|
|
Rogers Pass to the Bob
Marshall Wilderness, days 39 - 46
Day 39
Up early to find myself in a cloud; I think I'm too high to call it fog. As I fix breakfast and pack, glimpses of the world below pop up from under me now and then. Only once do I get teased with a view of the main ridge to the east. It stays like this while I hike up to the divide, but as I round the shoulder of the peak, a bubble of clear air floats in and I catch a parting shot of the peak just as I hit the spot where the trail begins its descent to the pass and the highway. Apropos, I should say.
Rogers Pass, being the Continental Divide, has big pullouts for vehicles full of travelers to read the informative signs and snap a photo or two of this deep notch in the mountains. Amongst the cars pulled over, I notice one from home, Gallatin County, with a backpack next to it. I walk over and ask the young gentleman if he is going to hike the divide. No, he replies, but his friend is. A guy then walks up and says, "Hi, Rick." I am surprised, to say the least, to see a person who I had met several years earlier readying himself to hike the continental divide to Waterton Park. My direction. He is ready to start hiking; I must wait for my next load of food. We decide to meet in Alice Creek.
Nick and Mel arrive not too much later with my bag of dried this and that. I repack and jettison a few things I think I can do without and am off on the last leg. Exciting and disheartening at the same time with the Bob Marshal ahead and the end in sight. The speed of motorized bipeds diminishes quickly as I climb north, replaced by a flock of turkey vultures circling me &endash; are they waiting for me to drop in my tracks? I stop and watch them for a while. They actually must have good lunch nearby. Not long after that, I see the tawny blur of a deer or elk disappear into the trees. The serenity of the morning is broken as I drop into the pass and see houses, second homes, cabins, clearcuts, and roads pushing their brutal way virtually to the continental divide. A tough lot we humans are casting for the wildlife. I walk on towards a cloud-ensconced Green Mountain and see the speck of Tim on its flank.
We meet up at the base of Lewis and Clark Pass, just in time to hunt out which road heads up Alice Creek. Plenty of Sunday drivers on this Saturday afternoon. The first vehicle by stops and has a family whose matriarch was raised near Helena. She asks if I have seen any grizzly bears. No, I reply. Then she warns us of marauding and murderous grizzlies who have killed 40 cattle of a local rancher friend of hers. Trying to keep a mask of politeness, Tim's and my eyes figuratively roll in our heads. My first thought, they see black helicopters, too! It is just too much! I test this out on a contractor and his wife from Helena I run into on the road a bit later. The guys eyes roll. I have spread the load. But we must beware! This attitude exists and it must be countered. Management decisions on our public lands are political ones for the most part. We cannot kid ourselves otherwise. If we are going to maintain our last vestiges of wild lands and wildlife, we must let decision makers and politicians know what we want. (Call your senator today!)
Day 40
A long, damp and foggy climb back to the divide is how we start the day. On the ridge, it is clear on the northeast side, thick as pea soup the other way. It makes for a unique walk. Somewhere along this ridge is the official boundary of the Scapegoat Wilderness. Ahhhh. We stop for an early lunch when the sun burns a small hole in the clouds around us and opens a tremendous view of Caribou Peak, the basin below and the Dearborn River canyon just before it leaves the mountains. But it doesn't hold. The weather sets in again, it begins to rain, and then it pours. We hike in rain most of the rest of the day, driving at times along the socked-in divide.
We are in the Canyon Creek burn now; a large fire that burned during the 1988 conflagrations in the northern Rockies. As we approach where we are going to camp, the rain quits and the clouds lift a bit. We can see where we are going. Hiking through the old burn is unique. The narrow pass we are dropping into to camp burned hot. Very few young trees are growing, but the shrubs and grasses are abundant. The standing dead trees are relatively thin and devoid of any branches while very few downed trees are present, having burned up completely during the fire. It is a very mysterious and somewhat unsettling landscape. It reminds me a good deal of the north slope of the Brooks Range in Alaska where there are no trees and the mountains seem more spectacular because they show all the definition of their forms. At first I am unsure about the site as a camp. But we have a little spring, and are able to find a protected corner in a dry wash to build a small warming fire. A pair of hummingbirds seem to like our company as they keep coming by to check out whatever new item we hang up to air.
Day 41
The day begins with a bull elk snorting on the hillside above us. He is ethereal, moving in and out of the almost invisible gray snags in the early morning light. This becomes my favorite campsite of the whole trip. It has character and a completely different nature than any other.
We begin what we expect to be a bushwhack back up and along the divide we have dubbed Wolf's Cutoff. It is now an easy to follow trail from much use. The beautiful day really exemplifies the extent of the Canyon Creek burn. What would have been a mostly closed in hike through trees is now a wonderfully view-filled jaunt. Not everyone agrees with us. After a short break on a knob we encountered a dead weasel. It had been recently killed, probably by a coyote who was disturbed by a couple noisy humans just above him. The fire reduced the cover for prey species, for both that which the weasel was hunting and the weasel itself.
A full day of hiking takes us down into the Dearborn River drainage which was not burned, and then back up to the divide and back into the Canyon Creek fire at the head of the North Fork of the Blackfoot. The character of this spot is totally different than last night's camp, as the area is thick with 10-year old lodgepole pine and there are many more standing burned trees mostly sporting branches. The thick groundcover makes for a very soft tent site. We see no critters here, but do hear someone snort a time or two nearby. This gets the bear stories rolling between Tim and I.
Day 42
When I awake, I think to myself how it must have dipped below 40. I find my head cocooned inside my sleeping bag and it is chilly. But I am toasty in the bag, so I stay put for a few minutes and write these thoughts in my journal. The moon was a beamer and the sky crystalline when I had gotten up for a nature call in the middle of the night.
