Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Thimbleberry plants lined the trail, but the berries were long gone. In the afternoon we walked in an old burn area with seas and seas of fireweed’s bright magenta, which was especially pretty against the bright green of new young pine trees growing among the black snags. Purple asters, goldenrod, and a sprinkling of other flowers also decorated the landscape.

  After an uphill pull for the last two miles, we found water and a place for both tents, though finding an appropriate place to hang the food bags was a challenge in burn country. The new trees were not yet tall, and I hoped the bears were short, too. I’d decided we didn’t need to carry bear cans as no one else we saw on the CDT was doing so. We would trust our bag-hanging skills.

  While taking care of morning chores in our tents, a big thunderstorm hit. Hunkering down in tents, we waited for it to pass, giving us a late start. It was nearly 9:00 by the time we hit the trail. We forded creeks and streams at least 4-5 times during the day and had many wet bushes to walk through. I didn't mind it all that much, the cold water feeling good on hot feet.

  After going up Straight Creek Pass, the rest of the day was downhill, except for all the little uphills that seemed to be part of even downhill days. We descended Welcome Creek and then Dearborn, and by afternoon we were out of the burn and into deep forest. Deer prints, moose poop, and one giant bear scat informed us of large animals, but we only saw chipmunks, hummingbirds, and other small birds. There were no big stands of flowers and no people.

  We ended the day a couple miles ahead of schedule, hoping that would make the next day less brutal. Nearly 4,000 feet of elevation gain was planned, and we would be carrying a two-day supply of water. Ugh!

  At Black Tail Creek Crossing, we loaded two gallons of water for RockStar and six liters for me, my requirements always less than hers, for which I was grateful. We then started out with a long climb in the forest. Leaving the forest and still climbing in the high country, ferocious winds increased in strength and distracted us from the effort of going up by seeking to hurl us back down the mountain.

  Hunkered down behind some very short trees to avoid the gusts, we stopped for lunch before resuming our climb and battle with the wind. We might have made our planned destination with just the climb to worry about, but adding the wind and trying to keep from being blown over took more energy. We only made 8.3 miles after a lot of work, meaning we would have a longer day to reach Alice Creek, but we would have less water to carry.

  Although we didn’t get as far as planned, we had one of those walking on top of the world days with high mountain peaks surrounding us, most of them below our elevation, the rewards for our hard work. Amazing. We camped in a depression between hills on the high ridge to shelter us from the still-fierce wind.

  It was a cold night, freezing condensation on tent walls by morning. Getting up first to take down the food bags, I was rewarded with beautiful morning light shining on the lower end of the north/south rock formation called The Chinese Wall, south of the iconic picture postcards but the same type of rock formation. The wall glowed almost orange in the early morning sunlight.

  Within the first mile, we met PEOPLE. Section hikers Cassie and Tony passed us, and later, Problem Bear and Porter. We had met Problem Bear in New Mexico in 2013. After an on-trail chat, we continued in opposite directions.

  RockStar had a very hard time, especially uphill in the morning, her legs fried from the 4,000-foot climb the day before under so much water weight. We took the Wolf option of the old road down to Alice Creek to find water, not arriving at our campsite until 8:00, but we had tents up, water stowed, and food bag line placed before dark. I took a Ziploc bath while sitting in my tent eating dinner, and we hung the food bags by headlamp.

  Leaving first, RockStar saw a moose as she headed down the jeep road to Alice Creek Trailhead. Interpretive signs at the trailhead told us we were in a valley used by Shoshone coming down to their winter camping grounds, also the route of Meriweather Lewis coming back from the Pacific on the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1806.

  We hiked back up to the CDT at Lewis and Clark Pass, the principal path through the Divide before Rogers Pass was discovered. Half way up Green Mountain we met Beacon, whom we also knew from New Mexico in 2013.

  After our trail chat, he continued NOBO and we SOBO. From the top of Green Mountain we could see ridges and mountains yet to walk on the way to Rogers Pass, down to a saddle, up a mountain, down to a saddle, repeat, repeat and repeat some more. RockStar had a very difficult day on completely worn-out legs before we reached Rogers Pass three hours later than anticipated.

