Bob Marshall Wilderness: Chapter 3

Aug/ 9/ 17

If I were to say that all of us aged about ten years by the morning, would you believe me? I would probably say that Dwylin has reached the ripe old age of 60 by now. Looking back, the morning had a few memorable moments. Some of us went down to the lake to get water, and to collect our laundry. It is just too bad that most of the clothes hadn’t dried completely yet.

Walking back up to the camp you could see breakfast being made with our burners because you still can’t have any fires. Warm water is a must if you want coffee or Mountain Houses, and with very little heat otherwise you’ll find the propane burners to be a great source of hand warmers as well.

The realization of how separated from the world we are has started to set in. How no one can get information about us, and we have no way to find out what has happened back home. All while eating our breakfast's that won’t expire until 2047!!! I know, awkward transition…

It’s time once again to pack up and head out, but we can’t leave till we get Dwylin bandaged up. We have figured out a basic way of keeping him moving, and it only involves 4 band-aids. Along with ibuprofen, which is increasing in amount by the day. Jon has also made an appearance on the disabled list. I can’t remember if his feet got burned when he fell asleep while fishing on his boat or if he just got boring old blisters. The first story is funnier, so let's just agree to have that be the “real story”. Jon in an effort to dilute the pain of his burns had a great plan of wrapping his feet in toilet paper to create a buffer between his feet and shoe.

We started our 5 miles for the day, but before our sore feet could even loosen up we saw wildlife. I don’t know the difference between what kinds of animals we saw or didn’t see. So excuse me for not knowing what it was, and we also don’t have a picture. Either way, we soon continued on our way and headed back to the fork in the road from the day before.

We walked past two ranchers leading a bunch of horses back up the trail. This was always a treat to stare at, or maybe we just longed for the horses to take our packs and gives us a ride.

Just around the corner from the ranchers, we walked into a real problem. WATER! Water on our hike was usually accompanied by a bridge or its just a creek with rocks to walk on. Dwylin may or may not have used his bandaged feet to his advantage, and we decided to go back and take another path.

Somewhere in this area we walked up on this random cast-iron box on a tree, and Nate decided to open it up, and to our surprise, it was a phone. One that you would have needed to wind up in order work, but it looked like they disconnected the line some time ago. Nate picked up the phone and said, “Hello operator, get me the diner.” Then, if that is not enough, he continued quoting Barney Fife reciting a poem to his “Dear Lovely Juanita” into the phone.

It wasn’t more than three minutes later and we had to go uphill, and it seemed to be straight up. This was followed by what seemed to be 2 miles of being on top of this plateau surrounded by small trees that were just above your eye level. We finally cleared and could see a valley accompanied by the river again.

We thought the dust was bad on day one, but it was so much worse today. Everyone ended up spreading out of about an eighth of a mile. Matt, Nate, and Dwylin leading with Caleb and Landon somewhere in the middle while Dan and Jon fell far back for a while.

Finally, we reached an open space, and we all got back together in one big group. We stopped for a nice break from walking and someone suggested a group picture. Nate took the picture on a timer for us and it was a great picture. The way Nate reacted to getting a picture was pure comedy, and you should just ask someone that was there to describe it to you. This also ended up being the only group picture that we took for the whole trip.

In this particular area, there were some massive trees around us. Now, once again I don’t pretend to know what trees are what. (OK, so I don’t know much… hey, I know you all are thinking it) The funny thing is we kept seeing more of these trees and out of nowhere Nate said, “Cedars of Lebanon!”. Oh, Nate, so simple and yet such outstanding humor. Nate also gave one of the trees a big ole hug, and Jon eventually joined in.

We got off the path and found a perfect place to set up camp, but there was one issue. Someone else had set up for camp already and he also had horses. Now, we must blow up our rafts and go out on the river, and find ourselves another campsite. We were not out on the river long, maybe 20 minutes, and we found a great spot for camp.

We landed at our newly appointed campsite, and it seemed almost perfect. There was sand for our tent to rest on and some great scenery to admire. So the guys started to eat our snack food, like crackers, bars, and Jon got out the summer sausage (remember that, it will come into play in our next post.)

Our five-mile hike didn’t take long at all, about two and a half hours if I recall correctly. Which isn’t bad compared to 12 miles in 8 hours.

Being that we found our camp, roughly around 1. That meant we had plenty of time to waste the day away. Fishing is what most started doing, and we spread out over the river. Dan got his fly fishing rod out, but *SPOILER ALERT* we never caught a fish during the whole trip with that thing. Nate ended up catching about 60% of our fish, and that became a joke of ours. How does Nate always catch fish?

