Being a part of the Elk Creek experience is being a part of Elk Creek history. Through the work caper program, each and every rancher has taken a part in shaping the ranch. The corral and barns have been the work of two generations of Elk Creekers. The first photo shows the corral complex as we know it today, but ranchers from the Fifties and Sixties would recognize very little of it.


Elk Creekers from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s will remember a different corral world. This photo is taken from about the same spot and in the same direction as the first photo—up Elk Creek toward the cabins. The barn, built by the original homesteaders, was on the right, and the round training corral was situated right where the main saddle barn and stalls were added in the 1960’s.


In the 1960’s, Chip Ridgway and Cliff Moore, Betsy’s husband, joined the first work crew to build a new saddle barn. (The building in the background is the homesteaders’ barn, which we tore down, with regret, the next year.) We added four stalls the next year and that facility remains the place where most of our riders start their days with their horses.


Looking down Elk Creek, away from the cabins and toward the main corral gate, older Elk Creekers will see new and larger corrals. The original barn is long gone. The hill which once butted up against the back of the old barn has been graded to provide more corral space. Those alumni with a great memory for the horses might enjoy seeing Meacham’s daughter Nellie, white like her mother, and her son, Chance, in the near corral. Chance will be three this summer and will get much training attention. Elk Creekers, both the two-legged and four-legged critters, have succeeding generations enjoying the growth and history of the ranch.

Elk Creek has always strived to be an authentic ranch experience, where all work and all contribute, not just to a particular day or even a particular session but also to the ongoing story of the ranch. Our horse herd bears special witness to the contributions of many Elk Creekers. Punch was born almost four years ago. Melissa assisted mother Sunny with his arrival and immediately started handling  or “imprinting” him.

Punch did not suffer terribly during his first summer! He was curried and handled and halter broken and coddled. He had his feet picked up and had all sorts of things thrown over him and around him in the old western tradition of “sacking out” the colt or foal. Then he was coddled again… . and again.

In the second and third year, we do much groundwork with the young horses. Over the years many ranchers have brought their own training experiences to Elk Creek, and the groundwork routines have become more and more refined. The effort is always to do as much on the ground to avoid problems and make fast progress when first mounted.

Josh started the big day in 2010 on Louie (the saddled horse) working with Punch on lead in the round corral. He twirled the lead rope over Punch’s head and did just about everything he could to startle Punch from the top of Louie, and then he just swung off Louie and onto Punch. And that was that. Punch didn’t know what “hit” him.

Last summer Melissa introduced Punch to the barrels and all went well. (Good thing she did the imprinting when Punch was a tot!) Dozens of Elk Creekers have written the early chapters in Punch’s story and have started him well; more will write later chapters. Punch, in his turn, has contributed to a few chapters in our Elk Creek story, and we are all better for it.


Barrel racing, either the straights or the cloverleafs, is a staple of western horsemanship. It is terrific training for both horse and rider. When Elk Creek started in 1957 we set the barrels up on the flats above the bunkhouses, and Betsy showed the way on Nipper. We learned quickly that shorts were not the recommended riding gear!

Elk Creek alumni will remember several different locations for our barrel practices and gymkhanas. For a number of years we rode up Elk Creek to a nice meadow. Later we moved to the small field above and to the west of the barn and corrals (where we now have our Sunday soccer tilts). Lincoln and Moda were an awesome pairing.

When Hap and Susan purchased the old Dead Indian Ranch, known later as Rawhide Ranch, Elk Creek had a great new barrel field. Actually it was the place where the early Elk Creekers first competed against the Dead Indian Ranchers back in the Fifties and Sixties. Rebecca and Luna showed the way last summer.

We started holding our end-of-summer alumni gatherings in 2009. That pioneering group decided they wanted to return to the “lists” and try the barrels for old time’s sake. What was most gratifying was how well these 50-somethings fared. And this is Andrew who is actually Rebecca’s father… like father, like daughter!



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From the dead of winter, fun memories of the salad days of summer.

Gunner, Andrew and Kyle’s yellow lab, was an Elk Creeker for a short time but he was a large presence. We lost him to cancer recently, but we have been comforted by a number of memories.

A Human Wannabe
Gunner had very little time for his four-legged kin. He was much more comfortable with his two-legged friends, and he was known to wear a hat comfortably or even to don a bikini for some pond-side time.

Not Exactly a Water Dog
Yellow lab he was, but Gunner was not an enthusiastic swimmer. Kyle managed to wrangle him into the pond for a brief lap, but she had the scratches to show for it.

