Horseback Riding Through the Absarokas

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Outside Traveler 2004

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Saddle Stories
Let loose on a carefree horsepacking journey through the Absarokas

By Elizabeth Hightower


	(Elizabeth Hightower)

SUNRISE IN TERRACE MEADOWS, in Wyoming's Teton Wilderness, and I sit up, wrapped in my sleeping bag, trying not to disturb my sister, Anne, as I listen to our horses grazing nearby. We turned them loose for the night to forage, looping cowbells around their necks so we could find them again, and one bell jangles softly as a horse ambles closer to our tent. And closer. And closer. Wait a minute. Anne bolts up as the animal lets out a grunt and—oh, please, no—unleashes a torrent of liquid onto the canvas fly. We rush outside, screaming, and there's Will, our stepbrother, grinning and holding an empty bucket in one hand and a cowbell in the other. "Mornin'!" he calls. "Coffee's on!"

Welcome to my family trip.

Some families go to the beach. Mine—all 13 of us, ranging in age from 71 down to 9—headed for the backcountry. The idea, as my stepfather, Bill, envisioned it, was to decivilize us all, to continue the conservation indoctrination he'd begun on our farm in Nashville, Tennessee. From Turpin Meadows, our trailhead 45 miles northeast of Jackson, we'd make a weeklong, 66-mile loop up into the 11,000-foot Absaroka Range to the Continental Divide. It seemed the perfect place to jump into the wild: The 585,238-acre Teton Wilderness, one of the first designated, in 1964, is home to one of the most remote spots in the lower 48—the Upper Yellowstone River. More famously, in my family at least, this wilderness is home to the dreaded 10,500-foot Marston Pass. In 1987, Bill and Will navigated the steep scree trail down Marston in a whiteout, as a relatively gnarly photo on the piano attests. Two years later, my mother, Jane, completed her outdoors-wife training on Marston Pass, polishing up her riding, fishing, and hunting skills for life with Bill. She swore it was so steep that one year a man lost his entire pack string—and she cried with relief when she made it down. So our trip was something of a family pilgrimage.

As on every serious expedition, each team member was charged with an area of expertise: Mom would be the trip wildflower expert, while Bill's daughter Karin would lead us in horseback yoga stretches. Will would teach fly-fishing and such survival skills as striking matches on the zipper of your pants, while his trainees, the grandkids—girls Katherine and Alex, both 12, Jake, 10, and Steele, 9—would be our experts on grizzlies and snakes. I was the geologist. We were also well aware that any successful expedition begins with careful provisioning. So we loaded one of the packhorses with Maker's Mark.



	(Elizabeth Hightower)

We would have gone nowhere fast without a guide. Ours, Press Stephens, quickly became our hero. A tall, sun-flushed cowboy with a Martin pack guitar and fringe on his chaps, Press has guided for 33 of his 52 years; his buckskin gelding, Bucky, knows these trails better than any outfitter in three states. But the part that cinched the deal for us is that Press practices minimal-impact horsepacking, never leaving the herd in one place long enough to damage the mountain grasses or the soil. Whenever we stopped, we tied the horses to one another, bridle to saddle and nose to tail, instead of to trees; at night, we turned them loose, and when we broke camp, Press dispatched the boys for games of horse hockey, to scatter the piles of pucks. "The days are long gone when you had a camp full of old-timers who want to sit around a big fire and tie their horses to trees right next to them," he says. "I can have 20 horses in this camp, and you'd never know it the next day."

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