Once everyone got back to base Dan couldn’t find his sandals and those are a premium relic around here. Some of the guys got a plan to go back and find the sandals and raft back down the river. Just before they left Dan found his sandals in his bag or somewhere, and the guys were too excited and left anyway.

Dan, Dwylin, Landon, and Jon stayed behind and cooked some fish. One problem for Dwylin was with how stiff he was, there were very few places for him to sit down. While trying to figure out the best way to sit down, Dwylin spun once and then a second time. Reminding the guys of a dog getting ready to take a dump.

While waiting for the others to return, we found a squirrel that required our attention. The first one escaped our rocks, but we ended up with a good laugh. (Later that night Matt hit a squirrel out of the tree with a rock.) Once again while sitting there doing nothing Dan and Jon saw a cave across the river as well as a big rock that they wanted to stand on. So they went across the river and Dwylin and Landon stayed back and began pumping for water.

As Landon and Dwylin were watching everything Dan and Jon were going up on the hill. We noticed that they were on all fours trying to get over some loose rocks. (We don't have any good pictures of that though, but we do have a video!!!)

At the same time when Dan and Jon reached the top, Caleb, Matt, and Nate, who had just returned from rafting, headed up the cliff as well. Later Jon showed us some pictures from above and showed us what needed to be crossed if you wanted to go up on top of the rock… NO THANK YOU! When Matt got up to the top he thought this to himself, “Hey, maybe this wouldn’t be a good idea. I mean, after all, I am getting married in 17 days.” (This is just a paraphrase of Matt's thoughts. No one actually knows what Matt was thinking at the time, but we’re pretty sure Linda was involved somehow.)

The five of them were on the other side of the river for maybe an hour, and it didn’t take long for us to hear roaring laughter and loud banging. Oh boy, what could they possibly be destroying now? Rocks! Apparently, it's fun for the soul if you roll a rock down a hill and try to jump out of the way while being 25 miles away from the nearest car… but don’t take my written word for it. Watch it yourself, we have a video right here.

Once the five began to cross the river they discovered that there were some fishermen that had passed by our camp to fish and we all got to experience the loud banging and laughter of our rock rolling friends from across the river. Our boys discovered that the water was much colder than before, and some of the guys were hiking up their shorts. One could almost say that they had very colorful speedo’s on, but why would they want to draw that attention upon themselves.

As the crew came back across the river. Dwylin was hard at work setting up his phone for a nice sunset video, and it only took 5 minutes to set up some rocks to a good enough point. So that the phone was in a proper angle, but… First, our fishing friends came back and stood right in front of the camera, and once they left Dan walked over to Dwylin (RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA) and sat down. By now the fishermen had passed and the video attempt had become a joke as Matt and Nate began showing off their stretching skills to the camera.

Some of the Magnificent Seven went into the tent to start playing pocket rockets as the sun got lower, but the game didn’t last long. It was noticeably the coldest night of the trip already. The sun hadn’t even completely fallen yet. Dwylin whose joints had began to seize up once again got up to head for the tent, and let out a groan for every step. Dan uncaring, but more than willing to comment on age, said that he’d hate to see Dwylin when he gets old.

Lets just end this right there, as we begin to fall asleep in the Arctic Circle of the Montana Wilderness. What will the next day bring? I’m sure it will bring HURLS of excitement as we head down the river.

Bob Marshall Wilderness: Chapter 2

Aug/ 8/ 2017

BEFORE BED LAST NIGHT:

Anonymous: “I ain't worried about my alarm, because I’ll get up at 6:30, No question.”*

(*- PROBABLY NO ONE WILL ACTUALLY ADMIT TO SAYING THIS… BUT I KNOW SOMEONE DID [I think it was someone from Montana.]) Also, this statement was paraphrased.

There was a rule we all agreed to as we laid down to sleep last night… NO FARTING! “If you need to fart, then get your hind end out of here.” I don’t think I've ever slept in a tent that was better suited for ventilation then this tent. Every night before bed, we would gather everyone's stuff together and put it under the tent canopy. You may have guessed by now, that means our tent was uncovered and all that was between us and the bugs of this world was a layer of mesh at the top of the tent. This would have been a massive plus at night for stargazing, but unfortunately, with forest fires only a few hours drive away. Most of the stars were deemed invisible to our eyes behind the smoky haze above our night time resting spots.

