Frugal Traveler – American Road Trip From Wyoming to Montana on Foot

Frugal Traveler | American Road Trip

From Wyoming to Montana on Foot

 

Contemplating the peak of Lonesome Mountain from the icy waters of Becker Lake.

By MATT GROSS Published: August 1, 2007

TEN THOUSAND feet above sea level, just north of the Wyoming-Montana border, lies Albino Lake, a fish-shaped oblong of icy water bounded on its east by a reddish, rock-slide-scarred ridge and on its west by the high, bare peak of Lonesome Mountain. A few tiny, rocky islands poke up from the water, and on one stands a thatch of purple wildflowers that glow like neon in the golden light of late afternoon. When night falls, the surface of the lake turns silver, then black. The rough stillness in the air is a constant reminder that, although a thin trail runs along the shore, this is the very edge of civilization – the frontier.

It was here, on the lake’s gentle, mossy southern slopes, that my friend Mary Ellen Hitt and I camped on our second night in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a section of the Gallatin National Forest just northeast of Yellowstone. All summer long, I’d been wanting to experience America the most frugal way possible – and to live out my “Man vs. Wild” fantasies – and these 920,377 acres of mountains, lakes, streams and valleys, recommended by several readers, seemed like a perfect place to do it.

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