It's not a race— no entry fees, no t-shirts and just a few rules. Every Memorial Day weekend at 8:00 AM a small group departs from a different point and if lucky, finishes at another—every year the starting and ending point changes. How you get to the finish is completely up to you, no set route. This year 18 folks showed up to give it a go, about half the group first timers. This is my eleventh year of giving it a go.
This year (due to an injury with my buddy) I teamed up with John and Andrew who I've done several Opens with prior. John had some co-workers that wanted to give it a go as well, so it was merry bunch of six.
Swift Reservoir (west of the tiny town of Dupuyer). Tiny Elvis is in the picture, but he didn't go (but wanted to
)
Heading up Birch Creek
Taking the South Fork of Birch Ck; beautiful area. Deep gorges, numerous water falls and pretty mountains.
Break for lunch. You'll see everyone is barefoot, with too many fords to count and sometimes the trails themselves running with water—your feet are constantly wet and stay that way all day long. Lunch and supper we let the dogs air out a bit and then dry them good at night.
We're heading for Gateway Pass to get over the Continental Divide.
Quite a bit of postholing, but we made it fine.
The main reason we chose this route is several folks have never been through Gateway Gorge; easily in my top five destinations in the Bob.
I was worried about having to cross Strawberry Creek (the upper Middle Fork of the Flathead River) twice on our way to Bowl Creek as in past years we weren't able to and had to grope through miles of blowdown off trail. This year, while pushy—still doable. We headed up Bowl Creek for the Sun River Pass, which would take us back to the east side of the Divide. We made it a mile or two shy of the pass and called it a day, roughly 28 miles.
I was up early the next morning and headed out on my own while it was still nice and cool. Trail was pretty faint in places and hadn't been cleared in awhile which meant fighting blowdown, but made pretty decent time to the pass.
You eventually descend down to the North Fork of the Sun River.
If you look at a map, it shows the trail following the NF of the Sun downriver, which it does. You would think it's an easy river walk, slightly downhill. Upon closer inspection the trail remains high above the river and at every drainage (and there are a lot of them) the trail drops precipitously to cross the creek and then steeply back up—amounted to several thousand of feet of gain/loss.
I was rolling pretty good (for a guy who is 67 anyways
) and hadn't seen any of the crew for several hours. I got to a junction (unsigned) and new the trail turned downhill towards the trail. One of the few shaded sections of the trail and still morning, so made the most of it. After a mile or so, something didn't seem right—checked the gps and I had turned down the wrong trail! Turned around and climbed the roughly mile back up. Sure enough the next (unmarked) junction (just a 1/4 mile further) turned downhill. I saw fresh man tracks ahead of me and realized the peloton had now passed me.
I caught up with them when they stopped for lunch and saw they were surprised I was behind them
Shortly after lunch John thought he saw a grizzly just ahead in some thick new growth lodgepole. We got our bear spray and gave several "hey bear" warnings. Eventually the bear came out downhill of us and I'm pretty sure it was a large (very large) black bear boar in a color phase I had never seen—chocolate w/ black legs and a bit of black stripe down the back. Easily a 300 lb bear.
As the day wore on, it really heated up. Like 25° above normal temperatures. At every creek crossing we stopped in the middle to let our feet cool down, took our shirts and hats off and dunked them in the creek and enjoyed about 15 minutes of reprieve. Repeat at every crossing.
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not overly heat tolerant and quite frankly it's never been an issue the last ten Opens I've participated in (usually just the opposite—cold temps with rain and snow). There were very few clouds, brilliant sunshine, hot temps and no shade—so we just soldiered on.
At six-ish we stopped for supper. I've found it a lot better strategy to stop early evening; eat supper and get a little time off your feet vs getting to camp at 9-10:00 PM having to get shelters setup, worry about cooking supper and then having to hang your food (and going to bed on a full stomach).
After supper tow of the folks decided they had had a enough and we split ways, the two parting towards Gibson Reservoir to be picked up the next day.
The four of us continued on. I found a ford that would lead to a trail on the west of the NF of the Sun that would save us roughly two miles. On Friday it showed flows dropping quickly and I thought it would be very doable, but with two very warm days the river looked a little high and angry.
We gave it a go and thankfully no one got swept!
The trail was nicely shaded on the west side of the river and after getting soaked up to our waists, heat was no longer an issue. The trail went through several nice looking meadows, one with about twenty head of elk. We hiked until dark and found a place to bunk for the night, roughly 32 miles. We were praying for cooler, or at least cloudier weather the next day, but the forecast said otherwise.
Again I awoke earlier than the others and got an early and cool start. I went through several meadows and jumped several small bunches of elk as I went. The cool and shade wore off and the sun and the heat turned on as we were now following the South Fork of the Sun River upstream.
No one thought they had another 30-ish mile day left in them in this heat, so it was decided we would bail at Benchmark. It was an easy decision for me as the temperatures climbed, my energy just tanked.
