Steve at the put-in
Heading downriver
I've paddled parts of the upper Missouri River, but not all of it and not all at one shot. I've toyed off and on with the idea of doing a long stretch, from Ft. Benton all the way to Ft. Peck. So... I managed to convince my friend Steve and his son Randy to do it. That would go through all of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
I figured on about three weeks, and if we were lucky we could sail a lot of the way.
I figured if there were just two of us we would take two boats, one each, our Vermont Fishing Dory and our beat-up fiberglass canoe. With three of us... I figured we'd still take two boats, but we might need a slightly larger canoe.
We'd had a pretty good stretch of spring weather, and I was pretty excited. I contacted Terry Selph at Hole-in-the-Wall Adventures and arranged for a shuttle. He'd never done a shuttle all the way from Ft. Benton to Ft. Peck, but said he could. We would have just Steve's rig and I didn't want to leave it at Ft. Peck the whole time, so Terry offered to park it at their place for most of the time and just drive it to Ft. Peck a few days before we would take out.
Steve and Randy are in Colorado, so we did some long-distance planning. We divvied up the food responsibilities and who had what gear, measured coolers and stoves and such. We figured we'd freeze some casseroles and things like that for the first week or so of dinners, then do regular back-pack type stuff.
Water was a bit of a worry, as the Missouri suffers from agricultural runoff pollution and heavy metals from mining waste, so filtering isn't really a good option. We were going pretty early in the season, so some of the access points which have potable water during the main season would not be ready — they shut them down and drain them for the winter. I called a bunch of people and we lucked out and would be able to resupply water at James Kipp Recreation Area at Fred Robinson bridge, about half-way through.
Steve and Randy showed up a day early so we had a day to figure out our packing and determine which canoe we would use. I had borrowed a slightly wider aluminum Grumman from some local friends, knowing it was wider than ours. That turned out to be a good thing, as Steve's cooler wouldn't fit in our canoe, and the extra space seemed like a good idea. We spent the day working things out and everything looked good. So we packed up the boats, one on top of the other, and got a good night's sleep.
We headed for Ft. Benton on May 7th, just as the weather was turning from perfect to not-so-perfect. We got to Ft. Benton in the afternoon, and didn't get on the water until 16:23. But all the gear fit in the boats ok, and we had enough freeboard that things didn't look too dicey.
It was overcast and spitting rain by the time we made camp in some cottonwoods on an island about six miles down. We set up the "silver lining", which is no longer silver. The original was a big 12' x 16' nylon tarp I had found somewhere back in the 1970s, and we'd used it on so many river trips and other back-country trips that it finally wore out. I bought some newer, lighter coated ripstop a few years ago and made a new one about the same size, with re-inforced grommets at all the places I thought they should be. It's a grungy color, not silver, but it's still the silver lining.
Then we started gathering up firewood. For the first time in a long time I was having trouble starting a fire — most of the wood was wet or damp and was having trouble finding good tinder. I said something about wishing I had some of that fire starter paste I had told Steve about after we got back from a trip up in British Columbia, and he said something like "huh, you mean like this?" and produced some from his kit. I had looked around Missoula and couldn't get any, but he had gotten some on line. We would have eventually gotten it going, but that sure speeded up the process.
We dragged a bunch of wood under the silver lining, especially smaller stuff for the morning, then built up the fire and tried to warm up and dry off a bit. We found a good-sized rock and let it warm up in the fire, then passed it around. You couldn't hold it for very long, but it felt great between layers of shirts or next to your skin once it cooled off a bit. It did a good job.
The ground had been mostly dry-ish when we arrived, so it was still fairly dry under the silver lining, and that was also relatively flat and free of sticks. So I decided to set up my tent under the silver lining, thinking I would clear out a spot somewhere else and move it there once it was set up. But in the end we just set both tents up partly under the silver lining, and it worked pretty well. It was nice to have a mostly dry tent and fly when it came time to pack up the next morning.
We were on the river at 10:30 the next morning after a cold breakfast of OJ and granola. If we were going to make it all the way to Ft. Peck, we needed to make steady progress, so we spent the day trying to make up what we had lost on our first day. It wasn't too bad at first, with some downstream wind.
