Surrounded by GRIZZLY BEARS at a Log Cabin in Montana!

This is the four-mile cabin in the Apsaroka Mountains of Montana. Surrounded by over a thousand grizzly bears, it is smack dab in the middle of one of the most stable populations of bears south of Alaska. Grizzlies move freely through the mountains here and right now they're extremely active. Holy cow, that is a huge track. So that would put the Ohani length of that thing at like six and a half. I think this is a rub tree. Mr. Market's territory. Yeah. That territory is right on our trail. So join us for two days of jaw-dropping beauty as we literally walk in the footsteps of the mighty grizzly bear. We're in the Apsaroka Mountains on the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park in Montana heading for a pretty incredible spot. It's a historic log cabin that was built in the heart of one of the wildest, most rugged sub-ranges of the Rockies. The Apsarokas are steep, deeply cut by rivers, and prime grizzly bear habitat. It's springtime. The bears have just come out of their dens and are roaming around the lower elevations of these mountains. Welcome back to Montana everybody and welcome back to the 4 Mile Cabin. If you've been around here for a little while you would know that I came here last year at this exact same time of year and it was completely different. This whole place was buried in snow. I had to actually snowmobile in but the west has just not gotten the snowfall that they usually get this winter and so right now man we don't have like any snow here. It's completely dry and everything looks completely different as well. But either way I'm super excited to be back. I've got my brother Tommy here as well as my best friend Colton and we're just going to get out and enjoy the Apsaroka mountains here. Definitely hit the trail, do some exploring, and I'm hoping that we'll catch some fish. We're going to head down to the Boulder River a little bit later and see if we have any luck. Now despite the lack of snow it is still pretty chilly here. We're expecting temperatures in the high 40s dipping down well below freezing overnight. And so I'm going to quickly fire up this wood stove and then we'll take a look around the cabin. The cabin itself was built in 1932 and has two rooms inside. You've got the kitchen which has the wood stove in it as well and then there's the bunk room which has a few different beds for visitors to utilize. The cabin also has electricity which is a rare treat in these forest service cabins which tend to be fully off-grid. Now to start things off here we're going to try to track down a hidden waterfall on the Boulder River. There's no formal trail to get there and you can really only find it if you're looking at a map of the area. For me personally whenever I think of this state or the west it reminds me of my family because we took so many road trips out here and this was also where we are right now my dad's favorite spot to come fishing so yeah it just means a lot. I miss him so it's sad and special the last time I was here I was talking to my dad on the phone about the different places to fish on this river and yeah very sad to be back here a year later and he's no longer with us but special to be here with Tommy my brother my best friend Colton all of us who spent so much time with him at our cabin in places just all over the country it's yeah wouldn't want to be here with anybody else so it's going to be very important for us on this one to keep in mind that we're in grizzly bear country. So we're always going to be making noise the louder the better at times to let them know we're coming and if we do happen to have an encounter we all have got our bear spray we know the drill you know when it comes to bears like it's always fascinating when you do get to see a grizzly bear at the same time you really are hoping that you see it at a very far distance oh my gosh guys hurry up hurry up we gotta go there's a bear that's really close to us oh my gosh all right so we we have a grizzly bear Colton and I have had encounters with bears all over the country we got a bear walking right towards us the two of us used to host a television show called rock the park where we traveled to national parks and other wild places bear bear bear bear bear and so while this isn't our first rodeo that's a sow with two yearling cubs oh yeah you definitely don't want to get complacent when you are in grizzly bear country there's just something about mountain rivers the flowing water that just instantly puts me at ease i just love thinking about how the snow is melting and it's flowing down these massive peaks and then making its way through the valley here we get to hike alongside it we get to fish in it it's just such a cool experience and i just feel so a part of this landscape when i'm here so far we're not having too difficult of a time going along the shoreline we're kind of dipping in and out of the woods getting onto some of the boulders and it seems like we're getting a little bit closer to this waterfall the waterfall here is part of a steep canyon stretch here on the boulder river where it cuts through narrow sections underneath the major peaks of the apsarokas and so this type of terrain generally creates rapids short drops and boulder choked cascades like the one that we are seeing right here this is why i love the west right here just miles and miles of wilderness with secrets to uncover and beautiful views around every turn it's a pretty awesome way to start this trip i'll tell you what so we tried doing a little bit of fishing on the river before heading back to the cabin however unfortunately we didn't have any luck but it turned out to be a real relaxing time to just kick back and watch the water flow by so i don't know if anyone's really noticed but i don't often do my campfire whiskey anymore but i figured this was a special occasion we're in one of my dad's favorite spots and we have his favorite scotch here so we're gonna take a little drink in honor of him and just kind of soak in this this beautiful place together because