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hello Walkers and welcome back to Montana and welcome back to City walks
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the channel where I walk you around cities and uh point out interesting
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things and like today take you on little nature walks
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um I haven't filmed in Montana for six months probably April I think and it's
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mid October it's what is it it's about 42° fhe about 5° C beautiful mid October day
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and it is 11:30 in the morning we have filmed here before or I have filmed here
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before we've walked here before this is Pine Creek Trail it's super popular this
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morning and I'm taking kind of a shortcut through a side road Campground hopefully this will lead up to the
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trail uh the campground is closed this time of year but the Trail and other
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things are open you can see some of the campsites here and it's not a very long
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trail nor a very difficult Trail up to Pine Creek Falls which is our ultimate
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destination and I hopefully I can find my way through here uh it's so crowded
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that the parking lot was full and I had to park in a place a little bit further back I'd like to thank our patreon
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supporters thank you so much for all all of your support and for um just the encouragement that gives
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me in knowing that uh these walks are
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useful and handy um oh here we go Pine Creek Trail Head um and uh I'm glad
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you're enjoying them so anyo um and there's also you can make a
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onetime gift via PayPal or cofi or coffee you you can see those in the
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links in the YouTube description and you can generally find these walks and other
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walks where City walks live on the CityWalk virtual tours.com
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website so check that out but Pine Creek Falls is
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about 15 20 minutes south of Livingston Montana and uh it's a very popular Trail
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because it's so easy because it leads to a pretty waterfall
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and um just a beautiful Canyon so we'll walk up along Pine Creek above Pine
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Creek really and uh make our way up there and we'll cross a bridge and we'll probably
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see I a bunch of other
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hikers guess that's too funny uh human nature
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right I pulled up and saw this this further part parking lot full filling up
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so I just pulled in there and you come up here to the trail head and there's actually plenty of
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parking up here I guess that was maybe a group that we will potentially run into as we make
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our way up here I'm not sure but the last time I
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hiked here may have been in 2022 fil filming I've hiked here before um
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the day before the big floods it was a rainy day
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and uh this is interesting I haven't seen this sign before closed to stock
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December 2nd through September 15th it's pretty hard to get get up here on the
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approach Road in the winter it gets icy and they don't maintain it uh but it is
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a popular destination for Ice Climbers
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it's an old forest fire area that's coming back
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if you have any questions um please let me know in the Des in the
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comment section below love to hear your comments love to interact with you guys it's one of the joys of doing
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this so please feel free comments
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questions uh concerns or Corrections actually as long as they're well
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intended and well put
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oh you know what I forgot to introduce myself so I'm going to spin the camera around real
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quick my name is Henry I will be your proxy Walker today your virtual tour guide and co-discoverer I like to
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emphasize co-discoverer because a lot of times I'm new to a place as well so
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people up ahead are looking I'm going to spin you around
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again little tree across the
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trail the first time I filmed up here it was after late in the season
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early in the season and uh a lot of down timber across the trail I tripped and
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fell I had to cut that bit I usually live those things in in but had to cut that one out because I said some naughty
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language look at the colors um so I just recently published
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three Alaska walks and we had some fantastic autumn colors up there in the
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Birch Forest Rivals anything I've seen back East but now we get to have a second
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Autumn all these wonderful colors
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there this is a separate Trail the George Lake tie
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Trail and that's a goes up to George Lake surprise
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I'll have to go back and look at the previous my latest my last Pine Creek
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hike it feels like a lot of this Timber that died in the
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fire has fallen in the last year or
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two be a good place for a comparison
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part of the natural cycle although I think that fire may not
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fire I'm going to adjust this microphone
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better although it's going to capture my breathing a little bit
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more I love this little section of the trail this little tunnel of
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trees oh I also have to spin you around here this giant rock
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here so this is a local Trail locals Trail um gets used a lot by families we
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call this Slide Rock got cuz our kids when they were just little toddlers would love to climb
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up there and slide down and not really smooth but smooth enough rock face super
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exciting when you're two or three or four not great for the seat of their
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pants but they outgrow them so quickly anyway good memories
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this is exactly the worst height for me too high to step
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over and just low enough that crouching is uncomfortable I got to scramble under
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well hm quite a few trees down and this one was looks
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healthy they do a couple of them really they do get some wind storms in
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you can see down here you can't see the creek but you can see this little mini
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flood plane and if we didn't have a trail we'd be scrambling through
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that or I'll swing around over the other side uphill side see all this down
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timber up here as well and that's not from a fire that's just
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natural blowdown um but it can be pretty exhausting to
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get through that kind of stuff and I have to think about back to
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the Native Americans and the Trappers and Hunters hundreds of years ago or 100
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years ago and think man that must have been tough
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going of course they'd probably have a horse to do most of the going
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here's Pine Creek another interesting thing to
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observe a type of change is the course of this River over the years
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can't I don't know how long that main log there has been but it has shifted the course from
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the left to the right over the years and of course with the water levels that changes as
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well really pretty as this is Downstream side
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another interesting thing is when I film walks up here I have to time it right because this Canyon you can see the
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walls there and to the north is so narrow that you lose the sun pretty
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quickly and end up in Shadow get pretty chilly too