But then it turned to upstream winds and some rain; The dory was difficult to control and keep headed right. We pulled ashore for lunch at about 13:30, just above the mouth of the Marias River. I didn't realize Steve had wanted to check out the Marias, and while I knew where we were on the map, I wasn't paying too close attention to the streams coming in. We were surrounded by willows, and mostly just needed to get some food in ourselves for energy and warmth. It was windy and spitting rain.
At 16:45 we pulled in and made camp on an island opposite a state section at about mile 29.5. We had made up the miles we needed, but the weather sure wasn't cooperating.
We had a bit of a time setting up the silver lining, but were glad we did. We got a fire started and heated up a big potful of cheeseburger and noodles, and ate it all. We had one of my lunch oranges for dessert. Hot chocolate all the way around.
We pitched the tents under the silver lining again.
The next day dawned cold, overcast, and spitting rain. We were up at 08:00. After thinking it over, we decided to take a layover day. We would be coming up on the White Cliffs section of the river soon, and it would be some of the most fun for exploring. I hoped the weather would clear up some if we gave it time to pass.
We moved the fire back two feet so we could build it up a bit without melting the silver lining, then toasted bagels and cream cheese and salmon for breakfast. We discovered ice inside the lid of the ice chest when we got stuff out, so at least we didn't have to worry too much about the food for a while.
We spent the day sitting around the fire, and retired early. Dinner was Diana's green chilli and cornbread, yum! I began thinking about not going clear to Ft. Peck, but instead taking out at Fred Robinson bridge. The Dory was too hard to control in the wind, and if we went clear to Ft. Peck we would be spending all our time on the water with no time to explore.
The next day Steve rebalanced the load in the dory, and it did much better. We hit the river as the sky was clearing a little.
We passed by the Virgelle Ferry, being careful to avoid the cables strung across the river that hold it in place when it crosses. I remember being glad we didn't have the masts for our sails up, as I think they would have snagged on the cables. Some day I would like to cross on that ferry just for fun. The ferry has a motor, but they do change its attitude and put it in a ferry position facing diagonally up-river so the current helps push it across.
A bit further downstream, we stopped at Coal Banks Landing. There is a seam of lignite coal that runs through the area, and the spot was a stop for steamboats going up the river to refuel.
The rangers were flushing out the water system when we arrived. They had just added iodine to it. We asked them if it had been tested recently, and they said as far as they knew it had never been tested. We topped off anyway, promising to filter it, and headed on downstream.
Firewood is generally scarce in well-used campsites, so before we got to the Big Sandy campsite we loaded up on firewood.
We got to camp about 15:30. The weather was nice, and the river guidebook talks about a tepee-ring near the campsite, so we climbed the hill behind camp. We found a tepee ring right away.
Steve wandered off a ways and soon announced that he had found another one.
Randy has a keen eye for artifacts, and we had barely arrived when he said "Hey guys, look at this!" He had found a mano (a grinding stone). A metate is the other stone on which the material being ground is piled.
It was pretty interesting to examine the manos more closely. You could fairly easily discern the difference between the side used for grinding and the rest of the stone, as the grinding surface was much smoother — worn down by all that grinding. We replaced it where he had found it, then went over to the second tepee-ring, where he found another one. That stone had a notch in one corner. Whether that was cut there deliberately or not, who knows? But seemed to fit your hand perfectly for holding the stone for grinding.
We wandered on up the ridge and after a while Steve announced he had found yet another tepee-ring. It was quite a ways from the two down by the river. We surmised maybe this one was where some scouts hung out, keeping an eye out for anyone approaching the camp. And yep, Randy found another mano.
It was getting on towards evening so we dropped down into a draw and followed it back to camp.
Steve had a satellite emergency device he could text with, so he texted Diana and asked her to call Dona and have her contact our shuttle driver and see if he would leave the vehicles at Fred Robinson bridge instead of Ft. Peck. That way we would have more time to explore.
The next day we floated down to Eagle Creek, one of the more popular campsites on the river. I had planned to camp at the lower end, but those camps were already occupied by a school group from Boulder, Colorado. We never had cool trips like that when I was in school! Another group from the same school arrived a bit later.