Once morning arrived, and everyone decided to loosen up and get our stuff out of the tent. Someone got up and headed for the tent entrance, and stuck his rump out the door and gave a fart. “OK, that's not what we meant!” Someone said.

Before our trip began Jon bought a water purifier. If you never had to use a pump for clean water before, have you lived? I submit that you have not! Let me explain how long this process took. If you need water you were gonna need to sit there and pump for a good 5 minutes. Once you had finished, you would be tired enough that you would start to drink that water… and a small tear would roll down your check once you realized that you had to start all over again.

It didn’t take long for us to seemingly see Dwylin age before our eyes. By this morning, one would think Dwylin was the ripe old age of 50. We wondered how he was going to react to walking another 8 miles today. He continued this way until we started our hike when his feet would loosen up. Dwylin took 3 band-aids and two Ibuprofen or as our friend Bruno from Ohio calls them, “Ibua-profain”.

We made our breakfast, packed up and headed out around 9:30 am for another 8 miles of hiking. We all agreed on a few ground rules as we left, we needed to drink more water, and rest more, as well as eat more during our hike. Then off in the distance, we heard a HOWLLLLL!!! but not just one, but a couple of them. Dan looked up ominously from packing his bag and said, “wolves”. Dan guessed that they were within a half-mile of our campsite. This, of course, made Dwylin, who was at least 45 years old by now, even more nervous about the day ahead.

Winding in and out of the hills and valleys we made a good pace for ourselves. We found animal paw prints and fresh scat all over the pathway that we were navigating around. The views were huge and wide and at moments there was major vegetation and steep hills. Our pace wasn’t just good, but it seemed to be absolutely spectacular. We ended up going 8 miles in 3¼ hours, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The first couple miles didn’t have much to offer for memorable dialog, and indeed most of the hiking was that way. Each day of hiking we passed people on the trail on their way back. Every once and awhile we would get information out of them and try to figure out how much farther we had to go.

Finally, we reach that day's destination, Big Salmon Lake was here and so was everyone else! We must have seen around 20 people at or walking through this point of the trail. I distinctly remember someone with an Australian or New Zealand accent, but it didn’t take long for most of them to head on out. We had made it 20 miles by this point and it didn’t take long for the bags to come off and for some of the boys to start playing “Pocket Rockets” (Poker).

Poker is a favorite travel game for some of the boys, but playing with rocks instead of chips made the games more fun to watch (playing with only 10 rocks really made the games go faster). The baby of the group, Caleb, had never played poker before, and usually, this means quick defeat unless your name is Caleb. Apparently, it is just as effective to be lucky instead of being good. One of the early hands Caleb bet all the way through to the end with only Landon in his way. He threw the cards down certain of defeat, but everyone playing yelled in surprise. Apparently, he had a straight and didn’t know it! Which was good enough to win that game.

This was the first place on our trip that the smoke added to the surroundings. The lake is 5 miles long and was absolutely gorgeous. Most of the guys decided that the fishing on the shore of the lake was not good enough. So everyone but Dwylin got their pack rafts out and we had our first experience of blowing up the rafts. It was a surprisingly very simple process and the boys made their way around the lake to find fish.

Now while everyone one was out in the lake fishing, Dwylin stayed by camp to “heal his joints”. Dan kept looking into the shore and noticed that Dwylin, who we thought was going to swim and heal up, was just standing waist-deep for at least a half-hour. (Dwylin may or may not have been afraid of the cold water, but who's to say.) In due time the fishermen got back to shore, but they couldn’t see Dwylin anywhere. Then they heard a voice from somewhere saying, “Did you catch anything?” Looking around, all that could be seen was a lone head protruding from the water. It was indeed the head of Dwylin. The water was a lot warmer then the river was the night before, but all in all Dwylin couldn’t stop shivering. By the time he got out of the water, our best guess is that he was in the water for a good hour.

Talking and laughing helped the evening progress nicely. Otherwise not a lot of other memorable things happened to my knowledge, I’m afraid. As the evening continued no one could decide if we wanted to use the tent or not. Finally, three hero’s stubbornly decided to set up the tent, but there was literally only one place we could put the tent. Everyone got in and went to bed, and let it be known, the only thing harder then the ground we slept on has to be concrete!