honestly that's what these places are all about they're about making memories and just being together with the people you care about for dinner tonight we are all making our own pizzas really utilizing the fact that we have an oven for once and i think it's gonna be really really good all right dear god thank you for this awesome cabin help us to be safe tonight and bless this food amen we didn't have a ton of ingredients to choose from i think we just had cheese salami pepperoni pizza sauce of course and some pesto i guess i just kept it simple avocado oil sauce cheese and then tea with pepperoni that's it that's good that's it and that's all man that's it that's all man i started with a hefty amount of the avocado oil okay then we added some cheese right away then the sauce on top of the cheese then the pepperoni then more cheese that's great bad way to start the morning man oh man this cabin is in just the most beautiful spot smack dab in the middle of the mountains on the boulder river and four mile creek here so after taking in the view of the creek for a while it was time to head back to the cabin and whip up some breakfast so that we could get out on the day's adventure got a nice little cabin breakfast here some bacon hash browns and eggs simple but very filling and delicious well the time had finally come to head out on the day's adventure we're going to start off by driving the road here deeper into the mountains where it should get rougher and rougher so as many of you probably can pick up by now family is extremely important to me and i'm so grateful to live right by the house that i grew up in where my mom currently lives now it's a pretty big space for just my mom to live in and we wanted her to be able to feel safe and secure and so that's why i'm so happy we were able to hook her up with four anona aurora 4k security cameras these cameras are pretty cool and we've got them positioned around the house so she can keep an eye on every single corner of this space so if you're at the front door the driveway the side of the house or the backyard it's totally covered each camera comes in a box like this and has all the hardware that you need to install let me show you how it's done all you have to do is mount this bracket to whatever surface you want to hang the camera you screw on the next piece and then attach the camera then all you have to do is install the solar panel which allows this camera to essentially run forever without having to charge it manually the whole process takes about five to ten minutes and then you are set for the long term which i think is really really cool as i mentioned before it's 4k it's got ultra high definition video with full color night vision and i spend a lot of time here on this property i store most of my cabins here and it's kind of cool to be able to look back and see myself working on them doing different chores around the house it's especially cool to be able to look in the backyard and watch the dogs having fun as well these cameras have ai detection which means they're going to capture who or what is entering the premises and it's also nice that it has two-way communication that way if somebody's at the front door or anywhere on the property you can let them know that you see them and hear back from them as well so somebody is at the front door like this i can communicate back and forth with them it is really really nice all in all i think it's a really awesome setup for my mom it's a great way for her to be able to keep an eye on her property whether she's home or away and so if you want to check out the anona aurora 4k security camera all you have to do is follow the link in the description of we're so grateful to them for sponsoring and for keeping my mom safe and so with that let's get back to this adventure all right so we're going to give the road a go here see how far we can make it up this pass it's going to be very slow going because there are rocks ruts puddles you name it that we have to navigate around this is what i love about the west there's roads like this all over and even these trails the ride is a little bumpy but the destination is stuff you're not going to see anywhere else we're definitely starting to go up here and we're running into a lot of downed trees thankfully people have come through here and caught them up so from here the road continued further up into the mountains until we reached the end of the line now that we're on this trail the plan is to hike into the apsaroka beartooth wilderness and track down the east branch of the boulder river here wow take a look at this so this is the box canyon guard station built in 1929 what a gorgeous spot you know these cabins these old guard stations that's what a lot of the cabins that were able to stay in used to be they would have rangers up here you know doing work on the forest research and then also assisting visitors but a lot of times nowadays they don't need these stations and so that's why they rent them out to people like us this one is not for rent but man would it be a cool one to have looks like a tiny little one room cabin gorgeous view and you're right here not only on this trail but on the boulder river just unbelievable all right we are on the trail our destination is the east branch of the boulder river it's a different little section of this river most people use this trail to get into the back country so they're they're spending the night for us it'll be a nice little day hike and uh we're already getting incredible views so i'm happy seriously not our footprints right here oh man holy that is a huge track yeah that's i mean look at that that's that is one paw right here oh there is all the way up there so that would put the the body length of that thing at like boy six and a half feet maybe oh yikes that's a huge bear and that's the thing you know these animals they take the trails because why wouldn't you it's the path of least resistance why cut through the brush when you got a nice little trail and so it's not surprising to see that but i didn't think we would right