  Toni, our ride, wasn’t happy about our lateness, but it was the best we could do with RockStar’s fried legs. Toni was a friend we had met online, who had hoped to be part of our group in The Bob, but severe foot problems requiring probable surgery prevented her from joining us. She’d agreed to give us some very key trail support in transportation and lodging. But as a Montanan, she knew the highway from Rogers Pass was called suicide highway because deer frequently tried to be hood ornaments at dusk along that stretch of road. Toni had never been a trail angel before and had expected us to be there at the estimated time I’d given her. It was hard to be that precise over five days of unfamiliar trail, or maybe just because I was old and RockStar not in pristine hiking shape.

  Toni drove us to her home in Big Fork with a stop in Lincoln to grab a remarkably good little pizza from a gas station convenience store, and bacon and eggs from the grocery for breakfast the next morning. Finally arriving at Toni's a little after 10:00, we were beat. Toni was glad the trip had not involved deer dashing onto the highway.

  We took two rest days in a small house Toni and Frank had lived in while their big house was built. We needed the rest, and their cabin was a real house, not just a motel room, luxurious for hikers. Toni drove us around Kalispell so we could pick up various items of resupply or discovered need, and we dropped off one set of resupply boxes at the Moddermans, who would deliver them to us by horseback 3 ½ days into The Bob Marshall Wilderness.

  The Bob

  The section of the CDT through The Bob Marshall Wilderness was a long one, a real stretch for able-bodied thru hikers on one food carry. There was no way I, RockStar, and our three friends new to backpacking could have made it on one food carry. After a good deal of sleuthing, I’d found two sets of horse packers willing to bring us food at prearranged sites on the trail at a price we could split five ways. Moddermans were one of those horse packers. I talked to Mark, Pam, and Ryan by cell phone as they drove from Washington to Missoula. Soon there would be five in our group.

  The second day, Toni took us on a tour of Big Fork, a nice little artsy town, Toni herself an accomplished artist in paint and fabric. The tour included tales of many celebrities, who lived in or near the small town of Big Fork, including Johnny Depp, Wayne Newton, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez and numerous others. Evidently Big Fork was a popular place.

  Then a text from Pam told me they’d driven all the way to Montana before realizing they’d forgotten their hiking shoes, a little hard to walk The Bob without them. Lots of drama later, they replaced them at the REI in Missoula. At least they were in the right place to find more.

  RockStar and I checked in with Forest Service Rangers about a fire in Glacier to the north of us and a fire west of the Divide. The reports said the fires were stable and not currently a problem; all trails we needed were open. Toni and Frank fixed us elk tacos for dinner before we came back to the cabin to pack. We looked at maps and elevations ahead, and I talked to my son and daughter by cell phone.

  Oops. My alarm failed to go off in the morning, and we were awakened by Toni knocking on the door. RockStar and I scrambled to get ready and have breakfast, but we were still late. We left Toni with the impression we were always late. That wasn’t true, but it was true for the short time we knew her.

  Toni drove us to Kalispell to meet Mark, Pam, and Ryan, and Ryan's brother drove us all to the Marias Pass trailhead. Our little grou
p was ready to hike into The Bob.

  The day was a learning experience fording rivers for the three new backpackers as we took Wolf's route along the Two Medicine River instead of the Bear Creek route with numerous PUDs. (Hiker jargon for pointless ups and downs.) I liked walking straight through rivers with my hiking shoes on, and this route had almost as many river crossings in a day as the Gila, but RockStar and the new hikers changed to crocs at each crossing. We tried one high-water trail on the map, but the trail was so overgrown and difficult, we carefully made our way down a steep, overgrown hillside to the regular trail.

  Smoke and Ashes

  About 10:30 we looked behind us and saw tall, billowing smoke clouds, which were unnerving and somewhat scary. Going back toward the smoke didn’t seem to be a good option, so we kept walking as planned, while we kept an eye on the smoke behind us. I encouraged my little group to think through what we would do if fire came toward us. Rolling in the river to get soaking wet or lying down under the water in deep pools seemed the best options. Having a plan helped to settle our nerves, though we didn’t have to execute the plan.