There were lots of Bald Eagles, Geese and Pelicans as we floated down the river.
At camp, we put up the silver lining, or tried to. A micro-burst came through and lifted the logs three of the corners were tied to (the fourth was tied to a tree, fortunately), and me at one point. We all grabbed tarp and bunched it up to avoid it being shredded. I was amazed that the reinforced grommets I put in it when I made it held. We took it down, figuring it was a bad idea to try to rig it to withstand that kind of wind.
We hiked up Eagle Creek a ways, but another dark cloud was rolling in so we turned around and headed back. We waited a half hour or so in the tents for it to quiet down enough so we could cook on the fire.
The storm cloud went around us, barely, and made a great double rainbow.
Steve was having trouble with his feet, saying they were "swollen and they feel like razors being drawn across them everywhere." That didn't sound good given we were planning on hiking the next day.
In addition to all the geese, eagles and pelicans on the river, we saw a red-tailed hawk on our hike up the creek.
We lit a campfire and heated up some gumbo in the dutch oven, along with hot chocolate and pudding for dessert. We spent the evening telling stories around the fire, surely a ritual going back millennia.
The next day was a layover day. We hiked along the ridge behind the campground, over to "Neat Coulee," then dropped down into the coulee and hiked up it, taking the right fork.
There were buckets of holes in the rocks, all shapes and sizes. Some were well worn; others were ragged and looked relatively recent.
It never would have occurred to me, but Steve saw a cap rock that just looked like ... well, a hat. And yes, he put it back.
I always get a kick out of Neat Coulee — it reminds me of Southwest canyon country. I love winding my way up it, squeezing between the walls, always wondering what I'll find just ahead.
We stopped for lunch when we exited, then crossed the hump and explored around before heading down the other fork.
When we got back to camp, I asked Steve how his feet were. He said they were ok, he was just beginning to notice them.
We rested up a bit, then decided to hike back up Eagle Creek, looking for a petroglyph. We found it in an unlikely spot — poorly protected, not overhanging. There were lots of swallows' nests on the cliffs as we hiked around.
My diary says "Great chicken enchiladas, mandarin oranges, pudding. My meals will be a letdown." We were eating pretty well, something you can do with canoes and ice-chests.
We woke to the constant rattle and honking of geese; there had also been lots of frogs the last two nights, and Mourning Doves on the way down the river. We saw red-winged blackbirds in the reeds along the banks, and meadowlarks in the uplands. Flickers, and a small woodpecker, either Downey or Hairy, and always some robins near camp. I heard the occasional rattle of a belted kingfisher, but didn't see them.
We found plenty of firewood in the weeds and along the banks of Eagle Creek where it had flooded. We also acquired a few ticks on our hikes.
The next morning we paddled across the river and hiked up a draw past lots of dikes until the streambed wound up into the uplands.
Then we paddled down to the camp at Hole-in-the-Wall. On the way we stopped at the Crawford Ranch and checked out the old homestead.
The Hole-in-the-Wall camp has a bunch of trees that have been replanted to try to re-establish the cottonwoods that used to occupy the site. There are buckets in the lean-twos and a sign requesting visitors to water them. Each tree has two PVC pipes sticking out of the ground near them, into which you pour water. I watered them all, I think. Some of them are clearly cottonwoods, but some look like other species, with different leaves and buds. Some of the trees looked pretty dead; others had a few new shoots lower down and near the ground. There are two older solar panels, dated 2003, with a well in among the trees. I presume the setup was to water the trees. I didn't see a pump anywhere, and there wasn't a pipe coming up inside the well. I wonder how long it has been since it worked?
We unloaded the boats, and were ferrying the gear up to the camp. It was late in the day and Steve wanted a bath, so he hopped in the river. Randy and I continued unloading. At one point I went back to the shore to get the last load and looked around, and didn't see Steve. I called, but got no reply. I couldn't figure out where he could be. I scanned the river, but no Steve. I hurried back to camp and asked Randy if he had seen him. Like me, he'd last seen him out in the river. We called a bunch, but no reply.
