My primary motivation in taking the Super Butte was to simplify resupply logistics. Lima and Leadore are famously annoying resupply stops. A lot of hikers take Anaconda to make a shorter food carry to Darby as well.
Happy6
Other common reasons are to cut miles, depending on the route you take, you cut about 250 miles off the red line or 150 off the Anaconda Cutoff. This is especially relevant if you got a late start.
Or just for a change of scenery. Aside from the Whitehall road walk, I found this to be some of my favorite hiking in Montana, after spending the last two weeks hiking through terrain that was beautiful but pretty much the same day after day with another 400 miles of similar terrain to look forward to, this alt provided a lot of much needed variance.
High sage desert, rocky peaks with mountain goats, abandoned mining towns, touristy lake towns, etc., all are found on this route.
I also enjoyed the chance to be away from the Guthooks/Farout route, as it added a little sense of adventure not knowing what was around every corner.
Water wasn’t as much of a concern as I feared. The only section without good water was the road walk into and out of Whitehall. If you go through in a drought year this obviously might not apply.
Maps
There is a gpx. track being passed around online, a quick search and you’ll find it in several different places.
You’ll need some sort of non-Guthooks/Farout navigation app.
The Big Sky alt map.
Some people online recommend buying maps on Avenza, which I did, but I just ended up using the USGS topo maps on Gaia the whole time instead. My buddy used the Garmin app which worked well too.
Big Sky Alternative
The following route is just a line people have drawn linking together various trails, forest roads, and actual roads. There are lots of different ways you can choose to go, this is just the route I ended up taking.
Mileage changes depending on which route, map, or app you’re looking at but ballpark numbers are:
The route
I-15 crossing (Butte) to Whitehall – 35 miles
Whitehall to Ennis – 60 miles
Ennis to Big Sky – 45
Big Sky to West Yellowstone – 52 miles
Or
Big Sky to Mammoth Village – 55 miles
Helena or Butte to Whitehall – 35 miles
Resupply stops and routing
So you’ll resupply either in Helena or Butte via the I-15 crossing [mile 427 SOBO]. Leaving I-15 you have about 8 miles on the red line before turning at the Nez Perce trail junction [approx mile 435, there’s no junction icon on Guthooks], which is actually the old cdt route.
You’ll be on nice single track for a while before getting onto a fairly well traveled orv track which turns into dirt road after maybe ten miles.
Coming through on a weekend there were about 20 rvs parked in a field here so you could possibly yogi some water (or beer).
Whitehall
Big Sky Alternative Map
Whitehall to Ennis
The Big Sky Cutoff (also known as the “Super Butte Cutoff”) is the CDT of alternate routes: there is no one route; rather, a general goal: turn the incredibly circuitous routing of the CDT between Yellowstone and Butte, MT into something resembling a straight line.
You’ve got about 20 miles of road walk through farmland before you get back on a trail. Traffic was chill, not much danger, and the locals were all really nice.
I stopped at a farmhouse to refill my water since I’m sure the river and streams are full of agricultural runoff. I’m sure you could yellow blaze this without too much trouble.
There’s a hot spring around two miles off ‘trail’ at the end of the road walk, it’s called Point of Rocks.
After another chill 20 you’ll hit Mammoth, not really a town but a community of summer camps. Leaving Mammoth you’ll start climbing the Tobacco Roots where there are some cool old abandoned mines.
‘23 was a low snow year and there was still a decent amount of snowpack in the pass. If snowpack is high when you come through then ice gear might be a good idea.
The National Forest ends and the ranches start ten miles before the highway going in to Ennis, so you’ll either have to camp there or go all the way into Ennis.
Ennis
Ennis is a six mile hitch down the highway. Bozeman is about an hour drive in the other direction too. The locals all seem to know and love CDT hikers.
Big Sky Alternative Map
Apparently, Ennis is a very popular fishing destination (months later when I was in NM I saw tourist brochures for Ennis) so there are a selection of decent priced motels, restaurants, and a grocery store.
Ennis to Big Sky/ Bozeman
You’ll be following the High Lakes trail through the Spanish Peaks, beautiful single-track but hard to follow at times. Also, there are lots of lakes and you’re high up. Heads up… this section seemed to be about ten miles longer than the gpx claims.
More potential snow hazards in a high snow year as you cross the last pass heading into Big Sky. The other side of the pass is a well-used day/overnight hiking trail leading into downtown Big Sky
Big Sky
Big sky is expensive, even by ski resort standards, but there is a grocery store and plenty of restaurants. More importantly there’s an hourly $5 bus running to Bozeman where there’s a hostel, Walmart, REI, etc.
