June 23- Sula to Wisdom, Montana

A heavy dew during the night left us with a frosty morning. To give the tent a chance to dry and the temperature to rise to a rideable level, we took our time over breakfast and breaking camp.

We had a long talk with a local rancher at breakfast. He bemoaned the two problems which have ruined his ranch for hunting. A fire in 2000, for which he blamed mistakes by the forest service, burned off 200,000 acres of forest in the area. Even now the mountains are bare, except for a little ground cover. Unless replanted, it will take hundreds of years for the forest to recover naturally. The other problem is wolves, which seem to be widely unpopular in Montana. As the population of wolves introduced at Yellowstone has grown rapidly, so also has their range. The rancher said they have cleaned out the game in southern Montana, and a lot of livestock as well. There is a federal program to reimburse ranchers for documented livestock kills, but wolves eat every scrap of what they kill, destroying the evidence, so to speak.

Once the temperature got up to around 50 degrees, we set out on a gently climbing grade for a few miles before tackling a major climb to a double pass. First we reached Lost Trail Pass at 7100', where we dipped back into Idaho for a short distance. We visited with the ranger there for a while, then rode back into Montana and up to Chief Joseph Pass at 7300'. We did the climb in good form, stopping every 300' of elevation gain for a breather.

From the passes, the road dropped about 1500' to the huge Big Hole Valley, a high, flat, grassy, empty expanse of cattle ranches, surrounded all around by high mountains, still snowy now.

We had planned to reach Jackson Hot Springs and camp there, since their lodge rooms were full. But we were warned that the annual Rainbow Gathering of many thousands of latterday flower children is near Jackson this year. Local experience was that theft and panhandling were serious problems. So we stopped 18 miles short of there at the crossroads town of Wisdom, pop. 101.

We didn't want to camp at Wisdom because mos quitos were swarming. The owner of the one little motel there was off somewhere and unreachable. But we found out about a cabin for rent, and it turned out to be a very comfortable place to rest and relax. After an excellent pizza dinner we were early to bed in anticipation of a long, hard day tomorrow.