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so obviously this is a walking Channel and I end up reading articles about walking in the health benefits and one
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of the benefits is the ocular flow that these videos try to help stimulate by
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the visual flow of things moving past to as you
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walk um and another of course is the physical exercise which you can get inside on
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your treadmill or outside uh but one of the books I've read in the
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last year or two it's called breath or breathe and having this microphone next
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to me and uh walking uphill I'm very conscious of my
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breathing and it actually breathing through your nose and
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breathing deeply it's it feels good and I get I've gotten to like it a
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lot absor Beartooth Wilderness kuster gon National Forest
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you can read all that but a Wilderness Area if you're not from the US or unfamiliar
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is a legislatively designated Place
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area with some pretty stringent restrictions around uh
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mechanical access you have to have special permits to land aircraft you can't ride
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bicycles uh you can't bring in motorcycles or
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ATVs um and it's it's it's pretty nice to walk and I say
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that as a big advocate for riding
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bikes but uh still it's nice to have the
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quiet with of no machines really I think you can bring
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in chainsaws but I'm not sure about that um speaking of riding
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bikes if you have haven't checked out the Instagram page Instagram Channel I
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guess uh for City walks virtual
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tours I've been posting oh here's a little
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Robin eating some berries off that tree any who I've been
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posting photos and videos of the biking side of the trip my son and I took
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riding across France in May and from which I
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got quite a few French city walks or France City walks all along the lais
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valley and up to Basel Switzerland then back to Bayou Bay I
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think that's how you say it so check those out check out the
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channel if you're into it because it's been
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fun for me to share those experiences and to go back and stir the memories as
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there's a little bit of fire smoke in the air it's been super dry this fall and we've had a couple
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fires blow up in the region not really locally so much um we've had some really bad Hazy
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Days but it's it's actually cleared up but it creates this depth of the
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mountains sort of getting progressively lighter after each Ridge which is kind of
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nice not great to breathe but it's pretty
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oops this is a super busy Trail as I mentioned super
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popular and uh this time of
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year the black and grizzly bears are hyperphagic meaning they are jeez
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uh really rushing to put on as much fat as they can before winter before
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hibernation and uh there's also Hunters out bow
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hunting this time of year we're going to have to go under this I do believe that's not so
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bad um so even on this Trail I'm carrying bare
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sprays 99.9% chance unnecessary even higher than that really
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but it's good to have it you never
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know I'm going to get in some more Montana walks but then I'm also taking a trip just a
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short trip to see some friends in Chattanooga again so hopefully I'll get a couple more walks there and then over
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Thanksgiving we're going to go down to the redwoods in California to see some
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family and uh hopefully I'll get a walk or two done there either hopefully in the
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woods and maybe on the coast there as well
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if you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments
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there beautiful dogs like pain there
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buers this is actually close to the steepest
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bit which is not very steep unless you got little
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legs hi there you got to do your balance on both sides when
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you're you can see the creek down there
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maybe all ice hi there how it going good thanks that's all ice
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there's the creek and you can see a couple suppose
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those are ashin trees sticking out like yellow thumbs and the green of the pine
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I guess maybe that quote unquote steep section is up here it's
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like maybe up here 100 yards it's not very far and it's not very steep
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actually that's why the quotes
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there's a group ahead of us with some kids kind of
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threading the need here with quietness
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on the one hand it's nice to have quiet and uh calm and peace on these Trails on
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the other hand it's so fun to hear kids getting a little wild and having a good
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time hi there how yall doing
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I don't know if it came on camera but there's a child back there bouncing up and down on a fallen log and sort of got
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some spring to it super fun
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I can see some Talis rock over here and
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some I don't know what kind of Cliff that
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is shist or nice nice
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and if I slide by you here thanks sir
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day can I pass you thank you
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I think it's one big family out for a Sunday stroll for the most part love seeing that
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thank you problem yeah you too
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so then what they just pay you out and you get like a l
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yeah this is a steep bit quote
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unquote probably not even 100 yards actually
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is the payoff is we're right near the waterfall
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gets the breath going though
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there that is a joint over there you can smell it
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and it's perfectly legal in Montana
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fine Creek Falls y'all and then above here is a pool created by those
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logs and uh here's the bridge crosses over Pine Creek and then
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this Trail actually keeps going uh up and around here I'll point in that
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direction and it keeps going it gets really steep not really steep for
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several miles and ends up at Pine Creek Lake I've
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lived here for 20 years I've never been to Pine Creek Lake tried once in the
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spring and it got into some deep snow and so I quit I was with a group we
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but call that post holing when you the uh you're just stepping in this deep
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crusty snow and you keep breaking through and maybe it's only a foot deep
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or maybe it's two feet deep and it's
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exhausting we'll go up here a little ways
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all right here's the canyon and
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the trail continues on switching back to top of the falls and then on up to the lake I think we're going to call it
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thank you so much for joining us once again back in Montana beautiful beautiful Big Sky
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State hope you'll join me again on our next walk I'm not sure where that's going to be yet probably Livingston or
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Boseman but we'll see and uh until then keep on stepping