Plus you get to see the famously wretched hive of scum and villainy of “Bozeangeles” that everyone in Montana has told you about. If you have thruhiked before then I guarantee someone you knew on your last trail moved to Bozeman after finishing their hike so social engineer your way to crashing on someone’s couch.
Big Sky to Yellowstone
This is where you’ve got a few choices. Head straight to West Yellowstone and get back on the red line, which is the most common option. I didn’t go this way. There are a few different routes but they all seem pretty straightforward.
Alternatively, you can head southeast, straight into Yellowstone NP. I took the route SE over the Gallatin Range and entered YNP, hitching out from Mammoth Hot Springs to resupply at nearby Gardiner.
The section from Big Sky to Mammoth was really cool, it follows the Sky Rim trail with great views into Yellowstone. My plan was to hike south from Mammoth to Old Faithful but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Most of it is road walking and it’s a sketchy, very busy, no shoulder, windy mountain road. There were a few places you can get off the road and hike but a bunch of trails and campsites were closed.
It’s just not an area the park wants you to hike through; they don’t devote any resources to hiking in this section. I hiked about half of the 60 or so miles before bailing on the road walk and yellow blazing down to Old Faithful.
It is a really cool route as you pass through a bunch of thermally active areas that are all way cooler than what you’ll see on the red line, but unless you have a car it’s a hassle.
You can also head east from Mammoth Village and get on the Thoroughfare Trail. This is supposed to be a really cool hike.
Most of the wildlife is supposed to hang out on the east side of the park away from the tourists so this is your best bet to see Bison, Grizzlies, etc. but you’ll be missing all the cool geothermally active areas.
Happy6 on the Appalachian Trail
In any case I didn’t take this route so I can’t really speak to it.
Yellowstone
One tip for Yellowstone, if you have trouble getting permits, is to hitch to front country sites at Madison Junction and Grant Village. They have walk up hike in/ bike in site that multiple people told us they always find spot for CDT hikers no matter how full they are.
The Big Sky Cutoff (also known as the “Super Butte Cutoff”) is the CDT of alternate routes: there is no one route; rather, a general goal: turn the incredibly circuitous routing of the CDT between Yellowstone and Butte, MT into something resembling a straight line.
The earliest generally recognized departure is at Two Ocean Pass, where one can depart the CDT and head down the Atlantic Creek drainage into east Yellowstone. This, however, bypasses the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone, which I very much wanted to see, so instead I stuck with the CDT until shortly after West Yellowstone, MT, diverting onto an old alignment of the CDT. A network of trails and dirt roads, plus a bit of paved roadwalk took me past Earthquake Lake, some pretty amazing high plateaus and ridges, and a lot of ranches to reach the outskirts of Ennis, where I zeroed.
From Ennis, a longish paved and dirt road walk took me through the Tobacco Root Mountains, with abandoned mines and equipment sprinkled throughout. More road walk and a hitch on a school bus brought me to Whitehall. (I’d originally planned on hiking directly into town to avoid having to hitch, given there’d be a long road walk either way, but the oppressive heat — over 100°F — suggested adding a climb over a mountain pass was unnecessary.)
The whole alternate, 12 days in total, was roughly 178 miles long, bypassing 498.7 miles from the CDT. That is, near as I can tell, fairly close to the shortest route possible between West Yellowstone and Butte, while minimizing the length of CDT skipped and minimizing paved roadwalk. (A possibly slightly shorter route could have cut off earlier, taking dirt roads directly through West Yellowstone, but would also have reduced my time in Idaho to not even a full day, and included a very lengthy paved road walk out of West Yellowstone.)
I only took this alternate out of necessity: by the time I got to West Yellowstone, it was already near the end of August. The 321 miles this alternate saved saved me nearly two weeks of hiking; without it, I’d have arrived in Canada in the second week of October, to much colder weather and more difficulty getting away from Waterton Lake.
The large amount of road walk made parts of this alternate quite tiring, but largely it was still beautiful country, and while I’d have preferred being on the CDT proper, I don’t regret taking this route.
As you probably already know, there is no single “Big Sky Cutoff” (aka “Butte Super Cutoff”) as everyone inevitably takes a different variation, but I think the general route described in http://www.wildernesstravels.co.uk/cdt/bigsky.htm is a good place to start. I planned a variation of this for my wife and I’s CDT hike last year (2020) and I would recommend it if you want a Big Sky Cutoff with minimal logistics.
