Part Twelve

​     June 11                   Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana              (Go to Pt 1)
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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. ​

We got up to a wet, cold morning with the first obstacle of the day being the wide and swift Dearborn Creek crossing and we weren’t getting across this one dry.  The air temperature had to be hovering somewhere in the low 40’s when we stepped barefoot into the river for a crossing that was painfully slow, ice-numbingly cold and just generally a cruel way for the feet to start the day.  

​Add to this Craig dropping his boots in the river, which miraculously bobbed right into my grasp, and it was a real heads-up start to the day. (Later on, I started to think about what a serious-ass treasure hunt I would’ve 

Click on the map for a larger image

been on, looking for Craig’s boots had they been swept away down river.)  From Dearborn Creek we climbed up a faint trail in a gathering mist to the ridge of the Divide.

In the nondescript, shaggy woods at the top of the ridge, the trail blended away into the forest floor, leaving as its last remnant an old, wooden post with a rotted trail sign for Landers Fork lying on the ground, arrows pointing to nowhere.  I looked around; the mist made everything look somewhat opaque, like opening your eyes underwater in a heavily chlorinated pool.   

We consulted the map and took a guess as to our exact location on the ridge as best we could, given the foggy, thicket of trees where we now stood.  We were aiming to traverse into the Bighorn Creek valley and felt lucky when we happened across a snatch of pine-needled trail, which started us in the right direction but in the end only served to twist our (my) bearings into thinking we were descending to Bighorn Creek when, in fact, we were not.

We were well down the drainage when things just didn’t look right, so we decided to check our progress on the map.  Thinking we were in the Bighorn Creek valley, we examined the visible terrain around us against the map and couldn’t make heads or tails out of what we were seeing. So we pulled out the compass and the bearing it showed was somewhat close to the way we should be going but didn’t make any sense against the terrain - until we started to it piece together. 

“Huh, we must be in Landers Fork.”  Craig finally stated mater of factly, after we had examined the map, compass, altimeter and terrain. Sure enough, wrong valley. “Well, shit. Shit!” was about all I could say to this revelation.  We didn’t have any maps that showed where Landers Fork went and I had been the guy out front and it was the lead guy’s job not to lead us into the wrong valley; I’d just walked us down into ‘shit’ creek.

We had no idea how much of a detour following Landers Fork would take us on but one thing was for sure, we had scant appetite for backtracking up the valley, re-climbing the ridge and traversing back over into the Bighorn Creek basin.  So, despite the fact that we would be flying blind, we just went ahead and walked right off our map. 

We followed Landers Fork downriver all afternoon, looking hard to re-join something familiar to our maps but just couldn’t see enough terrain from within the towering forest to positively identify anything and we were starting to run up against the end of the day. 

​About the time I was thinking we should start scoping out a campsite, the trail imperceptibly contoured out of the creek bed up onto a marshed-out plateau where it abruptly vanished.  This was not welcome and certainly not this late in the day.  

We squished our way across about a half mile of wetlands then descended to another plateau where we picked up the remnants of a ghost trail that we hoped would lead us down to the main tributary. Instead, it maintained a steady elevation at 5,900 ft. to traverse the full 

length of the plateau and neither the path nor the terrain allowed us to drop down to the river for another four miles.

By the time we were finally able to drag ourselves down to the river to camp, it was after 8:30 p.m. and I was toast. The one upside was that the campsite we found was nestled into one of the most idyllic spots I’d seen yet.  

Set at the edge of an open and tidy forest, not 30 yards from the riverbank, was a huge Spruce tree whose lower limbs were a high reach off the ground and fanned out to umbrella a large area of clean, thick pine needles, more than enough room for our tent and a small but spacious front yard for cooking.

​We pitched the tent and made a half-assed attempt at cooking dinner but settled for overheated, undercooked, glop because we were just too tired and hungry to wait. I dozed off while eating this crud, that’s how tasty the food was and how ready I was to call it quits on the day.

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Go to Part 13

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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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