Four (Five) Pass Loop in Southern Abasaroka's

After picking up a few supplies in Cody, we headed for the abandoned mining town of Kirwin. Based on the description of the route in Douglas Lorain's book we parked the car at the Jojo Creek trailhead and walked the final 7 miles into Kirwin. We could have easily driven it, the road was good and just a couple of easy creek crossings. However, it was an easy walk into Kirwin, if just a bit warm to start. It rained a bit on the walk in to Kirwin but nothing heavy. Spending the night in Kirwin was a good option for us as it gave us a chance to acclimatize before heading into the high country. A few others camped here, most of whom had horses.
We modified the route by adding the Cascade Creek trail to the loop proper, so the first day we headed out of Kirwin up the Cascade Creek trail. It's a tough climb out of Kirwin with fully loaded packs but the trail leads you by some old mines and cabins that are high above Kirwin, so interesting scenery. We eventually reached the top of the pass and enjoyed spectacular views all around. We then traversed the ridge over to the East Fork Pass and descended the East Fork trail to it's intersection with the Bear Creek trail. We made it a couple of miles further up Bear Creek trail and then with rain rolling in, found a camp site and threw up the tent in time to wait out a couple of hours of rain.

The next day was a three pass day as we went over Bear Creek Pass and two unnamed passes on the Absaroka trail. We saw a large herd of elk on the backside of Bear Creek pass and a herd of Bighorn sheep on the second unnamed pass. We saw one big grizzly track on the trail today as well, but other than some clawed up trees, that was all of the bear sign we saw the entire trip. Not entirely disappointed about that... The first unnamed pass on the Absaroka trail is pretty cool at top, you feel like Frodo tramping through Mordor, it's stark and on a gray cloudy day, it's otherworldly. We made camp on the far side of the last pass in a large meadow at about 10,400 feet. Got down to 33* this night, which was the coldest of the trip. Cloudy all day today but didn't rain on us although it did in spots around us.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny as we finished the descent down to Wiggins Fork and then turned right to head up Burwell Pass. Nice climb to get the blood pumping this morning. Cool experience - as we neared the top of Burwell Pass, two elk (one a nice 6x6) were on the top of the mountain looking down at us. Reminded me of the King of the Forest in Bambi. We spent 30-45 minutes hanging out on top of Burwell Pass enjoying the views, which are marvelous in all directions. Spent the afternoon making the long descent down to the Greybull river, where the trail turns and parallels the river for the next several miles. This is drier country with a lot of dead trees, making the first few miles up the Greybull less scenic than other parts of this hike. We found a flat spot a hundred yards off the trail close to the river and made camp for the night.


The next morning we hiked over Greybull Pass and down through Brown Basin before descending steeply into Kirwin. It was foggy up top on the Pass, but would intermittently clear and provide cool views down into Brown Basin. The rain began to fall heavily as we hiked through Brown Basin and would keep up until we got to Kirwin. The climb up Greybull involves a lot of switchbacks on loose rocks, which are tiring. We finished out the hike by walking the road back to Jojo Creek. We did spook a big bull moose who was grazing in a clearing 50 yards off the road. That was neat although it happened too quick to get a picture.

We spent the night in Cody before heading back to Billings the following day. This was a great hike, I really fell in love with these mountains. The operative word is big, big mountains, big valleys, big passes, big solitude. We saw one group of three fishing their way down the Greybull. They were the only people we saw after we left Kirwin. My kind of hike.