on top of Monkotas... all covered with cheese...
Monkotas man!
The tri-point of Montana and the Dakotas turned out to be quite an adventure. Heading north out of Camp Crook, SD, we reached the ND line in about 20 minutes and turned left onto a public road that was little more than a driveway for a ranch about 10 miles away in Montana. This was a bit of a sloppy road, but we proceeded rather efficiently about three miles to the ND-MT line. The line was unmarked, but there was a tell-tale fence there, and we looked around for the small road leading southeast from the crossing. We found it - a faint jeep trail heading up into a field toward a water tank.
Bouncing along slowly on this road, we proceeded about 1.5 miles, past the tank and through some cow pies, to the bane of the tri-pointer's existence: the locked gate. The gate sectioned off a large hilly pasture of at least 3 square miles in front of us. Not another living soul was around (other than an occasional bird and an antelope or two on the horizon). We considered the old "Posted" sign and decided that we would tread lightly through this field, surely lighter than most of the livestock, if we walked and didn't drive across the grass.
The tri-point itself was not visible from where we left the car, but Snider Hill, just on the Montana side, was visible, and we simply walked a farily direct route across the field toward the treeless butte. About 1/2 mile later, we came to the top of a ridge and the monument came into view: a short red obelisk at the junction of two long fences.
After the long walk, Jill and I were tantalizingly close to the benchmark on top of Snider Hill with the fun name of Monkotas. We clambered up the hill, about 100 feet in elevation, and found the Monkotas monument. The view up on top was spectacular - there is very little relief around here and rising above the plain just 100 feet allowed a 360-degree vista. On top of the hill, Jill remarkably got cell phone service and called her dad, telling him that she was very close to North Dakota, but not actually in North Dakota (something about a pact between the two of them that they wouldn't visit North Dakota separately. Ask Jill.).
