Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
0.9/19.6 Dailey Creek Trailhead.
Small parking area and Dailey Creek crossing.
Dailey Creek was named for one of the first families to winter in the valley on the other side
of the Gallatin Range. The family arrived in 1866 and still had a ranch there in the 1930s.
Lodgepole Creek joins the Gallatin opposite Dailey Creek. Note that locals pronounce the
word creek like CRICK, to rhyme with trick.
All trails in this part of the park are long, steep ones that lead into the Gallatin Range.
Dailey, Black Butte, and Specimen Creek trails all join with the Sky Rim Trail 5 miles or more
away and 3,000 feet up (about 8 km away and 900 m up). The Sky Rim Trail affords spectacu-
lar mountain views to the very hardy climber or horseback rider. Also, some stumps of petri-
fied wood are preserved there, but they are harder to reach and less interesting than those on
Specimen Ridge in the Lamar River Valley. Both grizzlies and black bears live in this northw-
est corner of Yellowstone.
Along the far side of the river, you'll see red-tipped white stakes marking the park bound-
ary.
2.6/17.9 Black Butte Creek Trailhead;
parking area on the west, trail on the east. This is
the shortest but steepest of the trails that connect to the Sky Rim Trail.
3.0/17.5
The almost perfect cone shape of
Black Butte
looms over the road to the east. Unlike
most
buttes,
this is not a flat-topped mountain. Geologists call Black Butte an
igneous intru-
sion.
This means that it's made of rock that rose as a molten mass from deep within the earth,
but stopped and crystallized before reaching the earth's surface. Since the overlying rocks
eroded away, we can now see the intrusion. Black Butte's rock is about 50 million years old.
3.9/16.6
There's a tiny stream called
Wickiup Creek
here. A wickiup was a temporary shelter
used by nomadic tribes of Native American Indians. A group of these hunting lodges stood
near the stream here in the park's early days.
4.6/15.9 Specimen Creek Trailhead.
This trail connects to the Sky Rim, High Lake,
and Sportsman Lake trails. In spite of its name, this is not the best route to take to see petri-
fied wood specimens. A ranger or local resident can best advise you on how to reach them.
Remember that no samples may be removed from the park. Two easier ways to see petrified
trees are by hiking from Yellowstone's northern approach road north of Gardiner, Montana,
and at Petrified Tree near Tower-Roosevelt Junction.
To the east is
Lightning Hill,
so named when rangers from the now-razed ranger station
near Wickiup Creek used to climb it to check for lightning-caused fires.
