Madison River with the Madison Range
— — the trout river with the mountains over its shoulder.
Not only on a wall.
“The upper Madison runs north out of Hebgen Lake along the foot of the Madison Range, fifty miles of riffle and run that anglers shorthand as the fifty-mile riffle. Lone Peak and the Hilgard summits stack above the east bank, snow on them late into June. The river is rainbow and brown trout water of the first rank, a blue-ribbon stretch managed wild by Montana since the 1970s. Drift boats work the soft inside seams; wade fishermen take the gravel bars. The range stays. The water keeps moving past. from the studio
Madison River with the Madison Range, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The upper Madison River runs roughly fifty miles north from Hebgen Lake near West Yellowstone to Ennis Lake, paralleled along its eastern bank by the Madison Range. The range extends about eighty miles from the Yellowstone Plateau north to Bozeman, with its high point at Hilgard Peak at 11,316 feet and the more famous Lone Peak at 11,166 feet above the Big Sky resort. The river drops about ten feet per mile through this reach, a steady riffled gradient that gives the stretch its nickname, the fifty-mile riffle. Most of the corridor lies within Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Custer-Gallatin national forests.
The upper Madison is one of the most storied trout rivers in the American West, designated a blue-ribbon fishery by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and managed wild without hatchery supplementation since 1972. Rainbow and brown trout share the river, with average wild rainbows running fourteen to eighteen inches and browns over twenty inches present through the reach. The salmonfly hatch in late June and early July is one of the major fly-fishing events of the western season. From three miles below Quake Lake to Ennis Lake the river is restricted to wading only between Lyons Bridge and Ennis Lake in summer to limit boat pressure.
Conditions on the upper Madison turn sharply through the year. Spring runoff peaks in late May or early June, swelling the river out of its banks; the water clears and drops by the third week of June, opening the salmonfly window. July and August hold steady on terrestrial patterns through the riffles. September brings cool nights, blue-winged olives, and brown trout staging for the fall spawn. Winter freezes the slower margins, and the high Madison Range above stays in snow into July, with Lone Peak holding patches through August in most years.