  At lunch we sat on a hillside in the shade above the river. Unfortunately RockStar lost her balance on the uneven ground, fell, and ripped out the rivet for the strap on her croc. Then as more and more bees appeared, I realized my pack was set on a ground nest of bees, and RockStar got stung. It wasn’t the best lunch stop. It was very hot in the 90s.

  The heat, the river crossings, and the newness of it all for Mark, Pam, and Ryan resulted in a very tired crew by the time we reached White Rock Creek, but we had a sense of accomplishment for completing the day together. Tents were set up, bodies cleaned, dinner eaten, water treated, food bags hung, and we turned in.

  The next day everyone did a little better. The trail was good, and we moved steadily before lunch. Past the patrol cabin, we were temporarily slightly misplaced, but RockStar quickly located the trail change in the middle of the meadow we had just passed. Thundershowers passed by in the morning, but it only rained lightly.

  I could still smell a whiff or two of smoke in the morning, but we no longer saw smoke in billowing clouds. We did see high peaks, though somewhat obscured by haze, and a few late-season flowers: pearly everlasting, goldenrod, and a scattering of paintbrush, geranium and cinquefoil. Gentian were drying up before they could bloom.

  In the middle of the night, Mark and Pam saw a large rabbit, and in the day we saw a squirrel or two, and a few birds, and heard a loud bellow from a cow, who apparently didn’t like us eating lunch by Kip Creek.

  In mid-afternoon, the trail gradually became less and less of a trail. We were happy to find campsites at the creek crossing, doctored Ryan’s blisters, set up camp, and did camp chores. Mark rigged a great food bag line.

  RockStar and I were the experienced backpackers, but we learned a new way of hanging food bags from Mark. He threw a line high over a branch near the trunk of a tree and tied off one end close to the trunk. He then threw the other end of the line over a branch of a different tree a number of feet from the first. A fixed loop tied as high as we could reach on the line close to the first tree held carabineers with our food bags. Pulling the line over the branch of the second tree lifted food bags neatly suspended between the trees and far from the ground. That line was then tied next to the trunk straight down from the supporting branch.

  I was impressed. In all my hiking years, I’d never seen it done quite like that, and it became my favorite method of food bag-hanging if appropriately spaced trees were available, a method especially useful in lodgepole pine forests without large branches. Old hikers can learn new tricks.

  RockStar and I have never been particularly fast at getting on the trail in the mornings. Our backpacking newbies were only a few minutes behind us packing up. Overgrown trail in the morning slowed us down, but the trail improved as we passed Blue and Beaver Lakes.

  We met thru hiker John Z heading north. He’d walked a bit west of the Chinese Wall and saw flames of the Three Sisters fire. He took some difficult alternate routes and made up a few of his own. And he was planning to head SOBO on the AT when he finished the CDT.

  It was fun for the new backpackers to meet a thru hiker, who seemed a bit superhuman toward the end of his thru hike. We also met Cassie and Tony in the morning and Handy Andy and Twinkles in the afternoon. They had no trouble with the Three Sisters fire.

  We experienced smoke all day. I thought it was coming from the north, maybe something started after we left Marias Pass. As we settled into camp beside Strawberry Creek, ash fell on us and on our tents. I hadn’t experienced ash fall from forest fires before, although RockStar had on the PCT in 2008. Ashes carry a long way on the wind, and it was unnerving to have them fall on our tents days into the wilderness and far from any road.

  I was the slowest one to be ready the next morning. Bad for me, good for everyone else. I could always use the excuse I was old, a nice excuse for pretty much anything whenever I needed one.

  No smell of smoke lingered, and no ash fell in the morning. Walking down Strawberry Creek on good trail through meadows and trees beside the creek, we moved right along. Shortly before we reached the site of our rendezvous with horse packers, a ranger with a horse and two mules passed us heading NOBO. He was closing the trail we had just come over because lightning had caused a new fire in the Muskrat Creek drainage.

  Shortly afterwards, we met our horse packers with our food boxes. They were early, and so were we, and the exchange of food for trash was smooth except for RockStar's squashed Doritos and Mark and Pam's moldy cheese. We all had plenty of food.

