Part Eleven

​     June 8 - 10              Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana            (Go to Pt 1)
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The rain persisted throughout the night but had let up to a light drizzle by morning.  Getting dressed was miserable, everything was wet and I actually had to wring water out of my socks before putting them on.  My u-trou, shorts and t-shirt were wet, cold, dirty, smelly and ripe for mold.  And then there were my boots, which must’ve weighed-in at least eight pounds apiece as waterlogged as they were.  I slowly laced my boots while Craig fiddled with his pack, we were both in a glum, listless state of mind; a real ‘Eeyore’ kind of morning.

We broke camp, saddled up and continued down the Sun River.  Not very far out from camp the trail crossed the river, which we could not do because the Sun River was insanely swollen with very troubled waters.  The only alternative to drowning in the river was long stretches of bushwhacking through the forest whenever the trail jumped to the other side of the river - and when I use the word ‘forest’ I mean nasty, little 

thickets of half-dead, stunted trees infested with viperous deadfall.  The miles were easy when the trail favored our side of the river but made for torturous progress when it did not.

The rain had stopped around mid-day and we were able to do a thorough drying out at camp that evening. I was deadbeat tired but having trouble sleeping during the night because muscles in my legs, particularly my calf muscles, throbbed as they tried to recover from the last fifty miles.  The following morning was another slow-starter but a warm sun helped brighten my moral and once we got moving the pace picked-up and four, quick miles down the trail we branched off the Sun River into the Straight Creek valley where we bagged more easy miles all the way to camp in the upper gorge.

Click on the map for a larger image

The next morning I was anxious to get over the pass and push another high-mileage day but now that we were closer to the headwaters of Straight Creek, the steep, switching-back-and-forth nature of the trail got intertwined with the 

downhill, winding creek, creating persistent river crossings.  Under normal, summer conditions this wouldn’t be such a big deal but in the creek’s current, peak run-off stage this was a big deal and the frequency with which we now had to stop and search out crossings slowed our progress considerably.

​Then, just below the top of the pass and close to the wellspring of the creek, Craig had just rock hopped across the stream and was standing on a large, flat stone, when a literal slab avalanche of earth melted loose.  Craig, still standing on the flat rock, was now right in the middle of what was a thick layer of alpine tundra breaking away from the slope. 

I was unbelieving of what I was seeing. A fracture line, maybe forty yards across by two or three feet deep, had opened up just above and, in slow motion, all the embedded rocks, alpine flowers and tundra started to flow down the hill like molten lava.

Amazingly, the embedded rocks stayed temporarily set in the tundra, even as they flowed, and to make this whole incongruous scene even more unbelievable - Craig actually jumped across on three more of those moving rocks to solid ground just before the whole thing broke apart into a small scale landslide.  This was another one of those WTF moments.  

​Craig was now fifty yards down the slope from where he had been a moment ago and I was still standing, utterly gob-smacked, at the edge of a completely destroyed, roiling swath of mud, water and rock. Out of this swath gushed a whole new stream of water, carrying with it rocks and mud and earthen debris down and across the slope.  And the topper was, Craig had just rock-surfed an actual landslide!

It took us a good twenty minutes to regroup after that little episode but it was remarkable to have witnessed mountain erosion and re-shaping in such dramatically live action.  We topped over Straight Creek Pass and headed down Dearborn Creek on easy, one-side-of-the-river trail that brought us into camp, late in the day, at the confluence of Dearborn and Blacktail Creeks.  ​

​As we cooked up the evening meal that night, I wasn’t at all sure if I could face yet another pan of freeze dried surprise. This so-called ‘food’ was becoming increasingly difficult to 

Click on the map for a larger image

stomach and as for a dietary staple, continued consumption was not going to be sustainable. Tolerable for a week’s outing, maybe, but after almost a month of eating Mountain House freeze dried meals, just the sight of the package was getting offensive.  We both agreed over dinner that this had to change the next time we resupplied but, until then, we were okay with finishing off the last scrapings of our freeze dried meal out of the burnt bottom of the pan.

I was having another restless, achy night so when it started to rain at 2:00 am I could hardly believe the sour luck.  We’d hung our packs up in a tree, with food and other stuff that needed to stay dry, uncovered.  This was going to be one colossal hassle.  My camera was clipped to the outside of my pack, totally exposed, so I volunteered to go out in the rain and cover the packs. ​

I thrashed around for my rain slick then ran out into the pouring rain to pull down our packs.  It was useless trying to cover them, it was raining too hard, so I threw the luggage into the already crowded tent where Craig wrestled the wet packs around to make room for me to get in out of the rain.  By the time I finally got back to sleep it was time to get up. 

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Go to Part 12

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The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

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