The Hideout in Wyoming provides an Old West adventure with fine food, service, and accomodations.
I’m sitting in the dirt with my boot heel dug into the wrong end of a calf, pulling on its hind leg as hard as I can. My companion is at the other end of the frantic beast, sitting on its head. We’re on vacation, and right now we’re reconsidering our decision to visit a working cattle ranch in Wyoming rather than a spa in California.
One cowboy tends to the calf; another reaches over my shoulder with a hot branding iron and sizzles its skin with the Flitner Ranch brand. When we release the animal, it runs bawling back to its mother. We get up, dust off our jeans (and pride), try to ignore the smell of burning flesh, and let some of the other guests get what they’re paying for. We go back to sitting on the corral fence, watching the wranglers—Stewart, Mike, and Josh—rope another calf.
For branding day, Stewart wears a brilliant white, ironed, collarless shirt under a silver-buttoned vest. The cowhide chaps he stitched himself protect the razor-sharp crease in the Wrangler jeans wrapped around his quarter horse. He is a perfect picture of the mythical American West. And with every throw of his rope, with every calf he drags bawling out to the branding yard, Stewart is keeping that Western myth alive.
Not single-handedly, of course. It’ll take more than one wrangler to preserve the ways of the old American West. That’s where we come in.
Stewart Reed works for The Hideout, a dude ranch run on the 250,000-acre Flitner Ranch in the Shell Valley of north central Wyoming. The Flitners have run cattle on this ranch for five generations. Greg, the scion of the Flitner family who founded the ranch in 1906, is branding the calves that Stewart ropes with the Flitners’ “G O.” These days, the Flitners still run a farm and a horse- and cattle-breeding program, although family ranching is rapidly becoming an unprofitable enterprise. The big money goes to the beef factories, where cows are moved along conveyor belts like any other widget. Consequently, the family began the shift from herding cows to corralling tourists.
No one does things the old way anymore, and the traditions of the West are dying. Unless wranglers like Stewart—and dude ranchers like us—can save them.
We flew into Billings, Montana, where a cowboy named Keith “Sugarbeet” Wenthur collected us in our borrowed boots and drove us out to the Hideout, two hours away. We passed through the 100-year-old town of Shell, population 50, and turned into the small group of log cabins clustered around a barn and a big ranch house nestled in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains.
Our little casita overlooking the valley had an appealing porch with a railing for balancing our boot heels. But it was getting on in the afternoon, and within 20 minutes, we were on horseback, straining to stand in our stirrups in the “two point” position while Stewart and Sugarbeet coached and criticized. “Don’t lean over. Stand up straight!” called Stewart. “Like this,” said Sugarbeet, who stood tall while his horse trotted obediently in and out of the barrel course. Despite my neck reining, my own mount for our long weekend, a “flea-bitten” (meaning brown-spotted) white mare named Michelle, bumped a barrel broadside and over it went.
“Who’s steering who?” called Sugarbeet. “Let ’er know who’s boss.”
Our heads reeling and our legs bowed, we headed up to the lodge. Our orientation and riding lesson had to be squeezed in before supper because the next day was a working day. No time for tenderfeet.
The Hideout offers a barely varnished version of ranching to its guests: get up early, eat a good breakfast, and you’re back in the saddle again. Before lunch on the first morning, we had herded 30 bulls from the lower pen to another pasture 7 miles up the road.
Livestock has the right of way in Wyoming. In perfect spring weather—warm sun, blue sky, slight chill—the ride was delicious. It was easy to forget you were doing a job, until a wrangler reminded you, “Close the gap there!” and you realized that the next rider was 10 yards away and the cows were straying through the hole in the line like water through a leaky Evian bottle.
Guests help run the ranch, and their activities depend on the season—horseback riding, shooting, hiking, fishing, and biking through the spring and summer. In the winter, guests spend their days snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing though tall pines at Snowshoe Lodge, located 8,600 feet above the plains. From July to October, you can hide out from the Hideout at The Upper Hideout, the ultimate private-mountain getaway. From here, you can book special hunting trips, too.