  Next was a huge burn area with no shade, and my trail thermometer registered 94. Lunch was blessed with clouds that obscured the sun; without them we would have roasted.

  After lunch, we forded Strawberry Creek, and the water was so inviting Mark and Pam became water sprites for a while as the rest of us went on to give them privacy.

  Our burned trail turned uphill along Bowl Creek to wear us out before we reached Grizzly Park. We found pretty good camping in the meadow and were all tucked in as the sound of rumbling thunder threatened more rain.

  Shortly after we went to bed, we were treated to a spectacular sound-and-light show. Lightning repeatedly flashed closer than half a mile away, one flash closer than a count of one, with a deafening peal of thunder over our heads, and the fireworks were better than Disneyland’s Electric Parade. Rain poured down on our tents while we remained dry inside. It was quite a show for new and experienced hikers alike.

  The next morning our trail went through more burn, pockets of forest and wilderness that Mark said were all he’d imagined The Bob to be. A family of ptarmigans posed for pictures on the trail and the log next to it.

  The best of the day was at the last, climbing to just below the towering face of the Northern Chinese Wall. Everyone expressed amazement and awe. The sub-alpine terrain was lovely as we made our way to Lake Lavale; the lake was a beautiful shade of blue-green below the rocky wall, though the water level was low. Considering the hot weather of the last few days, we were amazed to find a few patches of snow below the wall.

  Fire Detours

  As we ate our dinner, a beautiful doe circled our campsite in the trees below the lake. We didn’t linger outside in the evening because a cold 47-degrees forced everyone to dive for sleeping bags.

  We woke to a cold and foggy morning, but still went back to Lake Levale to take morning pictures; the lake sat behind a ridge above the campsite and was not visible from our tents. We wanted another view and were hoping for morning sun. Unfortunately the cliff walls were in fog, but the lake itself was still a lovely blue-green.

  On the trail, fog lifted, giving us spectacular views of the North Wall as we hiked, an amazing, double, sometimes triple tier of cliffs extending for miles and miles to the south. We walked slowly below those cliffs, our mouths agape and cameras snapping shots.

  After lunch, we were stopped by a newly placed sign saying o
ur desired trail (Red Shale Creek) was closed, and tape stretched across the trail. An alternate on the North Fork of Lick Creek was suggested. After consulting our maps, (I carried three sets of maps plus my GPS and the guidebook) we decided to be law-abiding hikers even though we would miss a little of the North Wall.

  The North Fork of Lick Creek trail wasn’t bad although it had a few mud boggy spots. I managed to fall in the creek once, demonstrating my lack of gracefulness. We saw a trout in the creek; I might have scared it when I fell.

  After taking a false start on a supposed short-cut trail on my map, we found it unmaintained and full of downed trees from an earlier burn, but we still made good time and were at our new trail junction by 5:30. We had time to clean up and wash clothes, which we hung on the willows surrounding our campsite.

  Food bags were hung between new 20-foot pines, small trees to hold all our bags, but they were the highest trees in the burn. After dinner, we retreated to our tents. Mark, Pam, and I sang Holden Evening Prayer in our neighborly tents, after which darkness fell, and the melody of the nearby river brought sleep.

  Our laundry didn’t dry overnight. I left the campsite with wet laundry festooned over my pack. But no mater, the trail was a good one over a number of rises, through rolling hills and beautiful meadows, and we came out at Gates Park.

  After fording one yucky stagnant stream, we were at the ranger cabin and found lots of pack horses and mules, our horse packer with our food, and a ranger. We had planned to come to Gates Park even though we had not planned to come down that particular trail. The good news was our food was there. The bad news was our trail to the South Chinese Wall was also closed.

  There was lots of fire news. The Three Sisters fire had jumped the wall at Sock Lake near our planned campsite after the detour. The Rock Creek trail was closed all the way to the wall. There were two new fires on Moose Ridge, started by the sound-and-light show two nights previously. The Nyak Fire in Glacier National Park had grown from 1,000 acres to 11,000 acres the day we left Marias Pass and saw the billowing smoke behind us. The Nyak fire probably had been the source of the ash that fell on our tents nights ago.