Bob Marshall Wilderness: Chapter 1

Aug / 7 / 2017

BEEP!!! BEEP!!! BEEP!!! was the sound that most of us are greeted with at 4 AM Monday morning. Most of us just pressed our snooze button until 4:20 AM when Dwylin woke everyone by walking out of the restroom. It wouldn’t take long after that until the entire group would get up and get ready to go. It was around 5 AM when we all hopped in our trucks and left for our 2 and a half-hour drive up into the wilderness.

Most of the guys weren’t hungry, because we had enjoyed a massive meal the evening before. It also didn’t help that we never saw any breakfast places after leaving the gas station. That was our first mistake because most of us started our hike on basically an empty stomach.

The drive up was filled with dirt roads and great scenery and one random guy in the middle of the road wearing PJ’s and “SUNGLASSES”. Please keep in mind that this was still around 6 AM and with almost no sunlight. If you want to read into the situation, go ahead, but we never stopped to ask him any questions.

Finally, we ended up reaching our parking area where we left behind our trucks and head out on foot for 25 miles and 5 total days in “The Bob”. Remembering that we’re heading into a “WILDERNESS”; all seven of us grabbed hands and each of us said a prayer. We started with Matthew went around the circle and ended with Dwylin praying. After that special time, we headed out… after Nate told everyone that they should stretch.

We made it around a mile and a half and something started to happen that we didn’t expect. No one told us that the path was going to have that much dust. Most ended up walking beside the path instead of on it. Another observation was shouted out by Dwylin, from the back of the group… Dan! I was promised minimal hills.” Dan just laughed, as we continued UPHILL.

Probably a half mile later we came upon a sign, welcoming us to the park. Part of the sign was missing, and Dan said that he’d almost bet anything that it was a bear. This experience was followed by Matt taking out his knife, and carving something into the back of the sign… L+M inside of a heart.

(If you're not aware. Matt is getting married to Linda Miller just 2 weeks after our trip is over… and he is very happy about it. In fact, he ended every prayer on our trip by jumping in at the end of the prayer, and saying out loud “thank you for making Linda so awesome”. Even if he wasn’t the one that was praying.)

We continued on seeing great views and soon enough hiking up and down. Every once and a while we had to cross a creek and hope we didn’t fall in or at the very least get our feet wet. Wet Shoes + Wet Socks = Blisters or in reality Loose Shoes = Blisters.

We kept on hiking, making good time, as far as we could tell. Making it about 8 miles before the heat started getting to us, and it got to Dwylin first.

(Lets go back two or three years before this trip. There was a forest fire in the valley we’re hiking in now. Many trees are standing but very charred and with no comfort of shade. We came to learn very quickly that direct sunlight gets very hot very quickly, and without sunlight, it gets chilly very quickly. On the bright side, however, if you still have sunlight. You can dry your clothes on rocks quickly, because of the lack of humidity.)

OK, you're up to speed. We finally, for the first time that day, rested and snacked on some bars that we had brought with us. After that, we started walking again, but the damage had already been done! Some of us could immediately tell that our strength and stamina had taken a hit. We ended up stopping about 3 times by the time we got to the rangers station 2 miles away (10 miles total for the day). After resting in the grass by the ranger's cabin we figured out that we needed to go at least 2 more miles for a good camping spot, but we weren’t getting any closer by just sitting around. To make matters worse, Dwylin’s walking had already started to slow. Everyone knew why he was having trouble... BLISTERS.

Two miles later we started to receive hope… campsites! It sounds like rest to me! The only problem was that we had to find a spot cleared enough for a tent. Boy, were we ever happy for deciding at the last minute to bring that tent along. Between our tent and the water of the river was a valley of slippery rocks, maybe 30 feet of it… but if you asked the guys with blisters it might as well have been the Grand Canyon. Every step onto a rock you thought was secured and firmly in place, was instead a cruel joke, probably God’s way of making us more thankful for the river that we eventually got to.

Everyone got to the river at some point and got their feet wet, either cleaning their hair or to get below the water to shock their aching joints and sore shoulders (the water was FREAKISH-LY COLD). Afterward, some of the guys went fishing, and others got camp ready, and because of how dry Montana has been this summer, there was Stage 1 Fire Ban. Basically, that just means that no one is allowed to have a campfire, but propane fires are allowed for the time being (no sparks to set pine needles aflame). It didn’t take long after that for our “Mountain House” meals to get passed around. If you don't know what those are… Google it! Amazing for camping trips!

The evening basically ended with us back down by the water, skipping rocks, but of course, it turned into a competition. I believe one time, they had to skip the rock only once across the river, but the rock thrown could not skip past the halfway point of the river… you know stuff like that.