In the spring, it’s time to brand the new calves. So, at the end of our April stay, we are watching the cowboys and Stewart in the corral. He drags another bellowing baby out to where a team waits—one to sit on the calf’s head, one to hold down its rear with one boot and pull hard on a leg, one with a vaccination syringe, and one with the branding iron. It sounds worse than it is. All but the most squeamish guests end up sitting on a cow’s head eventually, once they realize that it’s a little like taking a 300-pound baby in for a DPT shot.
In the old days, branding day was a gathering celebration, a time when ranch life became a little less lonely, when the wranglers got a chance to see some girls. That’s why Stewart looks so spiffy—it’s a sartorial nod to tradition.
Perhaps a little untraditional, however, is the food. The current cook, Robb Howe, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute, although he grew up in Greybull, Wyoming, the “big” town nearest Shell. So lunches and the multi-course dinners are heavy on salads and seafood—not exactly cowboy cuisine. And thankfully so.
Another inauthentic feature of this ranch is the absence of siesta. One day, right after lunch, we saddle up with Stewart and Mike Diehl, the head wrangler, and head out to Devil’s Leap, 7 miles away. Our destination is a long finger of cliff that sticks out over the plains 1,000 feet below. As we ride, Mike tells us the heart-breaking tale behind the place’s name. “They say a dog went crazy up here and started herding his sheep over the edge,” he says. “The dog’s name was Devil.”
A typical Wyoming love story—it’s all about dogs and horses and cows. And the cowboys at the Hideout respect the old ways—several of them collect vintage cowboy shirts, practice rope tricks in their spare time, and make their own saddles and chaps. Stewart plays the guitar and sings cowboy ballads after dinner for guests who relax in the cowhide chairs, sipping that old cowboy favorite, Sauvignon Blanc.
For many of the wranglers, the Hideout offers only seasonal work. Most of the cowhands have college degrees and many will end up elsewhere, doing other kinds of work. Sugarbeet is working on becoming a veterinarian; Josh is studying fish and wildlife management. They find other things to do during the winter months, too, but they come back to wrangling in the spring because they love the life and the land and the cowboy ways.
If that’s not why guests go to the Hideout, it’s the reason most of them come back.
Mary Brown Malouf is a frequent contributor to D Magazine. Photo Courtesy of the Hideout
JUST THE FACTS
HOW TO GET THERE
Connecting through Denver: United Airlines (www.ual.com) to Cody, Wyoming. The Hideout is 70 miles from Cody, and the pickup charge is $50 per person roundtrip.
Connecting through Salt Lake City: Delta Airlines (www.delta.com) to Billings, Montana. From Billings the pickup charge is $75 per person.
Guests flying on a private jet or chartered flight can fly directly into Greybull, Wyoming. The Hideout provides free transportation to and from Greybull. Groups wishing to charter a flight can visit Edwards Jet Center of Montana at www.edwardsjetcenter.com.
WHERE TO STAY
The Hideout at Flitner Ranch
(three guest properties)
P.O. Box 206, Shell, WY 82411
800-354-8637 or www.thehideout.com
The Hideout has six cabins and 16 guest rooms and suites. Guests are encouraged to become part of the working staff and participate in the true cattle-work experience by learning (or improving) skills in horseback riding, herding cattle, branding (spring only), trapshooting, archery, and scenic rides. For the competitive guest, they arrange team penning and sorting in the arena and the Dudeo, where guests team up and compete in clown-like antics on horseback. Rates: $2,000 per person per week.
The Upper Hideout is open July through October and offers the ideal private retreat. You can hike or arrange to hunt mule deer and elk.
Snowshoe Lodge is the perfect setting to explore the Bighorns, by snowmobile, cross-country ski, or snowshoe in the winter and by foot or by mountain bike in the summer.
WHAT TO DO
Geo-Sciences Adventures offers guided tours of world-famous dinosaur tracksites, including the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite and Howe Dinosaur Quarry. Call 307-765-2259 or visit www.geo-sciences.com.
WHAT TO BRING
You can leave the fringed jacket at home, but do bring hard-soled riding boots, a hat with a brim, a bandanna, and comfortable jeans. Baby powder for your boots is a good idea unless you wear them all the time, and you’ll want some ibuprofen, unless you normally spend a lot of time in the saddle.