It seemed like only one possibility — something had gone horribly wrong, and he had gotten trapped and was under water somewhere. We ran into the river, probing the bottom and looking everywhere for some sort of disturbance. We couldn't find a thing.
We got back to shore and were at a loss what to do next. It didn't make sense. Steve is a great swimmer. He's been around water his whole life. He's floated in his life-jacket down countless rapids. He's been in plenty of sketchy situations and doesn't panic. But where could he be, if he wasn't in the river? I was a mess, fearing the worst.
But then Randy said "Hey!" and pointed up river. Coming down off the bank was Steve, happy as a clam and smiling. He'd gone up there to lie down in the sun and dry off. Of course, he'd taken out his hearing aids when he went in, so all our yelling had been futile.
Randy and I also cleaned up in the river; it felt great to be clean for a bit. My hiking boots were caked in bentonite, from when I had sunk in on our hike up the coulee across from Eagle Creek. It was a real bear to clean them off.
I took inventory of our water; we had about 18 gallons left, about 7 days' worth — not quite enough.
Dinner was Lasagne, the last of our frozen dinners. It was a treat. There were red-winged blackbirds around, and as evening settled in, bats.
That evening Steve got a text from Diana saying Dona had contacted our shuttle driver and he would leave the truck and trailer at Fred Robinson bridge. That was good news — we had lots of time to explore now.
We took another layover day, and hiked over towards the Hole-in-the-Wall. I asked Steve if he wanted to hike up to the hole, or explore more. He said he'd seen lots of hole-in-the-walls, so we opted to explore.
We spent some time looking at the long expanse of cliffs extending to the right of the hole-in-the-wall, looking for some weakness. It looked like there might be a way up near a black dike, so we headed that way.
As with all climbing endeavors, the proof is in the doing; you can't tell if it will go or not until you try it. It was a steep scramble, but it went up to the base of the cliffs and then through them. Soon we were on top!
Randy was walking along the top of a dike, I think mostly just because it's fun. But in the process he found some calcite crystals.
It was interesting how the cliffs were all this white sandstone, and then there would be all these other colored rocks sitting on top of the cliffs — rocks that once-upon-a-time must have been embedded in the sandstone.
There was a thin transition zone between the flat ground on top of the cliffs, and the cliffs themselves. That transition zone was characterized by short little swales or valleys that led down to the cuts in the cliffs where water poured over in waterfalls when it rained. The swales would be more shaded, and therefore hold snow and water longer, and as a result many had small clusters of trees growing in them. Sometimes the trees would continue down the slots in the sandstone cliffs. It was amazing how cool it was down there compared to up on top.
We were like a bunch of little kids as we scrambled down the miniature canyons leading from the swales with the trees to the cliffs where we could go no further. There were so many of them! And of course we had to go down each one, just to see what might be there.
And of course we had to peer over all the edges while we were at it.
We found a long (12" or so) string of poop. Who does that? Seems like it would be rather inconvenient!
We decided to work our way around towards the actual hole-in-the-wall, hoping we could find another weakness we could scramble down and return to camp that way.
That caused us to work our way up to the actual top, where we were in for a surprise. It was flat as a pancake, and planted with wheat. To the south, we could see Square Butte and the Highwood Mountains. There are multiple Square Buttes in Montana, and a boatload of towns named Square Butte. I presume there is a local landform that is some kind of square butte near all of them, although I'm not sure. But one should be rather specific when referring to "Square Butte."
We walked, and probed, and walked. We scrambled down, and scrambled back up. In the end, we never found a way down, and we ended up retracing our steps to where we came up.
After a good night's sleep, Randy cooked us up a scrum-delicious breakfast. Then we packed up and headed down river. We didn't go too far, as we wanted to stop at the Valley of Walls and hike.
We originally paddled past the Valley of Walls; there was another party stopped there and returning from a hike. We stopped and talked with them briefly, not realizing that was where we wanted to be. They were from Bozeman, and were taking off at Judith Landing. Since we were going clear to Fred Robinson bridge and might be short of water, I asked them if they had any extra if they would leave some for us at Judith. They were really nice, and said they would — in a big blue $18 jug. I asked for a name and address so I could pay them for it, but they declined. What goes around, comes around, and we will try to pass the good will on. We thanked them and continued on downriver.
