What with one thing or another it felt like it had been a long time since we went for a walk "outback". Another storm system is due to move in later today, so Dan suggested we take a quick turn around Blacktail Hill, which is only a 90 minute or so hike.
I have done this circumnavigation on horseback before, only once because it is quite rugged on the north side. Here, the north and west sides of the mountains have trees and dense, thorny shrubbery, whereas the south and east sides are exposed and grassy. It reminded me of a backpack trip we took on my 30th birthday, around Mt Hood. We thought that once we were at timberline, it would be a piece of cake as we could stay at the same elevation. We had not counted on all those major canyons coming from glaciers... But the washes off Blacktail are not of that magnitude, thankfully, and it does not take 3 days to go around.
We walked counterclockwise, getting the brushy part over with first, and the view as you come around to the south side is breathtaking. We got sprinkled on a little, and barely made it home before a squall hit the house. But we got the stalls cleaned before everything turned into a soggy mess again.
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