Black Mountain Lookout

John spent most of the morning trout fishing in Prune Creek with some luck but nothing to brag about.  I sat by the creek with my watercolors and pretended to be a Pleinair artist. The ‘real’ artists make it look so easy but I find this a bit challenging with getting a three demensional look.  I achieved it with the creek but my trees are horrible!!

We decided to take a drive and a short hike later in the afternoon. The lady at the visitor center, who sold us a $22 map, said the hike up to the Black Mountain Lookout was only about a mile long but the views were spectacular because we could see the Tetons to the west and two states to the east.

First we had to find the right road - that took two tries.  Then we had to find the trail. The road we needed to take to the trailhead was blocked by a pickup truck.  The driver appeared from the right, across the creek and sauntered back to the truck, turned it around and left.  We crossed the creek, looking right where the man came from and saw a trail, looking left were two 5th-wheels parked along the creek, blocking our view up the hill, so we assumed the trail was to the right.  We walked for about 15 minutes up hill and then back down and came to a road.  On reflection, we realized that the road must have run by the 5th-wheels so we walked back to the car and drove up the left side up to the real trailhead. 

That drive was truly made for our Jeep.  It was very rutted and rocky and gave us an opportunity to do a little off-road travel.  Then came the 1-mile hike to the top.  It was steep walk up 800 foot of elevation.  The one mile was actually 1.5 miles and the last leg felt like rock climbing as it was very steep, shale in places and so narrow I was hugging the boulders on the inside edge.  But we made it to the 9,500 ft. summit and the views were as expected.  The CCC constructed several watch towers in the Bighorn Mountains and this is one of three still standing and still in use during the wildfire season.  They even had to put in rocks and cut a way through rocks to make it to the very tip top of  Black Mountain.  We didn’t stay long and the trek down was much easier. 

The last part of the hike started up this shale walkway up through the rocks to the lookout building at the arrow.