Not Exactly a Horse or Stock Dog
Gunner was highly skeptical of the “big dogs” on the ranch. He saw nothing good coming from them, even after a “get-to-know-you” session with an impartial mediator.

Not Exactly a Hunter
The buck was smaller than the horses. (We had to repeat this picture!) Gunner thought briefly about him, but the antlers were a concern.

What Gunner Really Wanted
Gunner’s first backpack… a good day on the trail through beautiful country topped off with a hug and some human time (although his idea of sharing space in a tent made for a challenging sleep)… What could be better. Travel well, Gunner.

Elk Creek Ranch™

A Western Wilderness Experience for Teenagers

Elk Creek Ranch™ offers teenagers a unique summer camp experience in the western wilderness through a traditional ranch setting combined with a wilderness backpacking program. It is a summer of enjoyment, with groups sharing the camaraderie of youth and the recreational opportunities of the West. It is a summer of challenge, confronting each individual with rugged wilderness surroundings and a rustic life style. It is also a summer of involvement, with each teenager participating in a small camp community.

Elk Creek offers two different programs which can be taken separately or in combination with one another: the camp Ranch Program, which focuses on horseback riding and ranch work, and the backpacking Trek Program, which concentrates on extensive wilderness backpacking. Both programs are centered in and around Sunlight Valley in northwestern Wyoming, not far from Yellowstone National Park.

One of the unique features of Elk Creek Ranch™ is its offering of both a traditional camp program and a wilderness backpacking program. The first looks back to the western pioneering of the past and the second looks at the wilderness experience of today. Increasing numbers of teenagers are opting to take both programs, either in the same summer or successive summers, in order to have the broadest possible western experience.

Whether on the Ranch or Trek Program, the Elk Creek Ranch™ experience has been for fifty years and remains today many-faceted, appealing to a variety of interests and abilities. Our purpose is to provide a challenging summer for each teen. The challenge is partly physical in that we are very active and mobile. It is partly mental in that the individual encounters a totally different mode of life. The challenge is also environmental in that the ranch is located in one of the few truly wild areas left in the continental United States. In meeting this blend of challenges, each individual gains a widened awareness of himself or herself and a greater appreciation of our western wilderness heritage.

We hope you will join us for a truly unique summer.

We first met Lop, so named because of the damage to her ear, during the fall and winter of 2007-2008. She munched merrily away on the geraniums and other plants Susan had planted for Eli and Carley’s wedding. She then discovered our feeding routine with the wild turkeys and decided she deserved a place at the table. In short order she started charging at the turkeys to push them off the cracked corn. Lop was never bashful.

Our Last Lop Photo

Lop was a regular for the next few years, especially when feed was scarce. Dogs have always been a part of Elk Creek and the Ridgways, a situation that led to some confrontations, always interesting and sometimes downright humorous, with Lop. She took no prisoners. She would charge quickly and paw at the offending pooch with her front feet. But time is always on the move, and Sunlight—with severe cold, snowpack, wolves, and mountain lions—takes a toll on even the boldest critters. This is our last photo of Lop from the fall of 2010.

Lop’s Children

We have not seen Lop this summer or fall, and fear that the odds have caught up with her. We take some comfort in the idea that her children are still with us.  While identifying most deer is well beyond us, we do notice that some deer seem to gravitate more closely to the ranch especially when we might be feeding turkeys or when the woodpile or cabin might provide shelter from our infamous winds. We believe this young one is the buck that has been around the place the last two or three years.

Lop Would Be Proud

The buck is unimpressed with the dogs. He has had two winters of entertaining confrontations with Belle and Prudoe, our winter canines. Belle has learned that it is best to put a fence between the buck and her. Prudoe has opted to bow out of all confrontations as gracefully as a fierce Heeler can. During the summer the buck made the acquaintance of Gunner who took little time learning his place in the pecking order. The buck just has to be Lop’s son! The circle will be unbroken

The end of the summer brings a sigh of relief—everyone arrived home safely, the work pace decelerates, and our responsibilities narrow. That sigh is quickly followed by the silence and void left by the ranchers. Fortunately, we can turn to the photo gallery and look back with great joy on some favorite moments. The winter and spring of 2011 left copious amounts of snow in the high country. The first period backpack to Trout Peak had to work around some hard creek crossings and many snow fields.


The work capers for 2011 included the usual suspects—repairing old and building new fences; reroofing cabins, irrigation, working on the interior of the new Trek cabin including wonderful bunk beds, logging-logging-logging, rebuilding the bridge to the ashram, training young horses and caring for the lame and aged, stacking the hay for the winter, etc. What has been true for over 50 years at Elk Creek remained true in 2011—the ranchers continue to build and improve the ranch leaving it ever better for those who follow. The fencing included building over 1600 feet of jack pole fence, which is a Montana variation of buck fence. Next summer we will work on the buck fence on the other side of the road.

