Debbe Dunning's Dude Ranch Roundup S01E04: "Hawley Mountain Guest Ranch"

[Music] tonight on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup we're in montana to pan for gold fish ride horses and take a wild journey to the top of the mountain don't go anywhere we're about to get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup powered by ram trucks welcome to debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup this week we're in mcleod montana at holly mountain ranch we find ourselves deep in the gold mining hills of absaroka beartooth wilderness on a settlement that dates back over 11 000 years this is sacred ground from prehistoric dwellings and crow indian cave drawings to the old cabins and rock crushers of the montana gold rush these lands are rich with evidence and history of human settlers the original homestead was built in the late 1800s here on boulder river the jarrod family purchased the ranch in 1917 built the lodge in 72 and today great-grandson ron jarrett runs the ranch with his wife phyllis hi i'm debbie hi debbie i'm ron jarrett hi this is my wife phyllis hi phyllis so nice to meet you welcome this place is great is this the lodge this is the lodge this is our biggest room on the ranch this is like the main heart of the place where the place is a gathering we gather mix here and this is our view out the window people like this is a oh my gosh you get to see this every day and we never get tired of it especially when we see it through fresh eyes like yours every week this rock seems to flow through into your cabin is that actual rock it does that rock that sticks up in the floor is part of this rock that we're on oh i love it secure ground with just enough rustic cabins to accommodate 20 guests a week holly mountain ranch captures the essence of a small early american homestead this is a spot that people have been for a long time you can just imagine how far up and down the valley you can see if you're somebody that was here 8 000 years ago and you sat up here and you could see everybody coming in or going out and all the animals there weren't near as many trees back then so they could see everything herds moved with the seasons miners hauled wagons up and down the mountain and for thousands of years men and women have been here among the misty hilltops alone in the wilderness living off the land wow what a view well we're just about to have lunch so uh we'll head on in after lunch we'll show you the barn and introduce you to your horse and wranglers oh that would be fantastic then tomorrow we'll do something that i don't know how to describe you'll just have to experience it i am so excited to have my son cisco here with me this week he's just learning how to ride and a horseback trip through these purple mountain majesties is a great introduction to this age-old american tradition our first day here is almost a total rain out but today the skies are clear and bright so we're saddling up to hit the trail the first step to any dude ranch adventure is being introduced to your horse and wrangler and getting your saddle adjusted just right you'll be using it all week is the is the right one a little longer check it out exactly the same we have another beautiful day here at the ranch it's just incredible we're going to go for about an hour and a half ride into the canyon [Music] this land is spectacular ron's great grandfather ralph jarrett purchased this homestead as a place for his sheep to stop and graze on the 80-mile trip from big timber to the high country a welcome break on such a long journey today sure is nicer than yesterday sure it turned out nice what's this mountain in front of us called hawley oh that's hollywood holy mountain okay then holly crick runs right over here how was it named original homesteader in this country tom hawley he was here in early 1900s gallatin national forest is quiet and peaceful six mountain ranges and roughly 2 million acres border yellowstone which covers another 20 million acres four thousand miles of river runs through it serving as major tributaries to the yellowstone river there's a downed tree up here we'll all hold our horses back and we'll go up one at a time you guys know right what he just said one at a time i know you've done this but i just wasn't you'll go cisco what yeah here this is challenging terrain but these horses are used to it with a sure foot and a steady pace they work their way up and down these steep hills with ease you're doing well cisco i'm proud of you all right you can go steep little uh climb yep that's him that's him again my heart's a little sketchy the cameras then she gets over it oh you should have heard cisco's horse fart it was it was so loud so what is this is this hell's canyon yeah that's what this is called yeah this ride why do they call it that no idea plethora of information this is steep we may not know why it's called hills canyon but to me it's a little slice of heaven hey you don't go anywhere i hear there's gold in them there hills we'll do some prospecting and fly fishing on the famous boulder river on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup for more information on holly mountain ranch visit hollymountain.com the area surrounding holly mountain ranch has a long history of gold mining what started with a small fan and a lot of patience eventually became large-scale machines crushing tons of rocks a day we'll see plenty of artifacts of these machines while here this week but i wanted to see firsthand how it all started just one man digging in the sand searching for a fortune you know what we're doing here is demonstrating we didn't go to our best spot it's hard to get to and we didn't want to give away of course i'm told that a lot of places here you can get the gold and so we're going to try to get some sand we're going to get rid of the rocks and then we'll take some water and try to wash the sand what did your great grandmother tell you about tom holly told her well he told her that that there was gold on hawley mountain here and my grandmother said that he was too old and blind to show us where it was at the time so it's still here the