Boy, am I wrong. I hear Tim snap some twigs, so I get up. My pack cover is well frosted. Before dinner last night we hunted for an old trail described in Wolf's Continental Divide guide. We saw no sign of it, but he was here over 20 years ago, and it did burn over in 1988.
After breakfast, we head up the drainage towards the divide. Tim figures that the spirits of the former users of the route will guide us, and that concept bodes well as we do find old sign of the trail here and there. What would have been a thrasher before the fire becomes a game. We do well, and have a good route back to the divide as it pulls us deeper into the Wildlands. Near the ridge we have the company of a couple of elk. Ahead of us we see a pretty steep climb to a rocky point near where we will intersect a trail again.
Wow! What a place to be! I christen it Eyeopener Aerie. Undoubtedly the best view yet. The centerpiece is the one-mile wide face of Scapegoat Mountain; not tall, but massive. The scenery every direction is just spectacular, including the northerly view up the Dearborn River and into the Bob Marshall and what we figure out is Prairie Reef. It is hard to leave a spot like this even knowing that we are going to walk along the base of Scapegoat Mountain. But wait! A look at the map show that this isn't even the main part of the mountain we are ogling, but simply a shoulder of it - we can't even see the top! Off we head with great anticipation.
An hour later we climb over the finger ridge that comes off the north edge of the shoulder and round the mountain into an absolutely breathtaking sight. The front of Scapegoat Mountain is a two-mile long wall that symmetrically leads the eye to a well worn cap of rock that tops the center of the wall like a high alter in a wilderness cathedral. Each step is one of misgiving and anticipation. Will I miss something? What am I going to see next? We cross three basins to get to our camp at the north end of this mystical wall in Halfmoon Basin, where we are greeted by a community of happy mosquitoes.
The Basin is mostly treed, as we passed out of the burn along the front of the mountain. The campsites immediately accessible from the trail are pretty hardened and a bit too messy, but the view is so staggering that it is almost understandable why everyone camps here. But we all, as backcountry users, must learn to minimize our impacts and go a little lighter with the stock and campfires. One campsite must have 6 or 8 different fire rings. Trees are starting to die where horse users have tied their animals and they have dug out and trampled the roots. These impacts are unnecessary.
After dinner, I look for a place to stash my gear and as I walk around a clump of fir, I come face to face with a mule deer doe. She doesn't run, so I freeze and watch. She is looking for something as she wanders between me and my tent. She leaves. Later, as I try to hang my food - throwing, pulling, swearing, and generally making a racket - I stop for a moment and notice I am being watched by my deer friend. With all the noise I was making around these little trees trying to get a good hang, I am very surprised the deer would hang around. I watch for a minute then finish the chore at hand. I head towards my tent and there is the deer digging. Either someone is salting to draw the animals in or they are so mineral starved they are after the minerals where the horses have urinated. After a closer look, there are a handful of sites where they have been digging. The buck is still there as I hit the sack at dark. Another ho-hum day in paradise!
Day 43
Seven deer are in the meadow as I head up the slope at first light to watch the alpenglow on Scapegoat Mountain. I picked a spot last evening where the view would be best, and i am not disappointed. It is amazing to watch the colors on the face of this mountain. Those few fleeting moments are ones I will treasure for a long time to come.
Today we get a good start as Tim is heading out to resupply and meet a friend for his next leg. I cannot look back too many time in the short time before the mountain disappears as I enter the timber. What a place. It is steady hiking as we head down into the main drainage and on towards the Bob. We meet an older couple on their way up to Scapegoat Mountain. Should I turn around and go back with them?
Lunch is where I turn off to head over Elbow Pass. It has been fun to have an impromptu hiking partner the last few days. We say our farewells and I ford the creek. I have gone well less than a mile by myself when I step over a bear scat in the trail. It is a little used trail, tight and windy through the timber, so I tell myself aloud all about my trip so far and describe all the campsites and other features hoping to boor a bear so badly it will leave me alone.No more sign; no bear. When I get to the S. Fork of the Sun River, it seems like a long way to where I decide to camp, which is on the other side after the ford. The canyon is well shadowed by the time I get there, but it is a cool and bug free evening.
Day 44
Mare's tails in the sky yesterday evening leave me surprised this mornign as the cloulds clear and leave the sky totally blue. I lounge this morining, as I am going to have a short day. It is nice. My back has had a knot in it the last few days from messing with the adjustments on my pack. Why I decided to try something new after 40 days is anybody's guess. I really feel the end rolling towards me now. I sort my food for the next few days and look at my options for places to go and mountains to see.
Over a cup of cranberry tea, I become reflective of the fact that I have been hiking for 43 days now; one and a half months, half the summer. Yesterday's recap was good. All kinds of things have happened on this jaunt. I cannot, however, keep up with my mind. The gears shift to thoughts of two years ago and areas of the Brooks Range that Bob Marshall was the first person to document. How does that relate to this Wilderness complex and wildlife corridors? It does, if only because of personal observation of relative change. Our linear rational approach to life requires quantification; this followed by our consumptive ways which means in the case of recreation that we must go to, use and impact. Our nature do not allow for us to leave well enough alone.
The intersection here has put me back on a well used trail. Shortly after I start hiking, I run into a couple from Minnesota and we have a nice visit. Another couple miles and I run into a horse party. The last 24 hours have produced as much human encounte in the backcountry as I had in the previous 40 days. After all, I am approaching the busiest trailhead around the Bob Marshall Complex. I hike on and take the left fork, the route less traveled, that bypasses the trailhead and heads to the Bob.