At noon-ish we made it to the end of the Wilderness boundary and bade farewell for this year.
About 76 miles in 52 hours, not a bad effort—we'll see what next year brings
This year (due to an injury with my buddy) I teamed up with John and Andrew who I've done several Opens with prior. John had some co-workers that wanted to give it a go as well, so it was merry bunch of six.
Swift Reservoir (west of the tiny town of Dupuyer). Tiny Elvis is in the picture, but he didn't go (but wanted to
)
Heading up Birch Creek
Taking the South Fork of Birch Ck; beautiful area. Deep gorges, numerous water falls and pretty mountains.
Break for lunch. You'll see everyone is barefoot, with too many fords to count and sometimes the trails themselves running with water—your feet are constantly wet and stay that way all day long. Lunch and supper we let the dogs air out a bit and then dry them good at night.
We're heading for Gateway Pass to get over the Continental Divide.
Quite a bit of postholing, but we made it fine.
The main reason we chose this route is several folks have never been through Gateway Gorge; easily in my top five destinations in the Bob.
I was worried about having to cross Strawberry Creek (the upper Middle Fork of the Flathead River) twice on our way to Bowl Creek as in past years we weren't able to and had to grope through miles of blowdown off trail. This year, while pushy—still doable. We headed up Bowl Creek for the Sun River Pass, which would take us back to the east side of the Divide. We made it a mile or two shy of the pass and called it a day, roughly 28 miles.
I was up early the next morning and headed out on my own while it was still nice and cool. Trail was pretty faint in places and hadn't been cleared in awhile which meant fighting blowdown, but made pretty decent time to the pass.
You eventually descend down to the North Fork of the Sun River.
If you look at a map, it shows the trail following the NF of the Sun downriver, which it does. You would think it's an easy river walk, slightly downhill. Upon closer inspection the trail remains high above the river and at every drainage (and there are a lot of them) the trail drops precipitously to cross the creek and then steeply back up—amounted to several thousand of feet of gain/loss.
I was rolling pretty good (for a guy who is 67 anyways
) and hadn't seen any of the crew for several hours. I got to a junction (unsigned) and new the trail turned downhill towards the trail. One of the few shaded sections of the trail and still morning, so made the most of it. After a mile or so, something didn't seem right—checked the gps and I had turned down the wrong trail! Turned around and climbed the roughly mile back up. Sure enough the next (unmarked) junction (just a 1/4 mile further) turned downhill. I saw fresh man tracks ahead of me and realized the peloton had now passed me.I caught up with them when they stopped for lunch and saw they were surprised I was behind them
Shortly after lunch John thought he saw a grizzly just ahead in some thick new growth lodgepole. We got our bear spray and gave several "hey bear" warnings. Eventually the bear came out downhill of us and I'm pretty sure it was a large (very large) black bear boar in a color phase I had never seen—chocolate w/ black legs and a bit of black stripe down the back. Easily a 300 lb bear.
As the day wore on, it really heated up. Like 25° above normal temperatures. At every creek crossing we stopped in the middle to let our feet cool down, took our shirts and hats off and dunked them in the creek and enjoyed about 15 minutes of reprieve. Repeat at every crossing.
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not overly heat tolerant and quite frankly it's never been an issue the last ten Opens I've participated in (usually just the opposite—cold temps with rain and snow). There were very few clouds, brilliant sunshine, hot temps and no shade—so we just soldiered on.
At six-ish we stopped for supper. I've found it a lot better strategy to stop early evening; eat supper and get a little time off your feet vs getting to camp at 9-10:00 PM having to get shelters setup, worry about cooking supper and then having to hang your food (and going to bed on a full stomach).
After supper tow of the folks decided they had had a enough and we split ways, the two parting towards Gibson Reservoir to be picked up the next day.
The four of us continued on. I found a ford that would lead to a trail on the west of the NF of the Sun that would save us roughly two miles. On Friday it showed flows dropping quickly and I thought it would be very doable, but with two very warm days the river looked a little high and angry.
We gave it a go and thankfully no one got swept!
The trail was nicely shaded on the west side of the river and after getting soaked up to our waists, heat was no longer an issue. The trail went through several nice looking meadows, one with about twenty head of elk. We hiked until dark and found a place to bunk for the night, roughly 32 miles. We were praying for cooler, or at least cloudier weather the next day, but the forecast said otherwise.
Again I awoke earlier than the others and got an early and cool start. I went through several meadows and jumped several small bunches of elk as I went. The cool and shade wore off and the sun and the heat turned on as we were now following the South Fork of the Sun River upstream.
No one thought they had another 30-ish mile day left in them in this heat, so it was decided we would bail at Benchmark. It was an easy decision for me as the temperatures climbed, my energy just tanked.
At noon-ish we made it to the end of the Wilderness boundary and bade farewell for this year.
About 76 miles in 52 hours, not a bad effort—we'll see what next year brings
