Beyond: the internationally-recognized Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness that functions as a key piece of landscape protection for wildlife moving in and out of Yellowstone National Park and providing slow-paced solitude to humans. Photo courtesy Jesse Logan
by Hank Rate
Late in 2019 at a book signing event in Gardiner, Montana for the new atlas of stories and photographs commemorating the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, I gave a review of my involvement with the campaign to help bring permanent protection to those iconic mountains.
But afterward, while reviewing 15 pages of notes that I had seriously abbreviated during my talk, I became concerned that I might have come across as having a grudge against the US Forest Service, my former employer, from day one.
The following are omitted anecdotes that help explain my evolution in attitude, of how I’ve come to think about that influential agency in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and its presence in the American West.
Back when I was a young man in my 20s, I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Iowa country boy having finished my required Army tour of duty in Japan during the Korean “war.”
In Japan I had traveled on the west coast of the Island on Honshu and had visited a number of park-like, timbered shrines. But outside the shrine, there was very little standing timber. Why, I wondered? The common response of the locals was, “The trees were all cut down during the war.”
Casting about for personal purpose after separation from that version of government service, I went on to Forestry School at Colorado State. Subsequently I worked for the Forest Service for ten years (1955-1965)—the last four of which as a District Ranger on the Stillwater District of the Custer National Forest. These were great years.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. At Fort Collins, in pursuit of a Master’s degree, I worked seasonally with a Forest Service station near Flagstaff, Arizona. The forested Coconino Plateau provided water to the arid Salt River Valley to the south. The professional researchers were under constant pressure to prove that more water could be produced if the stately ponderosa pines on the plateau were to be cut down.
Hank Rate at home today in the Upper Yellowstone River Basin just outside of Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Jesse Logan
In other words, eliminate the forest that holds water in the mountains, and which supports a diverse ecosystem of life forms, because doing so would allow precipitation to run downhill to cities and agriculture. In Nature, the perception was, that the water was being "wasted." The local joke was that the only viable Forest Service management plan was: “Clearcut, Burn, Concrete, and Paint Green!”
My contra there (and mentor) was on older ex-Civilian Conservation Corps foreman named Ed Martin who oversaw the practical aspects of the station. The “pros” would gnash their teeth when they’d pass his desk which featured a large format quote from Plato, relating that the Greek province of Attica had lost its water resources when the forests were denuded.
Along the way, Ed taught me the rudiments of land surveying, which sustained my wife and me after we quit the Forest Service some years later.
Hank Rate expands upon his experience working for wilderness protection in this award-winning book edited by former Forest Service veterans Traute Parrie and Jesse Logan. It is available at bookstores and abwilderness.org
The following four years consisted of several assignments as a junior forester, mostly involving timber sales and fire suppression. I enjoyed the work, but I could sense pressure from the top to expand the timber sales program, especially into roadless areas. A timber sale implied a new road, which was to be built into the contract offered by the Forest Service to a private logging company. But there was actually a faster way: A fire in a remote area was considered off-budget, so the first call was for a bulldozer, not necessarily a fire crew.
I sat around campfires and heard bragging tales of country being opened up in this manner. Fires that happened to happen begat hastily-crafted roads. Large clearcuts commonly followed. In our more arid country, if natural forest reproduction failed, then tree planting followed. More workload for the Forest Service and contractors.
Contracts could be difficult to manage, especially in harsh soil and climate conditions with marginal profit margins. An example: One time I reported to my District Ranger a situation where the road and drainage construction didn’t meet the contract requirements. He sent me to the Assistant Forest Supervisor in charge of timber.
In a fatherly way the timber man told me to back off. “All logging is good,” he said. “We need to cut over all these old-growth forests before we can have them ‘under management and be more productive."
He sent me to the Assistant Forest Supervisor in charge of timber. In a fatherly way the timber man told me to back off. “All logging is good,” he said. “We need to cut over all these old-growth forests before we can have them ‘under management and be more productive."
In 1961, the Supervisor of the Custer National Forest, John Forsman (a good friend from a previous assignment), selected me as District Ranger on the Stillwater District. The district comprised 300,000 acres, mostly roadless, and included portions of two “Primitive Areas” (Absaroka and Beartooth) designated in the 1920s, primarily because of their remoteness and limited commercial value for logging.
They contained next to no commercial timber. Even much of the high plateaus that were grazed by sheep had been excluded. But recreational use of roadless areas had increased following the hardship of the Depression, World War II, and Korea (1931-1955).
