mountain National Park. The tops of the mountains were covered in alpine grassed meadows which extended for miles. Although you could see great distances very often it did not look like you were ON a mountain top. It was odd. I always knew we were in or on the mountain but sometimes it just did not look like we were on a mountain. This picture to the left shows Hazelton Peak 10,264 feet high, from the road toward Doyle campground which is at 8,100 feet of elevation.

Farther west yet in Montana we met the Beartooth Mountains. They were not really much higher but they showed much more evidence of their glacial shaping with rounded hanging valleys above younger vee shaped stream valleys. All of the roads and driving there was rugged. None of the miles and miles of nearly flat toped mountains like the one above. Everything in the Beartooth mountains was STEEP. and the alpine meadows were above a very obvious tree line. A saying we learned in the mountains was that "if you are too hot you are not camping high enough". We had nights in the mountains when it got down to near freezing, while it was in the 100s in the valleys below.