Part Twenty One

     July 7 - 8                 Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, MT                  (Go to Pt 1)

We descended the 1,400 feet to make camp along the shore of Johnson Lake after covering 17 miles that included 3,700 feet of elevation gain and 4,200 feet of descent.  There were other campers along the lakeshore making this only the second time in two months that we did not camp alone.  That in itself felt a bit strange but it only got stranger when a guy dressed in purple, denim jeans and a purple, denim jacket with the sleeves torn off strolled into our camp.  

He was sporting pointed, alligator skin boots and holstered to a gun belt that slouched around his waist was a Colt revolver big enough to scare the bejesus out of anybody.  The pistol was followed by a row of gold-tipped bullets packed neatly around the belt and on his other hip hung an 18 inch machete.  He flashed a wild grin with penetrating eyes that burned out from under the low brim of a bandito hat.

Without invitation, he made himself comfortable on a tree stump at the edge of our camp and made chit-chat while we finished eating dinner. Then he started to query us about our 

Click on the map for a larger image

equipment, taking a particular interest in our tent and sleeping bags. When he asked us what we were doing up here at the lake we told him we were hiking the Continental Divide but he seemed a lot more interested in those sleeping bags then he did any of our stories about the hike.

This guy was starting to creep me out big-time but Craig was over there totally chatting him up like there was nothing out of the ordinary at all, cracking jokes about his Magnum PI gun and scalp-ready machete, which kept adding levity to what, I thought, was becoming a rather scary situation.  Finally, the purple denim guy said something about getting back to his wife in camp but as he was leaving he walked over to Craig saying “I like your style, dude” and gave him a big, bro-ham handshake as he walked out of camp. 

Well, the purple denim guy did not come back in the night to scalp us and take our sleeping bags but it sure was an odd encounter that showed how venerable we were if he really had wanted to poach our gear. And thank God for Craig being able to disarm this guy with humor.
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We pulled out of camp early the next morning, heading up the trail before the purple denim guy had a chance to join us for breakfast.  We climbed the two miles up to Pintler Pass and, after attaining the ridge, the next five miles involved a huge descent into the Pintler Creek Valley which was then followed by a prolonged, ambling climb back out to the ridge of the Divide. From here, the Divide’s spiked ridgeline melted into wide, rolling terrain and open forests of tall, Lodgepole Pine.

We had planned to camp at Mystic Lake but when we arrived at the lake mid-afternoon, with plenty of daylight left, we considered carrying on another five miles to Hope Lake.  The mosquitoes were finally the tipping point; they were so bad that it was either set up the tent pronto or keep moving, so in a fit of slapping ourselves silly we hustled back up into the woods and carried on to Hope Lake.  

Four miles later, our map showed a trail descending from the Divide to Hope Lake but we couldn’t find it and ended up having to bushwhack the last half mile or so to the lake.  Unfortunately, the mosquito plague was just as bad at Hope Lake but at the end of this long, hot, sweaty day we elected to brave the mosquito cloud and go in for a grit-dip (bath) before pitching the tent and setting camp.  

I dug around in my pack for the camp soap then trotted through the blood-sucking swarm down to the lake. No sooner did I get started with my splash bath then out of absolutely nowhere it started to pour rain.  

I looked up at the sky in disbelief; I didn’t recall seeing clouds anywhere in the sky when we’d jogged down to the lake.  Now my clothes were up on a rock, getting soaked, my boots sitting next to them, filling with water, and the contents of my pack up at the campsite, spilled haphazardly onto the ground, were also getting drenched.  The tent wasn’t even up yet and I still had camp soap in my hair, for chrissake! 

I tender-footed it as fast as I could across the gravel to grab my shorts and boots then further brutalized my feet as Craig and I ran barefoot up to the campsite, hell-bent on getting the tent up.  Mind you, it wasn’t just raining; this was a full-on deluge of pounding ice water and we were completely exposed until the stake intensive tent got pitched.  
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Well, no sooner did we get the tent up and all of our stuff pulled inside then the whole downpour abruptly stopped and, just like that, it was sunny skies again. Craig poked his head out the tent door “Huh, look at that” he said, as sunshine filtered down through the pines onto our campsite.

The following morning we already knew we’d have to bushwhack to get back up to the Divide and decided to take a small rib-of-a-ridge that lay on the other side of the lake to begin a day of rotten luck and misadventure.
 
Straight out of the tent the mosquitoes were murder, big enough in size and numbers to carry off a small dog, and the first thing we hit when trying to skirt the lake on the north side was a nasty, mosquito-breeding bog, which immediately turned us away to try going around the longer, south side.
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The south side route around the lake got us into a thicket of a stunted, ragged woods that ended abruptly at a steep boulderfield crossing, then more bushwhacking to finally get us to our starting point at the bottom of the spur. The climb up the rib was brutal, on steep terrain and through thick forest buried in deadfall.

The exertion required to attain the ridge made for hot, sweaty work and the mosquitoes were horrendous, torturing us all the way to the top.  Up on the ridge we expected to pick-up the trail we’d been on the day before but for whatever reason we couldn’t find it, which made no sense because we had been on a good trail when we’d dropped down to Hope Lake.

We navigated westward by compass unable to see the forest for all the trees when, after about an hour, we stumbled onto the trail, or a trail, anyways. Our maps showed only one trail following the Divide so we figured this must be it but unlike the trail that we had been all day the day before, this trail we were on now showed no signs of Forest Service maintenance and was devoid of trail markers altogether. 

Brush, pine needles and deadfall littered the route as the trail faded in and out all the way to Surprise Lake.  And quite honestly, I actually was a little surprised that we found the lake, given the dodgy nature of the trail we were trying to follow.

​We stopped at the lake for lunch and watched a storm build out on the western horizon that was moving steadily in our direction and looked to me like we had about an hour before it made landfall on the ridge.  We continued along the faint trail until, 45 minutes later, our southwesterly bearing walked us right into the storm.

Rain came down in sheets of near freezing water mixed with snow filled, hail-balls that exploded in puffs when they hit called graupel.  We huddled up under our rain gear and watched the ground turn white with millions of exploding, graupel balls.  After the worst of the onslaught had passed, we carried on along the ghost trail, which began to take some odd twists and turns.

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Go to Part 22

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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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