old timers followed the gold by panning in the streams to see where the gold was coming from so what are you doing just taking off all the little taking off the rocks i'm pretty sure i don't have any big heavy nuggets in here so we're going to get rid of the big stuff and then we're going to sit through the small stuff and see if there's any fine stuff in here okay it might be gold this process is the simplest way to extract gold but if you're hoping to find a big nugget think again gold dust is the best you can hope for while panning but it's very helpful in finding where bigger deposits might be what is it going to look like a flat piece or a tiny tiny little dude they're usually pretty tiny smaller than the head of a pin smaller than a head of a pin that's typically what you find i'm going to need some readers that's really small but isn't it just like a glimpse of a shimmer and then you'd find it well it it's heavy oh it's heavy and so it stays on the bottom when you shake this around the heavy stuff is on the bottom so where the heavy stuff settles out is where the gold would settle out that's why they like black sand i'm not sure about what's in the black sand i think it might be iron but anyway that's heavier than a light board we have gone on an excursion where we did it all day and caught a few flakes but you would make a real poor living at it if i had done this a lot it would probably be a lot quicker i don't think we found any we have some black sand in there but i don't see any gold let's go like this let's just kind of see it i'm pretty sure that spool's gold i should have brought a syringe up here to suck these pieces up that's what they usually do is they have a little syringe when they get a piece it sinks on the bottom like that they suck it up it takes a lot of looking a lot of patience and we're all too busy working while cisco and the grandkids work on striking it rich i'm gonna go over here and join my friend eric brady for a little fly fishing there's all sorts of different types of flies some are hatching some are water bugs that are underneath the surface what i have on right now is a grasshopper and they all they come off the bank and they'll land in the water and drift down so you pulled that out and then you just let it go and it went as far as it's got enough weight to go that far yeah so with the fly rod your weight is in your line and it's long enough where you can cast it out so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to cast back i'm going to go ahead and cast all this line out and get it right back out there with your hand what do you say ten to two ten and two between those yes okay that's general general rules though okay i'm gonna try so you're gonna hold right left hand beware everybody back there all right so go ahead and cast back there now what you'll do is you see all the slack there on the river you'll pull it in as you go so i pull it down here yep just like that just like that that means i'm doing something right you're almost a natural if any of this seems familiar it's no surprise the boulder river and surrounding areas were the key shooting locations for the 1992 film a river runs through it there oh you see it i think you snapped the fly off though i'm sorry did i really i'm not seeing it go ahead and reel in a little bit all right and if so i can tie another one on i kind of hear it in your voice that you're a little disappointed in me she's getting it okay you're gonna show me how to tie a new fly on the fly that at the very end there's the eye of the hook oh my goodness that's so small and then our line so you got a neat practically invisible it is all right perfect i think i got it today oh my gosh all right run through so twist i'll twist the fly about seven times spin it yep okay so right above the eye there's a teardrop loop yeah i'm gonna take my tail twisted yep feed it through there okay and then i do that i make another loop and i come right back up through [Music] tighten it down and then you clip that yep and that's it you just clip the tail there we go cast up stream and let it drift down there now let it drift each time you're casting yeah the line should be coming through your hand okay just a little bit until it's all out got yourself yeah okay i'm gonna do this just because we're in the river track the shark those boulder river sharks okay so obviously i haven't perfected this yet but every ranch teaches me something new and i can't imagine a better way to spend a beautiful day we're going to keep fishing but stick around we've got a wild mountain ride coming up next right here on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup powered by ram trucks [Music] now the real adventure begins it's a brisk rainy morning as we load up for this long journey ahead for the next three hours we will be climbing the mountainside into millions of acres of pristine wilderness and i do mean climbing we are on this vehicle which is called the 6x6 and a group of us are going up to monument peak in blue lake it's kind of cool because we got a little rain we got a little weather i forgot my raincoat it feels good i mean and it's beautiful up here what do you think cisco yeah the pins gower the 6x6 vehicle it's actually an austrian military vehicle compared to the ford it's like a cadillac so people don't realize it but it's a lot smoother we're headed through the gallatin national forest to the absaroka beartooth wilderness area named for two distinct mountain ranges that are totally different geologically absaroka is volcanic rock while the beartooth range is mostly granite both are a major feature of the greater yellowstone ecosystem did you see this way i mean it overlooks this could be this could be yosemite this is like yellowstone this is amazing up here so how long have you been coming out here well our family first started coming here in about 1959 my mother was from eastern montana was looking for a place where they could have a family reunion and they love the canyon so much that they've been coming back ever since every year as you can see it's a little bumpy but the first stretch isn't too bad it's almost