4 Bear Trail - Cody BLM - Shoshone National Forest

Today was our last day in Cody, Wyoming, and we wanted to find a hike that would acquaint us with the spectacular mountain scenery along the Shoshone River Valley east of Yellowstone and west of Cody.

After some research, we picked the 10-mile (out and back) Four Bear Trail, which provides access to Four Bear Mountain climbing north, from BLM lands at the trailhead, approximately four miles to the Shoshone National Forest boundary where it connects to many trails in the forest. The elevation gain is about 2,000 feet, ranging from 5,600 feet to 7,600 feet. Spectacular views are offered of the North Fork Shoshone River valley and fascinating volcanic spires, turrets and banded rock formations. Wildlife such as deer, elk, grizzly and black bear, and numerous bird species such as golden eagles and mountain bluebirds are often found in the trail area.  After the first 2 miles, the trail is very steep and rugged with multiple switchbacks.

We were very glad we made this choice.  We found limited information about the trail on the internet, but, as it turned out, the trail rewarded us at virtually every step of the way.  We've seldom hiked a trail that had so much to offer in terms of scenery, geology an wildlife.  The BLM recently carved this trail out of public lands through an area where a patchwork of private properties make it difficult to find a route up to the border of the Shoshone National Forest.  A great deal of rock and trail work was necessary to construct switchbacks across the cliffs and through the cols to weave our way up to our destination.

Here's a photo of David at the trailhead.  Our weather was nearly perfect:  warm to 85F, with a stiff breeze blowing the whole day to keep us cool:

As we worked our way up past the ranches, we passed this skeleton, which hinted at some story of an animal that eventually succumbed to either the bears or other predators in the area, or to the cold winters:

It wasn't long before we had our quarry in our sights:  Four Bear Mountain!

Within a mile or so, we were tailed by this cheeky bird that kept flying from post to rock, and rock to post, keeping track of us as we invaded its territory:

Starting to climb, we began to get a hint of the stark beauty of this volcanic landscape:

We began to follow a stream bed up-gradient.  The water had worn a minor canyon in the soft rock, and willows and other opportunistic green plants found footholds near the moisture, among the eccentric rock formations:

Perhaps halfway up, we looked back and began to get a sense of the country spreading out below us:

From the beginning of our hike, David obsessed over this chimney-like rock formation.  It seemed our trail was heading straight for it the whole way - until - suddenly - we passed it without even a suggestion that we had done so.  A little disappointing, but we have the photos to remember it by.

One of our favorite rock formations was this duo which stood side-by-side on a knife-edge ridge that we had to traverse to get up to the col leading to Four Bear Mountain:

Near the top, we stumbled on this amazing, gigantic geode, just protruding as natural as you please from the volcanic rock in which it was caught:

We realized, "Holy Nodule!  We've come upon a vein of geodes, nodules and other quartzy rocks!" Kathy was beside herself.  We found the drainage that seemed to have washed these beautiful rocks off the top of the mountain and felt like children playing in a field of dreams.  We agreed to first rest and have lunch, and then we would return on our way down to take some time and hunt for geodes.

Here was our view looking north into the Shoshone National Forest from the ridge leading to Four Bear Mountain.  Kathy especially liked these two circular clouds, floating benignly above the landscape:

And then there's the obligatory selfie looking south across the Shoshone River Valley behind us:

It was extremely windy up on the ridge, to the point where we had to hold onto everything to avoid it blowing away.  The following 360 degree view from our perch high on the col of Four Bear Mountain will give you a sense of how windy it was.  The camera was almost blown out of David's hand as he made his rotation.

But let us return to Kathy's favorite part of the story.  We finished our lunch and began a half hour or so of geode hunting.  We found a desiccated juniper tree where other, unknown rock hunters had placed some of their favorite finds for our enjoyment.  Kathy added her favorite geodes to the collection and we took this photo (remember not to take anything but photos...):

Beginning our return after leaving Nodule Heaven, we encountered this doughty boy, who seemed to be a two-faced god looking both directions at once across the igneous landscape:

Kathy just had to find a rocky friend to play with, and here, finally, she did, standing on a dizzy precipice overlooking the bottom of the valley:

As we hiked further back down the trail, we realized that much of the lower ground we hiked across had been formed geothermally, much as parts of Yellowstone within the caldera.  Here are piles of spewed minerals and limestone, clearly formed from hot springs flowing and building tuffy hills in polychromatic ecstasy:

We found one last surprise before we hit the trailhead, which was this shiny vine of yellow-green leaves and white, fluffy seed pods, crawling all over a generous host juniper tree:

We tried to identify what the fluffy vine might be, but failed, so you will just have to enjoy it for what it looks like, without knowing its etymology.

By the time we returned to the trailhead, we had logged nearly 10 miles, with 2,000 feet of elevation gain and loss.  Our little dogs were barking.  We climbed in the truck, broke out our celebratory Gatorade, and drove the short way back to our campground, ready to pack up to move south tomorrow.