Cedar Creek Trail Montana Overview
While Yellowstone National Park is world famous for its astonishing and epic beauty, less well known are some of the surrounding trails just outside the park in Montana's incredible Absorka mountains. In this trail guide, I bring you one of these hidden gems, the Cedar Creek Trail, a 1.5 mile path that runs through a breathtaking mountain pass and ends in the ethereal decaying remains of a long since abandoned alpine ranch.
Cedar Creek Trail Montana Map
Cedar Creek Trail Montana Guide
The parking area for the Cedar Creek Trail can be found 10.3 miles north of Yellowstone National Park (see map above), and is immediately met by beautiful views of the surrounding mountains.
The trail itself starts as a gaited road, covered in snow when I visited it this January.
The Cedar Creek Trail was used as a movement corridor through the mountains north of Yellowstone for many hundreds of years, wandered by numerous natives tribes.
While the first mile is gradually uphill, the terrain flattens approximately a mile in, and after another mile of easy hiking, you are met by a beautiful and remarkable piece of history: the OTO Ranch, a now abandoned ranch that once housed livestock brought into Yellowstone National Park from the property.
The remains of the buildings that once housed the ranch's workers and horses are slowly returning to nature, visually morphing back into the mountain wilds.
From the surrounding beautiful landscape to the historical treasure hidden within, the Cedar Creek Trail was an incredible way to spend a couple hours that morning, and I hope that it provides your own journeys by the park with endless wonder.