I know I keep saying it over and over about many of the places that I've spent the night in Yellowstone, but this site really is as good as it gets. If wild was visible, it would have been cascading down the mountainside in waves. Everything about the place - the storm clouds spitting snow and sleet, the two bears rambling over the mountainside about a mile above me, the sound of geese flying in wedges overhead, the wild call of the sandhill cranes down by the lakeshore not far away, and most of all, the darkness of the timber that ran in a thin ribbon down the hill by Sheridan Creek to the lake - it all combined to make this one of the wildest spots that I've ever spent the night in. Classic Yellowstone, and I had it all to myself. So far as I knew, there was nobody else staying anywhere on this side of the lake, or for that matter, I didn't see any tracks heading east from the cabin, though I may have missed them in my hurry to reach camp.

The slope that ran down from the main trail to the side of the lake was littered with thousands of fallen trees, turned silver by the high country sun. I spent a few minutes tightrope-walking the fallen trees for a few hundred feet, seeing how far I could go without stepping down to the ground. Spooked by the dark brush south of the campsite, I finally stepped down and headed back to camp.

Oh yeah, if you look closely at the bottom photo, you'll notice a small red tag on one of the dead trees just beyond Big Agnes. It's there to mark the path that leads up the hill to the toilet. Like most of the other backcountry 'boxes' that I've seen, this one sits out in the open about 300 or 400 feet from camp, hidden somewhat by its location behind a small downed tree. The lack of privacy bothers some folks, but it has its advantages too - it's damned hard for anything of any size to sneak up on you without being seen.

I've gotta put in a plug for the Big Agnes tent - the wind was really screaming, but Big Agnes was rock solid once I got it staked out. This is one hell of a good one-man tent, the best that I've ever had.

I thought about lightening up some of these photos, but I prefer them to be a bit on the dark side - that's how it was on the eastern slopes of Mt. Sheridan that evening. Big Game Ridge, to the southeast of my campsite, on the horizon in the bottom photo, would appear and then disappear again into the swirling clouds as one snow squall after another swept across the highlands. Each passing cloud would leave the Ridge a bit whiter than before.