smooth sailing through the weathered remains of independence once a gold mining community now just a ghost town there's still gold here in 1896 there was a depression and the metals market crashed it was costing a lot of money to get it out and they couldn't afford to do it anymore for many years those who lived and worked here struggled to produce enough gold to survive montana is ranked as the seventh largest producer of gold in the u.s but it was never easy and took a lot of effort and ingenuity to make it happen the only thing that will sink in mercury is gold the gold was heavy so more of it would stay in the bottom in almost all these processes they used liquid mercury to separate the gold from the rock this was the three stamp mill here there would have been a steam engine back here that ran a belt and spun the shaft at the top the gears then spun the shaft that this piston is on would pick it up and drop it the ore was in here and it would crush it and the water would wash the rock away like muddy water we'll see some crawford mills further up the ground or even finer and they use mercury in the bottom of those and drain the mercury off to get the goal out we're only halfway there but it feels really good to get out and stretch our legs a little bit now is when the ride starts to get a little interesting we're going to start going up okay uh monument peak is is the middle one over here you can't see it from here but oh wait wait wait we're gonna get the very gonna come around the other side very very top the very very top the first part of the road we did very little climbing and now this is the halfway point we're gonna start climbing up we're probably close to about seven thousand feet and we're gonna go up to 9 700 feet this next part is a little rougher not as many people go up there so the road is still in rough condition and there's a lot of boulders and washouts but the vehicles we have getting through there pretty easily so well not easily they get through though we're climbing to 9000 feet and now the road is nothing but rocks and boulders it's obvious why we needed this 6x6 the weather is getting worse and it looks like we might have to turn back before we even make it [Music] but as we finally begin to reach the summit the sky opens up and the rain clears presenting us with a view so majestic i can't even put it into words [Music] god you know not many people get a chance to see this beautiful and remote part of the united states [Music] the road was long but seeing the sheer beauty of this place i understand how they make this trip twice a week every single week okay we're gonna break for a little lunch at blue lake but we've got a lot more to see at holly mountain ranch so stick around on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup for more information on holly mountain ranch visit hollymountain.com our trip from holly mountain ranch up to monument peak was a long wild ride but as you can see it was well worth it [Music] monument peak is the highest point in the area topping out at 11 000 feet and even at this altitude the remnants of gold mining machinery are everywhere how do you think they got these things up here it was it was a steep trip up here with horses they might have used cables and pulleys and ran the horses downhill while the wagon was going uphill but over and over and over over and over it took them some time my great grandmother used to come up to the ranch when they first got it and they ran cattle up there and she says the horses clawed their way over the rocks and the wagons bounced along behind that's how she described the trip a few of the other guests decided to hike to the top for lunch and enjoy this amazing scenery as long as possible [Music] we finish up our lunch at the lake and head over to a nearby hillside still covered in snow this time of year snow is scarce but there's more than enough to entertain kids of all ages just like i imagine it did so many years ago childhood goes so fast when i grew up i mean my fondest memories were with my girlfriends building a fort or carving our name our initials in a tree we had that secret and our parents didn't know oh my god it was such a long time ago and you come out to a place like this and you connect with your kids and i walk over to check on where he goes okay you can go back now mom cause he's having so much fun it's awesome boy i wish we could stay all night but we've gotta load up and take that long journey back down the mountain when someone asks you what is a dude ranch how do you answer that you know we're all different you know people come and they expect to have a good time they come for the horses they get something else out of it family atmosphere and the camaraderie they get in a small ranch i find the hospitality in these small ranches you show up as strangers it's really a matter of hours before you become friends and by the end of the week you're going to be lifelong friends it's amazing my son when i first brought him he just could not stop saying i want to ride a horse i want to ride a horse and then when there was children like now his imagination kicked in and he is playing cowboys and indians out here he doesn't do that at home with ipad in front of him uh once again the experience at holly mountain was unique personal and different from every other ranch i've been to the sheer majesty of this part of the world is enough to make it worthwhile year after year but the warmth and the hospitality of this amazing family has just made it perfect believe it or not there are still so many different ranches across the country to show you and each one offers a unique signature brand of horses hats and hospitality so i hope you join me next time right here on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup [Music] when you're ready to book your dude ranch vacation visit our website for more information and don't forget to tell them you saw it right here on debbie dunning's dude ranch roundup [Music] you

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Id: 671r_lbadS0

Length: 21min 57sec (1317 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021