The Absaroka and Beartooth were recognized by the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the western portion of the Custer Forest was obviously involved. The Act required all prior designation of Primitive Areas to be either classified as “Wilderness” or declassified in 10 years (by 1974).
My boss, John, and I had had several previous discussions in the office and on the trail, but now things were getting serious. John called me in and explained that the DC policy of the Forest Service, influenced by certain politicians, was not to classify any new wilderness areas, but that qualified roadless areas were to be identified instead as “Backcountry” and managed as such.
I vigorously argued that that was just warehousing the untouched country until the Forest Service along with private industry recognized “development potential.” John responded with a non-committal nod.
John and I worked together until our last ride some six months later. Unsaddling, he tossed me his Navajo pad saying, “I won’t be needing this in DC.” Then he rattled off down the road to a new assignment.
This was the last time we saw each other, but we corresponded the rest of his years.
The new Supervisor of the Custer (which is today part of the merged Custer-Gallatin National Forest) felt that my indoctrination had been incomplete and suggested that the Forest Service might send me back to college for a degree in business. At age 33, I envisioned spending the rest of my career in some catacomb devising ways to monetize all natural resources. I also was reprimanded for insisting that he give me direction in dealing with a mining company that was allowing large dunes of tailings to blow into the Stillwater River.
At age 33, I envisioned spending the rest of my career in some catacomb devising ways to monetize all natural resources. I also was reprimanded for insisting that he give me direction in dealing with a mining company that was allowing large dunes of tailings to blow into the Stillwater River.
So, with my wife Dorine’s approval and our first baby, we quit at the end of the 1965 field season.
After three years managing a ranch in central Montana, we bought a small place at the mouth of Cedar Creek, ten miles north of Yellowstone National Park between Gardiner and Yankee Jim Canyon. Cedar Creek is a tributary to the Yellowstone River.
At the end of the fall of 1968, we got winter meat (elk) on a hill within a half mile of the place. Next spring we caught spawning cutthroat trout with salmon flies from the creek and rescued trout that flopped out of the irrigation ditches that watered alfalfa fields. If you do not think that pertinent, then read on.
In the meantime, nearly a new decade along after the 1964 Wilderness Act, the Forest Service was quietly working on what-to-do about the Absaroka and Beartooth Primitive Areas and the surrounding undeveloped national forest lands.
In the autumn of 1970, a friend told me that he had been hunting in the timber at the head of Cedar Creek under Monitor Peak and that he had seen a lot of red survey flagging. I stopped in the Forest Service office and inquired.
The Assistant Ranger said, “Yeah, we’re going to log Cedar Creek and adjacent Basset Creek.” Then I asked about road access, which could require crossing some three miles of private non-forested land, another three miles of similar national forest, and then switchback up a steep mountainside before reaching marginal timber in patchy swamps on north slopes. The response: “We’ll probably have to condemn a right-of-way.”
Solitude and wildlife still persist undisturbed in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness though the Forest Service has allowed various waves of industrial strength uses to impact other areas of the backcountry. Photo courtesy Jesse Logan
This had been the treatment previously given to every major side drainage in the Paradise Valley, as well as Eagle and Bear Creek in the Gardiner Basin. This, despite slow tree growth, long forest rotation periods (if any), delayed tree reproduction and unstable slopes (post-glacial slumps).
Having seen this harmful pattern and with the Forest Service carrying out logging without any real public discussion, locals were appalled. These accelerated incursions into the wild country around us were causing unease, but there was a general attitude of helplessness: “How can we fight the federal government?”
Having seen this harmful pattern and with the Forest Service carrying out logging without any real public discussion, locals were appalled. These accelerated incursions into the wild country around us were causing unease, but there was a general attitude of helplessness: “How can we fight the federal government?”
Another problem: Practically everyone living close to the proposed roading and logging had a conflict of interest. Many worked for the government. Some government officials were community activists and leaders. There were grazing permits, post and pole sales, house logs, firewood and Christmas tree permits, etc. The District Ranger at the time was president of the Chamber of Commerce.
However regarding the proposed Cedar Creek clearcuts, we felt we had strong issues, such as condemnation of a road through the historic OTO ranch, the apparent lack of understanding by the Forest Service of the unique value of Cedar Creek for cutthroat trout spawning, and the failure to recognize the value of the Monitor Peak complex to the “local” elk herd, etc.
