The Yellowstone Triple Crown
The more I sit down to record these mountain adventures, the more I realize every one of my favorite memories begins with something akin to “we awoke before the moon had waned beyond the horizon, drank hot coffee in the cool air, and slowly made our way to the trailhead.” I won’t be apologizing for this fact as that’s probably the closest thing to consistency as I can find in my life.
So what’s the Yellowstone Triple Crown? Some may call it the Mammoth Triple Crown, but however heavy the head that wears the crown, or whomever’s head it is the crown adorns, it’s still climbing three pretty cool mountains. In short, it is an effort to scramble up Electric Peak, the highest in the Gallatin Mountain Range, then run to the top of Sepulchre Mountain and across the meadow for a final run up Bunsen Peak. The day totals about 29 miles and clears about 8,000’ of gain, and every bit of it was fantastic.
Electric + Smuggling Mountain Athletes into Yellowstone
One day when I’m spending my elder years tucked away near the mountains skipping rocks and sharing stories with my grandkids I’ll tell them about the time I smuggled one of my friends into Yellowstone National Park. It’s a more interesting story depending on how you tell it, but the long and short of it is I had one more compatriots than I had seats in my converted camper van, so in order to get through the gate we had to bury one of our runners under a small mountain of duffel bags and blankets as we drove through the 5:00 AM convoy and made our way toward the mountains. We had only about ten seconds after passing through the gate before bursting into laughter over how absurd the whole situation was.
The cool morning was a pleasant welcome as we laced up our shoes, filled our vests, and began traversing the meadows. Cold, wet shrubbery whipped against our legs as we passed and it felt as if we were swimming through the fields of Yellowstone. The three of us laughed at how soaked we got just within the first mile of this project. They gave me room to geek out about the old CCC infrastructure that adorned the back end of the meadow. It was little more than a few electric poles, but to me it was an entire generation given hope and purpose by working towards providing safer access to the great outdoors. They have an immense presence back in my native woods of Pisgah National Forest, and I’ve been obsessed with their now abandoned mission for years.
Around the bend, over a stream, through the woods, and to the base of Electric Peak just a couple hours after the sun had come up. This was easily the most challenging summit of the project, and the only one with class III scrambling, so it made sense to tick it off first when the day was cool and our legs were fresh. I was amazed at how efficiently we climbed. Pat, just coming back from weeks at sea level, Brendan, deep in his training for his first 100-miler, and me now having ticked my 100-miler off my bucket list just a couple weeks prior. We were all at the start of the day rather fatigued, but you’d never guess it by how consistently we cruised up the flanks of the mountain, talking about Woodstock, Bison genetics, and whatever else came into our heads as we went. The rock scrambling slowed us down a hair, but went through without any issues. We made the summit around 9:30 and made fools of ourselves for my friend who had been watching us climb the mountain from the gaze of her spotting scope in the town miles away. The Gallatins, Paradise Valley, and even the Tetons in the distance came into view under the morning sun and lit up vigorously like mighty earthen bulwarks guarding entrance into the heart of the super volcano we were running around. A slow snack and a quick descent followed, and we we were making our way up Sepulchre in almost no time.
Sepulchre
The only wildlife, or I suppose I should say the only “charismatic megafauna,” we saw all day was a herd of elk already screaming into the skies as the rut slowly begins to come in full swing here in the West. We followed their calls up the massive, meadowy switchbacks of Sepulchre until the inevitably disappeared back down in the valley below. The day was heating up by this point, and while not quite as aggressive as some of my other recent endurance projects, I was amazed at how poorly I’ve adapted to the heat. I should really do a better job at preparing for that next season.
The trail rounds the backside of the peak before granting us access to the summit. It felt truly wild looking at all 360-degrees from this spot. We could see the dense, juvenile lodgepole pines near the Yellowstone Caldera which outlined the massive fires of the 1980s. We could see pieces of the old railway that used to run into Gardiner as well as the Roosevelt Arch that stands as one of the most iconic monuments in national park history. What’s even better is we saw Electric Peak from one of its most stunning angles. It was a contortion of jagged rock in a valley carved through by ancient glaciers which once stood over 4,000 feet tall above what to them was the floor and to the volcano was a ceiling. It was a collision of two worlds, hot and cold, but Electric Peak stands vigilant, generally apathetic to the land of fire and ice below.
Of Bunsen Burners and Storms
The descent off Sepulchre would be our fastest miles all day. A balmy series of 8:30s felt awesome even on the cement bricks that were now my legs. We could see the storm slowly creeping in, and even though many may be cautious of the lighting danger while being on top of Bunsen Peak, Brendan, always the positive one, simply reminded us that “it had finally cooled off.” Fair enough.
This was the only time a gap of any significance was created between our trio of mountain runners. Brendan took the lead in an effort to “finish off” his legs at the end of another lengthy effort while Patrick inched just a couple minutes behind. I summitted about five minutes behind the group, admittedly pushing a little more than I should have while coming off the tail end of running 100-miles and spending a week climbing mountains in Canada, but a man’s gotta live while he can. They waited for me at the top so we could celebrate the completion of the project together, but by this point the rain was beginning to come in so we made a gentleman’s agreement to just meet at the car whenever we all made it down off the mountain. I had barely cracked open my celebratory beer before a symphony of thunder and lighting began raining down across Yellowstone. There was about a strike a minute for the next twenty-or-so minutes, and they were all rather close. All in all it was kind of a perfect finish for the day, and we all enjoyed watching the storm crash down up on the landscape from the safety of my van.