Horsepackers ride 240 miles through Yellowstone National Park

BILLINGS – Unfortunately for the four horsepackers, their 260-mile trip into Yellowstone National Park started with a setback.

On July 17, as they sauntered along the Eagle Creek Trail near Wyoming’s Sylvan Pass, four mules in tow, a blockade of wind-toppled trees obstructed the way.

“We came to a tremendous pile, trees piled up higher than our head and 2 feet in diameter,” said Bill Yager, the trip’s 70-year-old organizer and a Pryor, Montana, rancher. “Had we gotten through it, we were still 7 miles from where we were supposed to camp that night. We didn’t know what there was the rest of the way ahead of us, and we were wiped out.”

Rather than fret about the sudden change of plans on their first day out, horsewoman Hannah Orth said the group was confident Bill would find a way to reroute the group.

Bucket list

For Bill, the route into the Thorofare Valley, on to the Bechler River and back via Heart Lake was a bucket list trip.

“I give Laura credit,” he said. “A year ago Laura, who I had only met once, called me up and the two of us talked each other into it.”

Laura Michalak, 30, grew up in Chicago but has loved horses since she first sat atop a steed at age 6. During their initial meeting, Laura asked Bill about his dream trip. That’s when the topic of a lengthy horsepacking excursion into Yellowstone was first discussed.

“I always wanted to do a monthlong ride,” she said. So she told Bill, “You tell me when and where and I’ll be there. I don’t care what I’m doing. So he called me in November and asked if I was serious.”

Resignation

So great was the attraction to join Bill’s dream adventure that Laura and Bill’s son quit their jobs to go along.

After all, it’s difficult for most people to get 26 days in a row off. Despite the length of the journey and the hardships of backcountry travel, the companions wished the expedition could have lasted longer.

“If I could figure out how to do this every summer for the rest of my life I would,” Peter Yager said.

“I feel lucky I got to be a part of it,” Laura said.

Hannah, a 29-year-old Billings nurse, was the glue that connected Laura and Bill.

“That’s what the sauce was for getting that trip together – four people who had enough adventure in them to just leave life for a second and go do something that’s novel,” Orth said.

Not the first

Bill and Peter made their first trip into Yellowstone with horses in 2001, when Peter was only 16. Back then they walked in, leading their horses loaded down with camping gear.

“I don’t mind walking as long as somebody else is carrying the weight,” Bill said.

Since then, he has returned to Yellowstone often, for all of the obvious reasons.

“Where else do you have waterfalls, thermal features and wildlife all at once?” he asked. “Their trail maintenance is really good, and once you jump through the hoops to get a permit you know you’ll have a good campsite every night and that you’ll have it to yourself.”

In comparison, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, another rugged place hikers and horsepackers adventure, Bill said the best campsites can bustle with as many as three horse parties, and there are lots of miles between scenic spots.

Route planning

By February, Bill had outlined the route, and what campsites to reserve in Yellowstone. In part, the trek was an homage to Howard Eaton. He was one of the first horsepackers to guide guests into the park in the 1880s on 20-day outings. Eaton is also credited with developing the paths that later became known as the “Grand Loop,” a roadway that traverses to many of Yellowstone’s top features.

“I’ve been drawing routes for 20 years,” Bill said. “The main thing I wanted to do was make it kind of a tour, and as close to we could get to a loop in the park, and catch as many of the cool backcountry features as we could. As we went through the permit process that changed a little bit.”

Laura said Bill initially told her, “It might be just you and me.” In the end, however, 10 people joined. Some toted backpacks as they tagged along on sections in Yellowstone’s southwest corner near the Bechler River for five days, or for the six days into Heart Lake near Grant Village. They ranged in age from Peter’s 12-year-old stepdaughter Eislin Davis to 72-year-old John Snyder, Bill’s cousin. Orth rode with the group for 17 days, dropping out at the trailhead to Heart Lake at about mile 170. Peter estimated he walked about half the 240-mile route.

Peter inherited his father’s adventurous gene, working as a park ranger in Yellowstone and Alaska. After serving in the Army, with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he spent 35 days in 2009 backpacking in the Beartooth Mountains, attempting to visit every drainage in the south-central Montana range.