Early on I asked to speak to the Gallatin Forest Supervisor who was based in Bozeman. I figured he might give me a sympathetic hearing knowing that I had a history with the Forest Service. When I was ushered into his office, an assistant had laid out a large map. Without any more than an introduction, the Supervisor launched into his presentation: Pointing to Yellowstone Park, he said, “This has been recognized as a place for public recreation.” Then sweeping his hand across the surrounding national forest and including its roadless lands, he said, “I administer these lands, and they are intended for development.”
End of discussion. The battle had been joined. Although the Forest Service had long touted itself as a “conservation” agency, there was little recognition that nature and the health of wildlife conforms to bureaucratic administration lines drawn on maps. The Forest Service and the leaders it groomed did not value wilderness and thought national forests were there to be logged.
Map of Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness is available through Beartooth Publishing (beartoothpublishing.com)
We called a meeting at Brogan’s “Joint,” a roadside bar and grill at the mouth of Bassett Creek. Brogan’s was packed with local folk: ranchers, outfitters who guided clients, hunters, fishermen, Gardiner residents, Yellowstone employees, and businesspeople. The meeting started with disorganized discussions. Order was “restored” by two self-appointed bouncers, Wayne Hoppe and Jim Batzloff Sr.
Business ensued. We organized as the Cedar-Bassett Action Group (C-BAG). I made the mistake of suggesting a course of action and was immediately drafted as chairman. Bill Hoppe volunteered as secretary-treasurer. Frank Rigler offered $500 and we were in operation.
As soon as C-BAG was created, we started spreading the word on what was imminent. Sale preparations had already been started by the Forest Service without public notice—action which would certainly involve road construction. This would make a deep gash into the Monitor Peak complex of roadless country and with that engineered acess leave it changed forever.
Main Mill Creek had been previously roaded and logged. Road construction had been started up the West Fork of Mill Creek in preparation for logging—yet another tentacle into the rugged Monitor Peak complex.
We put out newsletters—old purple mimeograph—pointing out the gross inconsistencies of Forest Service reasoning, wrote letters to editors, attended meetings and made presentations to any group that would listen. We were greatly encouraged. But we were dealing with the Forest Service’s prevailing culture and institutional mindset.
The Gardiner Chamber of Commerce (with the president being the Forest Service District Range abstaining) unanimously resolved to oppose the proposal. The Livingston Chamber was sympathetic. The manager of the major local sawmill was one of the few who took issue with our stand.
The Montana Wilderness Association, of course, was with us. We met a number of influential folks, most notably Guy Brandborg, retired Supervisor of the Bitterroot Forest and a fiery wilderness advocate who was famous for trying to tame the industrial forestry mindset of his agency.
New grassroots organizations were forming: Back Country Horsemen out of Seeley Lake and led by outdoor writer Roland Cheek was one of them and there would be other local groups to arise, like the Bear Creek Council and in 1983 the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
I met with a group of Montana Wilderness Association members camped on the Horse Creek Plateau and made our pitch. We led a mule in the Gardiner Rodeo parade, bearing a large placard: “Cedar Creek is for elk and stout mules.”
The issue was ripening. The clearcut logging method, as applied to lodgepole pine logging in this arid country, was getting ugly. Journalist and conservationist Dale Burk’s book The Clear Cut Crisis had been published in 1970. Controversial logging south of Bozeman was visible for miles and was called the “the diaper line” and many worried it would be a harbinger for a sightline of clearcuts ringing the Gallatin Valley.
° ° ° °
Initially, I questioned whether I should include the observations above in these remarks because all my information on this subject relative to the proposed Cedar-Bassett timber sale is from anonymous (well-placed) sources. At the time of the Environmental Assessment, the Gallatin Forest had a wildlife specialist. He did not agree with the Forest Service’s EA findings regarding the Monitor Peak Complex elk herd and its interaction with the Northern Yellowstone elk herd. In response from his supervisors, he was abruptly transferred to the Southwestern US region of the Forest Service.
The above information was obtained by moccasin telegraph (i.e. hearsay) and I would not have included it except for a published report that I mentioned in a letter to my brother in Alaska dated April 24, 1997.
I had read this in a newsletter from Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics which has represented a large number of Forest Service whistleblowers who were questioning and challenging the agency’s focus on cutting trees just to make timber quotas. This is a paragraph from the letter to my brother:
“Just read an article on Baranoff Island. The Forest Service issued an Environmental Impact Statement approving of massive logging, disregarding their wildlife biologist. So she appealed the decision and is now fighting wildfires in Colorado. The same thing happened when they wanted to log Cedar Creek. He got his transfer while on vacation and was told to report to his new station in New Mexico without coming back here.”