We stopped at the next likely-looking place, thinking it was the Valley of Walls. Oops! At which point we realized the folks from Bozeman had pulled up there. We ended up paddling back upstream so we could hike up it; I'm not sure it was worth it. It was hard work, and made us think about Lewis and Clark paddling and poling all the way up from St. Louis. Those guys were athletic machines.
The bottom of the valley had a small ephemeral stream running down it. At first we thought we'd have a liesurely hike up the streambed, but it was all gumbo, and if it was the slightest bit wet, you sunk in ... bigtime. So we ended up side-hilling around the steep banks, or climbing up and over small knolls in many places.
We stopped to camp at the Dark Butte campsite. I fixed dumplings for dinner, and burned the bottom of the pan. They weren't particularly good.
As evening wore on we stayed up around the campfire, and noticed two small owls come to the tree right above our heads. We couldn't tell what kind they were because we couldn't see anything but an outline. They had a call kind of like a low grade loon tremelo. I think it was a Western Screech-Owl.
I slept in my tent without the fly, and it was cold. So I either need one of my better sleeping bags, or Dona, or to put the fly on! In addition, the batteries in my headlamp were about dead — at the beginning of the trip it had somehow gotten turned on in my pack. I need to remember to "lock" it when I put it away so that doesn't happen.
We encountered several people fishing before we got to Judith Landing. They all seemed to be doing pretty well — one had a 40" pike, another had a 6 lb. and a 9 lb catfish, and goldeye. We stopped at Judith Landing and picked up eight — 8! — gallons of water from the folks from Bozeman. No name and address, so we can't repay them, but we'll try to pay it forward.
We stopped at Murray Dugout, where George and Anna Murray cut ice off the river in winter and stored it in a dugout for use and sale in the heat of summer.
We camped at about mile 93.5, just above the Sanford homestead. There was a bald eagle on a nest at the lower end of the bar, and a muskrat in the river as we approached camp.
We stuffed ourselves at dinner, three Knorr rice and maccaroni and cheese packages with fried diced spam mixed in. Plus pineapple and pudding for dessert. I'm stuffed even now just thinking about it.
We saw Eastern Kingbirds, Grackles, Flickers, Red-winged Blackbirds and boatloads of Canada Geese. There must have been a pair nesting on the flat above the tents, as they woke me up in the morning.
The flat behind our camp had the best looking sagebrush I have ever seen. It seemed like it would be perfect habitat for Greater Sage Grouse. After we had camp organized we hiked over to the homestead and checked it out.
On our way back we checked out a falling-down building near the eagle's nest at the lower end of the cottonwoods where we were camped. I tried taking a picture through an adapter Randy had for his phone; it didn't work all that great.
The next day we stopped at the Hagadone Homestead, which had a good selection of abandoned stuff to check out. There was quite a bit of farm machinerary — a buck rake, sled, cultivator, corn-planter, disk, mower, and other things I couldn't identify.
Inside one of the buildings was an old boat; it looked to be in pretty good shape.
We stopped for lunch at mile 99.5, river left, in some cottonwoods. There was a bright orange bird there, with a black vertical chin stripe. The female didn't have the chin-stripe. They were building a nest, a pendant about 8" long in a cottonwood. It looked like a weaver nest, using very fine material. That description fits a Bullock's Oriole.
There are three ferries across the Missouri between Gt. Falls and Ft. Peck. We passed the McClellend Ferry, which I checked out thinking some day we might come down this way with our Happier Camper. I wanted to make sure the ferry was big enough to get us across. It is.
We camped at McGarry Bar at mile 103.5. There were nice cottonwoods along the river, and a fire ring. Unfortunately, someone had trashed the fire ring, and there was broken glass all over. Randy and I picked up all the glass we could, then dug out holes for the legs of the uprooted, bent, and turned upside-down fire grate, and then reset it.
We made camp about 16:00, so there was still some warmish weather left and we all took a swim/bath.
