Part Twenty Two

​     July 9 - 10                Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, MT                (Go to Pt 1)

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.

We were in some pretty dense woods on a broad, ambling ridge when we finally gave up on the notion of there being a trail anymore.  It was gone without a trace and without the trail we were driving in the dark. 
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There were no landmarks visible from within the forest and we hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the orienteering to know exactly where on the map we were and those two elements combined to deal out any effective use of the map and compass.  Without a visible terrain feature to sight-on or our own, known 

location on the map, we just weren’t clever enough to map-and-compass our way out of here.  So we really didn’t have much choice but to follow the high ground.

Fortunately, the woods we were traveling through were not a cluttered-up mess with deadfall and the hiking, at least, was not problematic as we spent several hours pushing  forward through the forest in relative suspense, not knowing if we were still maintaining the ridge of the Divide or following some other random ridge. 

Finally, at 6:00 p.m., we came up to a rise where the forest thinned and the ridge abruptly dropped away.  We could see enough now to know that we had lost the Divide somewhere behind us.  Across 

the valley, somewhat distant and far below, we could see pieces of a logging road snaking its way through the valley and now that we knew we were standing on a false ridge, we decided to descend into the valley and see if following that logging road would get us out to Highway 43.

We had maybe a thousand feet to descend to reach the valley floor and as we began down the steep decline from the friendly, Sherwood Forest we had been hiking through, the thickly, wooded mountainside swiftly became a seriously hazardous bushwhack.  The timber deadfall on this aspect of the mountain was stacked two to three feet high and the downpour we’d had earlier in the day had left everything slick under foot. ​

We started down into the chaos by trying to find and link downed logs that we thought looked passable as ramps but were immediately thrust into attempting a step-and-balance act across the tops of these steeply, stacked timbers that were way too slippery for boot soles.  Add the innumerable, broken branches that  

​stuck up from the logs like giant, porcupine quills and this drop into the valley had quickly put us into some very dangerous territory. 

About 100 yards into this mess, I stood balanced on the top of one of these slick timbers and looked over at Craig who was about 20 yards off to my left. Craig was also trying to stick to a greasy log and he was looking directly back at me like ‘You gotta be out of your freaking mind!’ when suddenly he slipped - and just as he started to go down my foot shot out from underneath me and I fell pack/headfirst through the broken branches to the ground.

I was stunned and lay still for a moment, then Craig yelled over and I yelled back “Okay” and struggled under the pack to stand-up again. We tried climbing up and over the log piles but with the packs that was utterly futile. Angling down and across the slope using the tree backs as ramps was the only to make progress.​

Three times I slipped and crashed into the steep deadfall and each time I was lucky enough to get back up with only a bruise or minor gouge but each time I went down I had to take a moment to be sure I hadn’t sustained a more serious injury somewhere because the anxiety of our situation was such that pain was pretty low on the register.  

It took us two hours to descend to the valley floor and when we got there the vegetation and growth along the narrow valley was jungle-like, forcing us to further thrash around as we tried to fight our way through overgrown ground willow and scraggled-up pines.  We dropped our packs at the most convenient, if not ​​

the flattest, tent spot we could find and rushed through another camp set-up to get away from the mosquito plague that had swarmed us upon reaching the valley.  

That night it rained harder than I had ever heard or seen rain come down before in my life and not just for a little bit, it was a biblical torrent for two hours non-stop.  After a while, I became concerned that the sheer force of this continuous volume of water pounding down on the tent fly would start to rip away the seams.  

The cacophony of rain thrashing the tent was almost deafening and Craig and I, only three feet apart, had to shout to hear each other. Naturally, this torrential deluge was also accompanied by a tremendous thunder and lightning storm that hit all across the ridges above the valley.

From 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. it was a real cowboy show out there but somehow the tent survived and we stayed dry.  From then on I knew that old tent could withstand a serious Mother Nature thrashing and be okay – as long as it got all of its stakes.

The next morning we bashed our way out of the valley jungle up to the logging road and headed south down the muddy ruts. ​

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Go to Part 23

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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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