This shows a pattern that has existed in the Forest Service.
West Fork of Mill Creek is like a lot of drainages flowing out of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, some that would not have been protected as wilderness or against logging if the Forest Service had not been called out. Photo courtesy Jesse Logan.
Gardiner and Livingston locals were near-unanimous in opposition to roading and logging Cedar and Bassett Creeks. In response, the Forest Service hastily issued an Environmental Assessment (EA) to justify its actions without being subjected to intensive scrutiny. Two key items that agency personnel invoked to justify their actions after the fact:
1) “Cedar Creek has little value as a fishery because it is dewatered for irrigation.”
2) “Elk hunting is limited because the elk are in the Park [Yellowstone] until after the hunting season ends.”
We locals knew these were not true. We contacted Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. To our amazing good fortune, a talented natural resource specialist, Jim Posewitz, was just putting together his newly formed environmental team, which was dispatched to our area.
Larry Peterman documented the very valuable spawning and escapement of cutthroat trout. Kerry Constan documented the year round elk use, as well as the migration route of the Northern Yellowstone elk herd. Bob Martinka worked on upland birds. Both Larry and Bob subsequently became leaders with Fish Wildlife and Parks and Posewitz is today a living legend.
With the Posewitz team’s documentation and public comment, the Forest Service then decided—was forced—to do an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). To our amazement, the erroneous fisheries assessment was repeated word for word from the Environmental Assessment in the EIS. Some other issues were treated in a similar manner. This made a huge difference in getting the attention of Congress as its members addressed the required Primitive Area study and what to do about roadless lands.
As required by the Wilderness Act, the Forest Service had issued a proposal for the Absaroka and Beartooth in about 1974. It was colloquially called the ABC proposal (Absaroka-Beartooth –Cutoff) creating three units of protected rock and ice, with road corridors separating—fragmenting—the units.
The bottoms of Stillwater River, Boulder River, Slough Creek, Abundance Creek, and Stillwater Basin—the biologically richest parts of the national forest and the places where the biggest trees grew—were excluded from wilderness consideration.
This was so absurd that, in addition to the contradictions in the Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Statement, Congress took the matter into its own hands with US Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana on point, and essentially ignoring the Forest Service and its self-described experts.
If left to the Forest Service would the much beloved Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness even exist today?
Groundwork for protecting the Absaroka and Beartooth as wilderness did not originate with the Forest Service. Instead, Congress developed its own bill, with support from citizens, relying on guidance from professional independent scientists. They combined the Absaroka and Beartooth Primitive Areas with surrounding undeveloped public land but vital to the wild character. Volunteer college students were dispatched to hike and fine-tune proposed boundaries. Planned timber sales, which had skirted in-depth analysis, had been delayed by public objection. Cedar, Bassett, and Crevice Creeks were added for Wilderness protection, as we had requested.
The irony is that the process of achieving permanent protection for these special places was set in motion despite having to maneuver the agency, the Forest Service, that normally would have been in charge of foresighted “stewardship.”
I attended a hearing chaired by Sen. Metcalf in Columbus, Montana. It played to a full house. The only testimony in opposition to wilderness classification that I can remember was predictably from a representative of the timber industry who claimed intimate knowledge of the “Sluff Creek area” and its “vast timber resource.” After he made a couple more references to “Sluff Creek,” someone hollered out, “Where the hell is Sluff Creek?”
Seems the hired gun was referring to Slough Creek and he backed off. Sen. Metcalf was amused.
The only testimony in opposition to wilderness classification that I can remember was predictably from a representative of the timber industry who claimed intimate knowledge of the “Sluff Creek area” and its “vast timber resource.” After he made a couple more references to “Sluff Creek,” someone hollered out, “Where the hell is Sluff Creek?” Seems the hired gun was referring to Slough Creek and he backed off. Sen. Metcalf was amused.
The stars were beginning to line up for us, but the Forest Service tried one more tactic. Its field staff stopped clearing and maintaining the trails within the proposed wilderness. Then we heard that they were going to pull out two critical trail bridges—Horse Creek and the high bridge on main Hellroaring at the Hellroaring cabin. We smelled a rat, so I talked with the District Ranger. He ridiculously allowed as to how the Forest Service had decided that bridges, cabins, and maintained trails did not meet the definition of “Wilderness”—untrammeled by man—and that they were going to rectify the situation.
