It's been mostly a warm winter, and so the river hasn't frozen much. That makes it a bit difficult to get across and go skiing on the other side.
I took a snowshoe up the river two weeks ago just to see what was happening. There are a couple of places where I can usually cross, but they were pretty uncrossable on that day. At least uncrossable if you didn't want to get your feet wet, and didn't have hip boots.
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| North Fork Blackfoot |
My neighbor Steve Kloetzel had made a small plank bridge by the river near his house, and spanned some shallow water with some long poles. As the water goes up and down with the day to night freeze-thaw cycle, ice builds up around the poles, and if you're lucky, it makes a bridge you can cross on... carefully.
I decided to try the same trick. There was a large log stranded in the middle of the river which spanned most of it, but it was difficult to get to. So I took some poles I had left over from thinning some trees, and laid them across the ice to the tree. I deliberately put them in the water a little, so it would back up and flood, and hopefully start the whole ice buildup going.
There was water that needed to be spanned on both sides of the log, but since I couldn't get to the other side, I could only put my sticks on this side. I figured after I got this side bridged, I'd work on the other.
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| Start of a crossing |
I continued my snowshoe on up the river, thinking maybe it would be frozen where it was real shallow near the upper swimming hole. That's the first place where I can cross with the horses in the summer as the river starts dropping. It was frozen about half way, but there was still a good stretch of open water. I took a long shot and tried to bridge it with one of my poles, but the pole wasn't quite long enough and just washed downstream.
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| Upper Swimming Hole, shallow but no crossing... |
The next day when I went to the mailbox I returned by the river to see how things were doing.
Some good, some not so good... In spite of being really cold the night before, there was water overflowing the ice everywhere. Probably because it had been warm the day before, and that melt-water was still coming down. Things that were passable the day before were now under water. But in places, the ice was a little thicker and not covered with running water.
The near part of Steve's crossing was an ice rink. I wished I had some crampons on my snowshoes. But I teetered carefully over to the bridge, feeling like a 95 year old lady, and from there it was easy.
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| Kloetzel crossing | Steve's bridge |
I snowshoed up the far bank, following my tracks from the day before. There was a tree down in the river that mostly spanned it, and the day before you could sneak across on it, but this day there was water everywhere.
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| Fallen tree |
The day before, I had crossed back by carefully walking along some ice lily-pads and hopping across a few open spots. I thought of this as doing the ice-floe dance, although I guess they aren't really floes, since they are anchored on rocks in the middle of the river. If you look at the big version of the photo below, you can see my snowshoe tracks from the day before.
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| Ice lily pad crossing |
It had been really moist during the night, and there was rime on everything.
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| Rime |
When I got to my proposed bridge, I was surprised to see it still in place. Things even looked to be improving, although there was a pretty good stream of water overflowing on the other side.
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| Ice bridge, day 2 |
I walked on up the river, thinking I might try to span another spot I had seen from above on my way up the day before. But when I got there I could see that the higher water now made a much wider channel on the other side. You could see the snow and ice bank from the day before underneath the water.
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| Potential crossing, too much water today |
In the next week or so the weather warmed up quite a bit and the river opened way up. It was still cold at night, but it was above freezing many days. I figured crossing was now a lost cause. But I needed some exercise, so a week and a half later I took a ski up. There wasn't much ice left anywhere in the river, so crossing seemed out of the question. There were a few big chunks of ice piled up on rocks in the middle here and there, but everywhere I looked there was a wide channel of water.
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| Ice chunks |
Until I got to my bridge! By some fluke, (or exceptionally good engineering...) the build up of ice had been sufficient and now all the water went under the ice bridge. I said "Yippie skippie!" and carefully worked my way across.
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| Ice bridge, day 11 |
On my ski up the other side, you could see where the water had eaten down through the ice, a super-fast version of the Grand Canyon in the making. I came across a log with yellow icicles hanging from it, I think discolored from tanic acid.
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| Ice erosion | Tanic acid icicle |
It was such a nice day I decided to ski on up the river, following the road on the other side. It had snowmobile tracks in it, so it was pretty easy going. The tracks were from some people helping out with the Race To The Sky , a 350 mile dogsled race from Lincoln to Seeley Lake that takes place in the middle of February. All of the high water had made it difficult for them to put in their temporary bridge across the river.
I got up to where the bridge usually is and discovered they had gotten it in the day before when the river had finally dropped. It was a new bridge, made to span a pretty good stretch of water, assuming there's something to put the legs on in the middle of the river. So I skiied across and made my way home.
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And then I had a yummy cup of hot cider, fed the horses, studied some Spanish, played my banjo, took a hot bath, and crashed.
If you're thinking of heading up this way and want a really nice place to stay, consider The Lodges On Seeley Lake . It's run by friends of mine, some of the nicest people you'll meet anywhere. You'll not just enjoy your stay, you'll want to come back.
If you want a really really nice place to stay and like to catch fish, you can have your own private secluded cabin on your own private creek and pond with a great view: Krutar Homestead .
If you're just passing through, there's a wonderful bed and breakfast, The Blackfoot Inn, in the town of Ovando, also run by nice folks.
And no, I don't get kickbacks from any of those unsolicited promos...