The benefits of this route are that you do not need to send a single box ahead, as all resupplies are done at real grocery stores in towns. Also, you can do this hike with only 2-3 campsite reservations in Yellowstone NP, yet you get to spend around a week’s worth of time in the park. It’s a nice compromise of a lot of time in the park without a lot of permits. Without further ado, I’ll give an overview with mileage of my own Big Sky Cutoff, presented in SOBO order because that’s what the OP asked for:
— Mileage / Resupply —
Butte, MT (via ~15 mile hitch from northernmost I-15 crossing on the CDT)
< 38.6 miles >
Whitehall, MT (on route, Jefferson’s Fresh Food resupply)
< 63.2 miles >
Ennis, MT (via ~7 mile hitch from Hwy-287 crossing at McAllister)
< 41.0 miles >
Big Sky, MT (on route, Roxy’s Market resupply… or take bus into Bozeman)
< 61.0 miles > (this includes 6.2 mi of road walking from Big Sky to Porcupine Creek TH and 6.0 mi of road walking from Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone to Gardiner)
Gardner, MT (on route, Gardiner Market resupply)
< 80.0 miles >
Cody, WY (via ~45 mile hitch from Eagle Creek CG on Hwy-14)
< 79.2 miles >
Dubois, WY (via ~26 mile hitch from Hwy-26 crossing on the old CDT)
— Maps —
Printable maps for most of this route can be downloaded at http://www.wildernesstravels.co.uk/cdt/bigsky.htm
High quality waterproof maps (and digital versions) of almost the entire route can be purchased from Beartooth Publishing. Specifically, you will want the following maps:
Tobacco Root Mountains, Bozeman / Big Sky / West Yellowstone, Yellowstone North, Yellowstone South
You could just buy the single Yellowstone National Park map for the Yellowstone stretch, but that version doesn’t have the specific backcountry campsites marked, so it is useless for trying to plan out campsite reservations while knowing mileage in between the sites. For that reason I’d suggest buying both the North and the South maps for Yellowstone, as linked above. You can try and plan out your campsite reservations using the official Yellowstone Trails & Campsites map, but without mileages in between the sites, it’s not very useful. I found just buying the Beartooth maps to be worth it, plus Beartooth Publishing is local company in Montana and they answered all of my email questions really kindly and were super informative and helpful, so I think it’s worth supporting this local business.
— Yellowstone NP Backcountry Camping Permits —
For more info on getting your backcountry permits for Yellowstone, check our the Camp in the Backcountry page on the YNP website.
When we went through Yellowstone (northbound, in our case), we only needed to get 2 nights worth of backcountry permits, because we did some very careful planning to camp right outside of the YNP border for multiple nights. It can be done.
Importantly, when you call ahead to reserve permits, it can be done no earlier than 3 days prior to the start of your trip, so you kind of need to call in when you are quite close to entering the park. With this in mind, I would recommend the following:
For SOBO hikers, you will want call in to get permits once you are in Big Sky, MT. It you can’t get permits there, it’s still possible to squeeze by and camp just outside the YNP boundary near Shelf Lake, then hike into Mammoth Hot Springs (where there is a campground) in one 29 mile day. You can walk 6 miles (or hitch) from Mammoth Hot Springs to Gardiner to resupply at the grocery store there. From Mammoth Hot Springs or from Gardiner, you could also call in to get your permits.
For NOBO hikers, you will want to call in to get your permits once you are in Cody, WY. Yes, you can hike through the park for multiple days before that without having to actually camp in it overnight. I would suggest the following schedule when entering the park from the south: camp at Bridger Lake, just south of the YNP boundary, hike 20 miles from Bridger Lake to just past Eagle Pass (where you get out of the park again) and camp around there, then hike another 15 miles from Eagle Pass to the Eagle Creek Campground at Hwy-14 (where you can hitch into Cody).
— Navigation —
Lastly, the OP asked about navigation… I found navigation relatively simple on the cutoff. The trails along the way are mostly very good and oftentimes marked, so a compass, a physical map, and a brain is mostly sufficient for navigation. If you get the digital versions of the Beartooth maps on the Avenza apps, then you can geolocate on the maps themselves. I would actually suggest the electronic maps for this reason. I actually purchased both for redundancy, but only really used the digital maps on trail. The physical maps were helpful to layout on the floor and plan the whole route though, and I liked being able to write directly on them too with notes.
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