I countered that it looked as if the Forest Service was trying to make the public dislike Wilderness as they have come to know it prior to the Congressional action. The District Ranger, of course, denied my contention. I countered with a friendly bet. I bet him a six-pack of beer that if the Absaroka-Wilderness bill, being championed by Sen. Metcalf, passed, then the bridges would be rebuilt in short order. We shook hands; the bet was on. My wager was on common sense.
Both actions came to pass. The Ranger ended up leaving without making good on his promise of putting the bridges back in. Within two years of passage of the act creating the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a new ranger tipped a loaded mule over while attempting to ford Hellroaring Creek near the old High Bridge site. Having been removed, both bridges were replaced without the construction benefit of the old structures. Trails were cleared. The old cabins remained in place. The A-B Wilderness is beloved today.
An angler who respects the special allure of wilderness leaves his mountain bike at the trailhead, as is required by law, in order to protect the slow-speed special character of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Photo courtesy Jesse Logan
Here, let me offer another aside: A decade before the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness debates started in earnest, when I was District Ranger, I felt that we, the Forest Service, were going too far in accommodating public use of the “backcountry.” Portions of trails were being graveled. New grades were supposed to be kept at six percent. Side-slopes were widened. Bridges and corduroy built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s were being replaced to higher standards to enable greater volumes of users. A big job on the Stillwater Ranger District was cutting a trail into a sheer rock face for some 500 feet to reach the top of Impass Falls and connect the East Rosebud Trail to Cooke City. It was done to appease industrial-strength recreation at the impairment of the wild character of the land.
Good engineering fun and it resulted in a trail today known appropriately as “the Beaten Path,” but how to explain the sudden change in standards?
With Sen. Metcalf as lead proponent, the Absaroka-Wilderness bill wound slowly through the Congressional maze. Objections were raised and countered. We locals were called NIMBY’s (not in my back yard), but the scope of how much land got protected as Wilderness broadened from a much smaller number to 900,000 acres and the cards were on the table. The bill passed and was signed on March 2, 1978.
The next day, I took a backpack and snowshoed from our place up Coyote Hill to snowline. Then I mushed up the ridge between Cedar Creek and Slip n Slide to the base of Timber Mountain.
A howling wind came up and the ridge was a total whiteout. Suddenly I was in midair! I had walked off the edge. A second or so (seemed like 10 minutes) later I was on a downslope in soft snow and shaking the snow off.
I cut north into forest and picked up a blazed survey line. The line led to an old brass -capped monument, which today was on the wilderness boundary. With a snowshoe I scraped down to bare ground, built a pot of coffee and reveled in the day. That evening Scotty and Louise Chapman showed up at the house with a six-pack of Michelob. A good day! Few people I’ve known, here or gone, ever regretted holding the Forest Service in check and preserving more lands than the agency refused to do itself.
Postlude
Over time, following my experience with the Forest Service, I came to realize that the professionals who rose to positions of leadership held or developed a distinct bias toward economic development of the national forests in myriad forms. In turn, this grew the organization and the power of its leadership.
Despairing of potential for change, a light appeared in the form of Gloria Flora, a Forest Service veteran and today a former supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Recognizing the raw beauty of the unroaded Badger-Two Medicine east of the divide between The Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park, she worked, while on the job, to get out from under previously awarded oil and gas leases.
When asked about the bias of officials above her, she said, “They’re dinosaurs; they’ll die!” Then came Jack Ward Thomas and Mike Dombeck as chiefs of the Forest Service, and care for the land seemed to prevail. But a change in politics appears to have choked off this trend.
Over-cutting and a reduction of the timber base has cut back on the timber sales program in arid, wild country. Reproduction and other management problems have led to over-optimistic rotation projections in this age of climate change. Recreation and public involvement have affected long-range timber management planning. All this has reduced the viability of the large timber mills that sprang up in the post-war period.
Logging for fire protection is now being used as a rationale for getting a full-blown timber program going again. Fuel reduction is effective for protecting structures at the edge of national forests, but three to five miles into the wild? The ironic benefits of “fire reduction” only last after logging if the underbrush continues to be constantly cleared at great effort and public expense.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series called "Those Who Faced A Challenge And Did The Right Thing," as part of a MoJo collaboration with The Cinnabar Foundation.
About Hank Rate
Hank Rate is well known for his involvement in conservation issues of the Upper Yellowstone River Valley. He has a been a professional land surveyor, a Forest Service district ranger and college-educated forester, a hunter, angler and citizen involved with a lot of grassroots efforts aimed at protecting the northern tier of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