The Trek again started in the high lake country of the  Beartooth Mountains and then moved to the rugged scree slopes and alpine meadows of the Absarokas. Even though the trekkers hike through the end of July and into August, they still had to deal with many snow fields and ice covered lakes, in which they strangely chose to swim… or at least dunk. At the end they had a three-day school in technical rock climbing. Through it all, they kept their strange sense of trekker humor.
For two years we have been frustrated by Mother Nature in our efforts to take the ranch pack trip into Damnation Basin, one of the headwaters of Dead Indian Creek. It is one of our favorite spots and, so, it was most sweet to be able to make the trip this summer. We actually camped, because of the danger of falling beetle-killed spruce at our old camp site, in the spot where the first Elk Creekers in Damnation camped over thirty years ago. We were not able to do the waterfall contest because the waterfall was encased in a huge snow bank. Our exit over the shoulder of Trout Peak was made all the more special by the herd of elk that escorted us out.


Since Elk Creek was founded in 1957, we have found ourselves building fences, gates, cabins, and furniture with logs and poles. One step in the process is debarking the logs with draw knives. The original bunkhouses were built by a construction crew out of Cody. Although they used draw knives for the finishing touches on logs, they had a powered log peeler. That device left Sunlight Valley with the crew, and all of our peeling work since has been done the old-fashioned way—by hand.

The roughest of guesses would be that half of all Elk Creekers have grabbed onto a draw knife and gone to work peeling a log or pole. The work has its satisfactions for your progress is clear, but it also can be a bit monotonous. Some good music, lively conversation, ranch scuttlebutt, and a zany streak help make the bark chips fly.

The new cabin for the Trek Program has been one of our most challenging and ambitious projects. In the tradition of the ranch, we have cut our own logs. We purchased a portable saw mill and cut all of the lumber for the cabin from the beetle-killed spruce trees on the ranch. This year’s efforts have focused on the chinking between the logs, and we are using small saplings that need to be peeled and fitted in the cracks between the logs.

Elk Creekers started experimenting with pole furniture a couple of decades ago building great couches for the porch of the rec cabin, but this year’s ranchers have raised the bar. The draw knives came out once again to debark slabs and poles for cabinets, shelves, and beds. As we approach the finish of the project, we look back with great gratitude and admiration to the work, talents, and creativity of all of the recent ranchers who built this new home for our trekkers.

When Doc and Emily Ridgway purchased Elk Creek Ranch in the early 1950’s, the cabins were vintage homesteader structures. The main cabin, now housing our dining room and kitchen, had a sod roof. Crude as the name may sound, the sod roof worked well. It shed the little moisture Wyoming receives and it shed much of the summer sun and heat. For almost a decade of operation, we kept the sod roof but in 1966 we replaced it with planks, masonite, and roofing paper.  We did, however, rebuild the tack house in the early 90’s and reinstalled a sod roof which continues to work well.

As we built the bunkhouses and rec hall in the 50’s and added cabins in the 60’s and 70’s, we used green roofing paper over different wooden roofs. In the late 70’s we built a car port for the ranch vans to keep them partially protected from the elements. Applying the roofing paper was always the finishing line for the summer project, so it was a time of great satisfaction and celebration.

Elk Creek, from day one, has made ranch chores and maintenance a part of the program; that work has been and is still central to real ranch life. The roofs suffer mightily, especially with the extremes of heat and cold. Every summer we take on the leaks that have developed over the winter, and we install new roofing materials in the most serious cases.

Curious, is it not, that our ranch experience has found that the sod roofs fared reasonably in comparison with roofing paper and asphalt shingles? Last year we put the roof on the new Trek cabin and this time we tried metal. Theoretically the new roof will last many years with no maintenance, but it was a task to install. We’ll have to see if it fares as well as the old dining room sod roof.

Susan and Hap Ridgway have been back living in Sunlight for four years. Memories, especially at our ages, are not to be much trusted, but for what it is worth they do not remember seeing Canada Geese in the Valley until this spring when this pair visited. They checked out several venues along Elk Creek apparently looking for a safe nesting place.

The Sand Hill Cranes are winged chatterboxes. We hear them at great distances whether they are on the ground or in the air. We watched a dozen cranes in a marshy area on Elk Creek make so much noise they actually scared a herd of deer grazing in a pasture that abuts the marsh. During the spring we will have visits from small groups, pairs, and singles. This crane was checking out the area by the ranch barrel field.

