These are pictures of a trip to the Windy Pass area of Gallatin National Forest south of Bozeman, Montana, June 17-23, 2006. Some of the pictures are large files -- mainly the long, stiched-together panoramic shots.

We spent Sunday through Wednesday at the Forest Service cabin at Windy Pass.

The Windy Pass area is crisscrossed with trails, most of which have been rutted by ATV traffic. They were pretty wet, too, due to the late spring runoff. However, during our stay there, we didn't hear or see a single ATV, despite warnings to the contrary on the Forest Service cabin reservation site. Maybe it was the time of year, or maybe because we were primarily there during the week rather than the weekend, but it was blissfully quiet. Other than some FRS/GMRS radio traffic from a construction crew back in civilization and one couple who walked past the cabin on their way up the Sentinel, we saw no one other than our group.

One note about the hiking we did: This was the least map-intensive of any hike-in trip I've been on. We had the national forest overview map, but that was not detailed enough for much of anything navigation-wise. We probably should have bought the USGS topo quads along, but I forgot to buy them. But that area is mostly such high, open country that we didn't really need a map. Even when we got lost off-trail on our last morning, we found our way back without much trouble or lost time. At times we followed the trails, and sometimes we just wandered with a general sense of where Windy Pass was and where the peaks around us were. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you could see the enormous, wide-open meadows that surround Windy Pass, you would see why we did okay without. It would still be nice if someone would publish a series of condensed topo maps of that forest like the popular Earthwalk maps we've used in the Winds.