off the bat we're like 500 feet in yeah it feels like yeah i mean we're prepared but oh boy yeah things things just got a little spicier we're basically following this bear right now because it's going right along the path so we'll see what happens but we got our bear spray so yeah hey bear you always know they're here but it gets a little more real when you see the actual evidence keep your eyes peeled for any rub trees that'd be cool to show this might be one up here no but i haven't been looking i think this is a rub tree see the fur oh yeah yeah you're right wow sign number two yeah the tracks that we saw were pretty obvious and clear but this kind of confirms it because that hair is very light and golden brown so those are grizzly tracks and this is a grizzly grizzly rubbing so these bears come through and they rub their backs on these trees they get up on their hind legs and just kind of get a little back scratch going and you can tell because the tree usually gets pretty marred up and then you can see fur which is what we have here and these rub trees too they're not solely just for the bear to scratch its back it's to mark its territory yeah that territory is right on our trail so and it doesn't matter how many times you come across a grizzly bear you're always a little on edge and you should be because these animals they're powerful and they demand that respect there's one thing to have the bear spray and be like oh we're prepared it's another feeling to see two clear signs that bears are around right now so we're a little more on guard and we are now officially in the wilderness area as well which means it's very remote and there's nothing out here other than this trail i'm gonna try to go under let's go we're still following the bear so this trail that we're on in a lot of these trails were actually old wagon routes to get back into the wilderness here sometimes to mines and to other things i can't imagine trying to take a wagon across this but it shows just the determination and perseverance of the early settlers to do such things pretty incredible hey bear this is the east fork of the boulder river a quieter more remote branch of the boulder river system it runs through a much more isolated drainage here in the absarokas with less dramatic cliffs and more open valleys and meadows as we've already seen it's prime habitat for grizzly bears who come through in the springtime looking for carcasses and other seasonal food sources unfortunately we're just not having any luck with fish but hey it's so nice to just be out here casting into the river taking in the beauty of the mountains there's really nothing better than that i'm here for the camaraderie and to just be surrounded by all this beauty so it's still a win in my book well this has definitely been a good one i'll tell you every time i'm in grizzly country i'm just humbled to walk in the footsteps of such a powerful animal and then when i stare up at these mountain peaks i'm just reminded of how small we truly are on this planet and yet at the same time our lives they carry so much significance and uh with that it's been so special to be here in one of my dad's favorite places and to do so with my brother and best friend i wouldn't trade it for the world for dinner tonight i am whipping up an absolute classic just some good old-fashioned burritos dear lord thank you for a great day thank you for protecting us out on the trail bless this food amen amen we got some classic burritos here with ground beef we got some lettuce in there cheese some hot salsa and some hot guacamole with hot sauce so this is going to be incredibly spicy but i think it's going to taste good when you've been out hiking all day or doing any kind of strenuous activity stuff like this just tastes that much better after exerting energy and uh yeah very satisfying all right guys it is about time to hit the hay uh the cabin is toasty warm the stove is purring but uh we're all pretty beat so we're gonna get some shut eye we'll see you first thing in the morning good night i decided that on the final morning here i would get up and go for a short hike and enjoy my coffee at this nearby lake it's just up the road and down a short trail and seems like the perfect way to cap off this adventure well good morning everyone what a beautiful morning it is we have to pack up today and move on and so uh i knew i wanted to have my coffee down here at this lake it's so gorgeous here it's just like sunken in next to the mountain it's just incredibly peaceful so there's a fish jumping on the far shoreline over there now the problem is that i cannot cast that far and the water is so clear that i can tell that there aren't any fish near me but he keeps jumping right over there and there's just no way for me to get to him so well it was eventually time to head back to the cabin to start packing out it's important that when we stay at a cabin like this that we try to leave things better than how we found them and so colton's out there chopping up a hefty amount of firewood for the next guests while tommy sweeps the place out and i pack up the car all right that's gonna do it for this one thank you all so much for coming along you know montana will always be a special place to me i called it home for five years and it's always a joy to come back here i love montana every time i'm back here feels like a piece of my heart reconnects and it becomes whole and this this day this did it for me just the peace the solitude being in the shadow of the mountains from sun up till sundown you can't beat it really reflected a lot about my dad and the fact that this is where him and his friends would come and fish and just the serenity that comes with being in this place i think it was a very healing trip as always i want to give a special thank you to our patrons who generously donate to this channel but again to all of you who watch you're all the reason that we get to do this on a weekly basis and i'm incredibly grateful for that but with that it's time for us to get on to the next one we'll see you next week god bless