There was a big ruckus of grackles up one of the cottonwoods by camp. Randy saw a snake up there, so we guessed it had climbed up using the cracks in the bark and was raiding a nest. We all kept staring up at the tree for quite a while — the grackles were dive-bombing the snake for at least a half-hour — but we never saw the actual snake again.
The Missouri in this stretch is the proverbial "Mile wide and a foot deep." Steve demonstrated one way to get in a boat in this kind of water.
The wind was coming up, so I put up our sail and we zipped along for about two miles until we got to Two Trees camp, where we stopped for lunch. After lunch we "lashed" the two boats together, and used just the sail on the canoe. It was a bit difficult, as the whole rig wanted to head into the wind a lot, so it took a lot of rudder to keep headed right. The wind switched directions a lot and came broadside a fair amount as well, so we ended up bringing the sail across numerous times. But we perservered, and sailed all the way down to mile 121, where we pulled out to camp.
I'm pretty sure I've camped there before. As we were starting to unload the boats and haul gear up to camp, Steve found a 30" rattlesnake. I think I've met this snake before, the last time we camped here.
Here's a short video of the snake when Steve picked it up with a stick and moved it out of the main camp.
We hiked up in the rocks behind camp. We found bighorn tracks, some petrified wood, and some calcite crystals.
At 19:00 it was still blowing pretty good, so we didn't even try to put up the silver lining. I put my tent farther down in the grove of cottonwoods, hoping for a little more shelter. We had to rig up a pretty good windbreak for the stove in order to cook dinner. In the picture below, you can see Steve sheltering from the wind and reading a book behind a big cottonwood.
We drove stakes into the ground to tie the boats up, and also tied around some small willows. I doubled up the stakes, being worried about the wind coming up.
The next day started out ok, but with an up-river wind. We met two Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks boats, each with two fisheries people in them. They were trying to net Shovelnose Sturgeon for eggs for the hatchery.
The FWP guys said a winter storm was coming, with a 39° high, snow, and a 20° low. Steve got a text from Diana on the satellite gizmo saying the same thing. As a result of that, we paddled down river a little further than we had planned, so we wouldn't have as far to go to the take-out. We camped on river left at mile 143 above Lower Two Calf Island, in a big cottonwood bottom.
We put up the silver lining, and a pole tarp Steve had. We figured we would take a layover day the next day and hope the storm blows over. Our hope was to have good enough weather to do some hiking.
The next day we hiked north from camp through the cottonwoods, across some old high water channels. The river guide says Lewis and Clark called this Tea Island, and it was all one big island; it's now eroded into several smaller ones. There was an old ranch in the sagebrush uplands, with a lot of fallen down buildings, many of which seemed like living quarters. We found a well, a four cylinder engine gasget, and some electric stoves.
I was surprised to find Lazuli Buntings in the sagebrush. One of the fish and game guys told us there were three kinds of sage along the river.
Towards evening it started raining and sleeting. I was worried the last six miles the next day would be pretty miserable, cold and windy. I didn't have any rain pants.
We packed up as much as we could before going to bed. We left out the stove, the table, and the cook-kit for hot drinks. We figured we'd have a quick breakfast and get on the river.
We woke up to cold, spitting, with snow on the hills across and just above the river. Randy was up at 05:40 and had a fire going so I got up too. We were on the river by 09:20. At least it had quit spitting by then. We tried really hard not to get our feet wet loading the boats. I had on an icebreaker and a wool shirt and my rain jacket, with my PFD for extra warmth; a wool hat, and pogies. We were lucky because the seat cushions were dry — I had pulled them off and stored them in my orange Bills Bag.
We were at the take out at Fred Robinson bridge at 11:40. There were a boatload of people there, and a lot of boats. Despite the crummy weather, people were out fishing.
We cleaned up the gear and loaded up, and as we headed home it started to snow. It snowed harder and harder the further we got. It snowed all the way home; there was close to a foot in places. It looked like the middle of winter, not spring!
All in all, a good trip. We could have used some better weather here and there for hiking, but we shouldn't complain — we had some pretty good days too! We were gone 14 days, and it was about right to be able to enjoy the river and get some good exploring in.