The exact time people started heading for bed escapes me at this moment, but there was plenty of daylight left. That didn’t matter to anyone, because we hiked 12 miles in 8 hours. We were spent and we still needed to walk 8 miles the next day and another 5 or 6 after that. This, however, concludes our first day of hiking.  Until we begin again, you'll just have to sit and wait for it!

Bob Marshall Wilderness: Prologue

Aug / 3/ 17 - Aug / 6/ 17

MONTANA'S FLATHEAD RIVER… That is our adventure for this year. A wild 1-week hiking/pack rafting trip that includes 7 friends and 25 miles of hiking back in a wilderness with everything we could ever need, well anything that we were willing to carry that is.

We cannot start this story without going back to Thursday, August, 3^rd. The night before our adventure began, when Dan and Dwylin drove out to Bass Pro Shop to purchase some of their final supplies for this adventure they were embarking on.

On our shopping list

1. Mummy Sleeping Bags 2. Fishing Supplies 3. Clothing 4. Fly Fishing Rod (One would argue that 2 & 4 should be the same thing but you’ll see by the end of our adventure… It most certainly was not the same thing.)

The two of them didn’t get home until roughly 10:30 pm, both with the intention of traveling down to Fort Wayne, IN to the airport to rent an SUV for their trip the following day. Now due to some poor planning, Dwylin had to get up at 4 AM Friday morning to pack his backpack and be at Dan’s by 7 so they could drive an hour and a half down to the airport.

Once they got to the airport they discovered very quickly that something was a rye. The big jumbo SUV they expected to receive had been replaced by an SUV with little legroom, and almost NO trunk space. Not ideal when you have 5 big hiking packs to take with you. Going back to the desk for a second try, we learned that was the only SUV or van that they had left. So the two of them headed back north to Dunlap, IN to an Enterprise for a vehicle. While we didn’t get the vehicle we wanted… We received a huge blessing we never expected. We ended up renting a bright red 2017 Ford F-150 Crew Cab, with plenty of legroom for even Landon, a lengthy 6’4”, in the back seat.

Dwylin drove back home to finish packing and to pick up Landon while Dan drove the truck back to his house soon to be followed by our Ohio boys Nate and Caleb. Finally, we were able to get everyone together and set out for our ultimate goal… Montana.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you our differences between last year's Alaska group and this year's wilderness group. This year has 5 familiar faces Dan, Dwylin, Jon, Matt (who flew to MT early to play in a basketball tournament with Jon) and Nate, while adding an additional traveler Caleb Hostetler from Ohio and Landon Miller from Indiana.  Most have probably noticed that Jared isn’t among the list of people, because he is in Ghana, Africa for a year… but he was very missed.

We headed out closer to 1 pm instead of our initial intent of 10 o’clock, but we still left just the same. We headed out through Chicago and on up to Minneapolis and on west. Trying to pick up our rafts in Browning, MT we headed through what seemed to be endless miles of empty roads. Devoid of all life except for the fields beside us and the many eyes in those fields staring back at us!

When the morning came, we wanted some food so we settled with a small restaurant called The Hitchin’ Post in Malta, MT. A good amount of food, but seemingly a bit on the cold side. That aside it was a welcome break from the travel. Just a little later we were able to stop and pick up our pack rafts from the Browning Indian Reservation and headed on to Plains, MT through Glacier National Park.

While well worth the visual experience, but we’re still unsure if it was worth the $30 price tag to drive through the park.

We finally made it to Dan’s parent's place around 4 pm on Saturday. Matt and Jon pulled in from their basketball adventure and Jon was shocked to see that Nate showed up, simply because no one told him that he was coming. A great evening commenced with Dan and Jon’s family with some great conversations and outstanding food. The evening ended with Dan taking the guys on a ride around the block in his old 1979 Ford F-250 pickup, a fun way to wind down the evening.

Later, Dan and his dad were talking about ranches and evidently, they were the only ones interested in the conversation, because it didn’t take long and everyone was asleep.

We woke bright and early Sunday morning ready for cereal and in anticipation of hearing Dan give a devotional at church. We were blessed to be a part of their fellowship meal at the church and devoured some outstanding food. We then headed back to Dan’s parents to pack and head up to Kalispell to get our final supplies at Walmart, and then spend the night at Dan’s sister, Sara and Verlin’s house. We packed up and now we sleep awaiting tomorrow when we leave bright and early to head out for our hike.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to write a new account every couple of days… stayed tuned.