April 26-29. Hot springs, bears and drinking horses.

Having formed an addiction to natural hot springs in Radium last year, I now view the maps of the road ahead with a quick search for routes that may include a hot spring venue..!! On this next stretch Bozeman obliged by raising its hand.

Bozeman Hot Springs resort and campground is a bit more commercial than Fairmont in BC. It has indoor and outdoor pools ranging from 60 degrees to 106 degrees (F) . After a long day of driving, we were very happy to set up Xolo and enjoy our new found skill of wallowing…!!!

Being here for a week meant finding some activities as well….to really get the best out of wallowing at the end of the day…!!!

Bear Canyon Creek

It’s hard to tell from Alltrails sometimes unless someone has done the trail recently and left a review or some pictures. I was trying to find a longer hike…with some views…that did not involve hours of trudging through snow. From the recent pictures on this one it looked like the best bet.

It’s a well marked, well travelled trail. The first couple of kms had some snowy bits and some muddy bits……but also quite a bit of well drained path to walk.

As we got further up….it became more snowy…but still reasonably well travelled…gradually the number of foot prints dropped off until we were following ski tracks again……..

I called it at the point where continuing would have taken across fresh snow on what looked like a considerable sized snowdrift over a creek. Granted there was a culvert sticking out at one end……..but it was not doing it for me……my spirit is just not THAT adventurous……that and the snow was getting deeper……

It was another one of those places with an old, abandoned rust husk of a vehicle…!!

We decided to follow the trail on the east side of the creek back down. The only tracks were cross country skis……There were a couple of places where ( as we waded through knee deep and more snow..!!) we wondered if it actually was a trail or we were going to find a couple of skis sticking out of the snow bank….with a whole heap of bear and wolf tracks…!!!

Alltrails seemed to think there was actually a trail there …and after a few moments of hilarity as legs disappeared into snowdrifts……

….and then…the path re-appeared and we made it down without incident.

Drinking Horse Mountain.

Based on a recommendation from a neighbour in the RV park Drinking Horse Mountain trail was going to be a short but pretty hike with some great views. It was supposed to rain in the afternoon but be nice in the morning. So with a promise of 3.3km for the route ….we duly set off.

It was a short trail…and a very popular one……and a bit of a grind up that hill….

The trail is a series of steep switchbacks on the way up…..

…..and some very pretty views from the top……..

Not just of the valley below….but also of some of the mountains that surround this area….

The loop path ack down was just about as steep…….but the view was quite lovely.

The path back to the parking lot had this really cool bridge……

Overall…it was a very cool little hike. Bozeman is an interesting town with lots of beautiful old buildings in the downtown. We had thought we were just passing through…but we might have to come back here one day.