The population of bald and golden eagles waned for many years. The causes for the decline include the use of herbicides (related to the Agent Orange used in Vietnam), and their more recent regulation has led to the return of healthy eagle populations. One pair of Bald Eagles nests in a small cave in a sandstone cliff along the Sunlight Road, and people annually set up with telescopes, binoculars, and cameras to watch a new avian family take shape. 

The hawk population has also rebounded, with the Red Tails leading the way. They keep close watch over the Elk Creek fields waiting for the unwary picket pen, the local name for the ground squirrels. As the picket pens dig holes in our irrigation ditches and the horse pasture, we are rooting for the hawks and hoping for even greater numbers.

Elk Creekers during the summer, either as ranchers or trekkers, rarely lay eyes on elk. Our best hope is on our backpacks, packtrips, and treks in the high country of the Northern Absaroka Mountains. During the winter, especially during March and April, the elk return to the lower reaches of Sunlight and are a constant and wonderful presence around and on the ranch.

The elk are always on the move. Native Wyomingites blame the wolves for the “vigilance” of the elk, but they also are looking for the best exposure to the sun, for space from people, for protection from the wind, and for good feed. Whatever the reasons, the elk pass through Elk Creek Ranch most days, finding some grass, sun, and temporary safety, before moving on around Steamboat and into Dead Indian Creek and around to Marvin’s Ridge.

In January Susan and Hap stumbled upon a lone cow elk hunkered down under a cedar tree along Sunlight River. They worried that she was injured or ailing, for the cow at first barely moved. In time she struggled to her feet and gave them this unsettling look. They left wondering what would happen to her, but she kept reappearing. One day she was with a group of deer. Another day found her in the pasture with the Elk Creek horses.  She covered lower Elk Creek over the next two months. She was enough of a presence that they gave up their fears for her, and the family named her Eloise.

We are cheating with this picture, but the magnificence of the bull “in felt” begged for a bit of latitude. We came across him in Yellowstone several springs ago. He was one of a group of young bulls (“hanging with the boys”) browsing for feed. While he was not at Elk Creek Ranch, he was on, or very close to, Yellowstone’s Elk Creek, so we claimed him in spirit.

Confident as the experts are about the source of the rock on top of Heart Mountain, the debate continues about how such a massive amount of material could have traveled so far. One theory is that the rock layer was on top of a more moist layer of rock, and as the Rocky Mountains started pushing up they tilted the plane enough that the top layer of rock separated and started sliding ever so gradually to the southeast, occasionally spurred by earthquakes accompanying the rise of the Rockies. Other geologists hypothesize that the slide took place later in the formation of the Rockies when the plane was steeper with the rock layer breaking away and moving at high speeds carrying it onto the older layer of rock.

Northwestern Wyoming, with its unusual geology, attracts many college field trips and geologists. The Yellowstone caldera is one of many unusual features. The granite at the bottom of Clarksfork Canyon is the oldest exposed rock in North America. Sunlight Valley was formed by glacial action. White Mountain once was a volcano. All that said, the mystery of Heart Mountain has attracted the most attention. Study suggests that the top of Heart Mountain actually came from the Clarksfork-Crandall area 20 or 30 miles to the northwest. Geologists reached the conclusion that a massive geological layer of rock extending across Yellowstone Park broke off and slid to the East. The top of Heart Mountain was at the start of the slide and actually slid onto older rock, and erosion over the millennia further shaped it.

Confident as the experts are about the source of the rock on top of Heart Mountain, the debate continues about how such a massive amount of material could have traveled so far. One theory is that the rock layer was on top of a more moist layer of rock, and as the Rocky Mountains started pushing up they tilted the plane enough that the top layer of rock separated and started sliding ever so gradually to the southeast, occasionally spurred by earthquakes accompanying the rise of the Rockies. Other geologists hypothesize that the slide took place later in the formation of the Rockies when the plane was steeper with the rock layer breaking away and moving at high speeds carrying it onto the older layer of rock.

Much as we enjoy the mystery of the mountain’s formation, we also simply enjoy Heart Mountain’s beauty. It accompanies us on every trip to and from Cody and Billings, and it struts its stuff in all four seasons. Liza Williamson Kuntz was and remains a long time Elk Creeker. She and her husband, Tom, “set up stakes” in Red Lodge, Montana. They built a home on a long ridge right above Red Lodge where they took their picture of Heart Mountain from fifty miles and a state away. 

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