“I have always really liked these over one-week trips,” he said. “Once you get into the rhythm of just being out there, and having that be what you are doing, you wake up and that’s your life. I always feel a little bit like you can detach yourself from the real world with that much time.”

Turned back

After being forced to backtrack and come up with a new way into their reserved campsites, the foursome drove their stock and gear about 100 miles southwest to near Moran, Wyoming, close to Yellowstone’s South Entrance.

From the new starting point they ambled up the Pacific Creek Trail, through the Washakie Wilderness and on to Hawk’s Rest near the head of the Thorofare Valley.

There’s something special about Hawk’s Rest, Bill said. It’s a visually stunning setting with the surrounding mountains rising sharply and lush green meadows. The place also emanates an emotional aura, a vibe that strikes the heart strings. Laura called the place sacred, adding she wished she could figure out how to live there.

Looping

From Hawk’s Rest the group moved on to Big Game Ridge for a 10,000-foot view of the Tetons, Heart Lake and other mountains fading into the distance. It left Laura struggling to find the right words to capture what she experienced.

“I felt like it was the culmination of so many things in my life,” she said. “It felt like a coming together.”

From this stunning view the party continued west eventually reaching Union Falls, the second-tallest waterfall in Yellowstone at 250 feet.

“That’s absolutely the most beautiful falls in the park,” Bill said.

Continuing on to the Bechler River valley, Laura said 110-foot tall Dunanda Falls captured her imagination as she soaked in a hot springs near its base.

“It felt like I was in a different world,” she said. “It also may have been a touch of trail brain,” which she described as a sense of becoming part of the wild, when the outside world falls away and only the present moment matters.

Orth described the Bechler area with its waterfalls and hot springs as the “garden that God made.”

Packing

Bill estimated the group was hauling about 600 pounds of gear, including all of their camping equipment, clothing, freeze-dried food, stove fuel and some horse feed. Twice they were resupplied by the hikers who joined.

“We never lacked for anything we needed,” he said.

Over his many years of traveling in Yellowstone, Bill said he probably already covered about 70% of the 2023 route. So he was familiar with the park’s permitting process and knew the campsites. He credited well-trained mules and horses as well as the importance of planning for the trip’s success.

“Bill’s style of movement throughout enormous portions of land is not usually done,” Orth explained. “Outfitters usually have a camp in the backcountry … a place to go.”

She also said many backcountry travelers don’t have the endurance for such lengthy outings.

“You really have to have that cowboy, flap-happy in the rain sort of attitude,” Orth said.

Despite traveling through some of the most predator rich country in the lower 48 states – with wolves, mountain lions, grizzly and black bears – the group never encountered any, seeing only tracks and so much scat in one place “to the point it was scary.”

“I think this might be one of the few of the longer trips I’ve taken without seeing grizzly bears, and we were absolutely in big-time grizzly bear habitat the whole trip,” Bill said.

Instead, the main wildlife they saw, he joked, were mosquitoes and flies. Distracting them from the stinging insects were fields of purple columbine, violet harebell and pink fireweed coloring the route.

The last leg of the 2023 horsepacking adventure retraced part of the first trip Bill and Peter had taken into Yellowstone in 2001. The country had changed. Nature hadn’t stood still. Two decades ago, Bill noted, Beaver Creek featured steep banks. In the 20 years since, the big tree-chopping rodents had repopulated the creek and turned the drainage into a large lush meadow by building a series of dams. Young trees had grown where fire-charred trunks once stood.

“It felt like coming full circle,” Peter said.

It wasn’t until Aug. 10 that the group made a “reluctant return to civilization” after a “thumping good time.”

“A trip like the one Bill orchestrated in Yellowstone last summer … it isn’t a job, it’s not quite a vacation, and it’s like this constant state of calm, but it’s really high-stakes,” Orth said. “It’s ritual and habitual, but still unpredictable. It’s slow moving, but it can all of a sudden be very dynamic. In the end, it’s this character-developing play.”