Part Fifteen

     June 19 - 22                                  Helena NF                                   (Go to Pt 1)
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Two hours later the forest thinned out and the ridge suddenly dropped away into a vast, arid valley and situated several miles out in the valley was a town, a fairly good sized town, and in no way should we be seeing any vast valleys and definitely no towns.  So, WTF now!?

In my mind, we had already found the ridgeline of the Divide and, the way I had it figured, we were heading south; my entire mental picture as to where we were, spatially, was completely orientated toward the ‘fact’ that we were, and had been, hiking south along the Continental Divide.  Now the ridge was about to end and the compass (which I hadn’t checked since we’d picked up the trail) clearly pointed north to northwest, and then there was that town sitting out there, unaccounted for.  This was bending my mind.

​I could not make my brain believe the compass. There was just no way, 

Click on the Map to see a larger image

in my south-forward orientation, could we possibly be heading north.  Finally, I stated “The compass is wrong; it’s got to be wrong.” Craig was just now getting a compass bearing on the town out beyond and stopped to look at me. “How is the compass ‘wrong’?” he asked

Kip Rusk negotiates deadfall in Helena National Forest."

“Well,” I replied “these mountains are full of all kinds of metallic deposits, there’s mining everywhere, and I think there’s a magnetic deposit somewhere that’s messing with the compass.”  Plausible enough. Then Craig asked “Well, where do you think we are then?”  To that I had no reply.  Pointing toward the town, he continued “Because I think that’s Deer Lodge out there and we’re going the wrong way”, handing the map back to me.

​No. No way. How could that possibly be? I spread the map out onto the ground and got down on my knees to study the contours closely and, damnit, sure enough, if I placed our location where Craig’s finger had pointed to on the map then the terrain, the town and the compass all synched. Well, if that wasn’t a shit sandwich with no milk.  All I could think was ‘how could I possibly get us this far off route’?

During the past six weeks Craig and I had swapped over the lead innumerable times and it was pretty much the lead guy’s job to keep track of where we were going. When I was following Craig I was there for consultation if there was a question but I really didn’t pay that much attention to the details of his route finding as it was much easier to get lost in your own hiking thoughts and let the lead guy raise a question if there was one. 

​This afternoon, Craig had been following my lead because earlier in the day I had been the guy who had practically bellowed “Tallyho!  A trail!  Follow me!” and now I was the guy staring numbly at the map; the guy who had just led us six miles north or, more precisely, twelve miles out of our way.  At this point, I handed the map back to Craig and we began the painful retreat of the six, unnecessary miles we’d just come.

It was after 8:00 p.m. by the time we finally got back to square one, making camp at the headwaters of Thunderbolt Creek not even a quarter of a mile from where south had turned into north earlier in the day.  And once again, here we were setting up the stake-dependent tent in a mine field of stake-stopper stones while being devoured by a carnivorous frenzy of vicious, swarming mosquitoes.

Craig was pissed and worn out; hell, we were both pissed and worn out. And even though Craig was the kind of guy who would never begrudge anyone for an honest mistake, his low key nature could be pressed with a repeat of the same mistake, especially when tired, hungry and being eaten by mosquitoes.

​This wrong-way-turn fiasco today was one thing but I had also been the guy asleep at the wheel when I led us down into Landers Fork a couple of weeks prior and that memory was still very fresh in everybody’s mind.  That evening I kind of acted nonchalant, as if nothing all that bad had happened while Craig was generous enough to pretend like the day hadn’t been a complete waste. 

Click on the Map to see a larger image

The next morning we bushwhacked out of the Thunderbolt Creek basin, dropping into the Rock Creek River Valley.  From here, we into full-bore, road-warrior mode, pounding out the miles on dirt access roads down Rock Creek and up Boulder River.  We had to bushwhack our way over into Browns Gulch, which went much easier than our timberbash out of the Little Bigfoot valley, and then an all-afternooner down Browns Gulch to within three miles of Butte.

​We set camp late, trying to hide the tent behind scrawny sagebrush and scrub oak the best we could because we were trespassing on posted, 

private property.  You know, one of those properties where the No Trespassing signs also read ‘Trespassers will be shot on sight. Survivors will be Prosecuted’ complete with bullet holes - and we believed them!

We walked into Butte around noon the following day, absolutely agape at the massive Anaconda Mine, whose open-pit excavation in width, berth and depth was positively mind boggling and also located, it seemed like to me, right in downtown Butte.  You could practically look 1,000 ft. down into the mining pit from the sidewalk.

Craig Dunn on the Streets of Butte, MT.

We had gotten into town early enough to get settled with our gear at a motel, stop by the Forest Service Office for a couple of maps and hang out at the laundromat where we changed clothes straight from the dryer.  We should have gotten started back out on the trail by mid-afternoon the following day, we had all of our supplies restocked and the bags were packed sitting by the door but it was the damned café that hooked us.  

​We made our excuses about it being too late in the day to get started but the real reason we stayed over another night in Butte was so we could eat more food; more Montana Burgers, Idaho fries, frosty milkshakes and cherry pie.  We ate three more times before leaving town the next morning.

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Go to Part 16

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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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