2024 Bob Marshall Wilderness Open

Tom, Elliot and myself started Saturday morning, but not at Roger’s Pass :). We started at Indian Meadows with the plan of coming out at Headquarter’s Pass.  Tom came up with a route that wasn’t intended to be the most direct from those two points, but that hit some really nice country (some of it we’ve never seen).

The morning was uneventful (but rained most of the way) taking the Mainline Trail, but instead of veering for the NF of the Blackfoot we veered up Lander’s Fork and then up Middle Fork Ck.  We were in and out of snow on Middle Fork, but every time we were about to put on snowshoes-it started to peter out (and repeat)

As we climbed for the pass that would take us to the NF of the Blackfoot at Carmichael, the trail petered out completely and got very steep (and very sketchy).

I’m not going to lie, it was a puckering ascent

Once to the pass we realized we still need to climb a good chunk more to connect us to the ridge that would us to Carmichael.  This is when we had 50-60 mph winds w/ some #6 shot gropple for better effect!

The trail dropped off and lost elevation quickly.

2/3 of  the way down the trail evidently dropped off the north side of the ridge, switched back some before coming around the toe of the ridge near Cooney Ck.  We dropped off certain to hit one of the switchbacks.  Except we didn’t.  This was a very steep slope, covered in beargrass and alder- if I didn’t fall at least 30 times, I didn’t fall at all.  It was pretty apparent that this trail had been long abandoned, so we side-hilled in the hopes of catching the real trail.  We did and it came down the main ridge, the same main ridge we dropped off of :). The Cairn map, USFS 2016 and Nat Geo all showed it dropping off-all were wrong.

We finally made it to Carmichael about 8:00 PM and called it a night.

We headed up the NF having to cross it twice within 20 minutes of leaving the cabin, great way to start the morning.

Our destination was a steep ridge that led up to the Scapegoat Plateau, maybe my favorite place in all the Bob—no trails, no people.

We got onto the plateau w/o any real trouble and pretty quickly donned snowshoes.

The route coming off the plateau is one we hadn’t done before.  We saw a couple of cairns the last time we were up there that led downward towards the upper reaches of the SF of the Sun.  We hoped to hit deadend trail (that was also on all three maps) and continue down the South Fork.  First it took us a long time to actually find a route off without getting clipped out, but eventually a relatively fresh elk track led the way.  We sidehilled trying to drop very slowly to insure we would hit the trail.

Well accomplished the first part, but not the hitting of the trail.  We went above, below, one side of the river, the other- there was no trail.

Like much of the Bob, this drainage had been severely burned and was littered with deadfall, lots of deadfall.  Anyone who has spent much time in the Bob in the Spring is well awe you’re going to spend some time fighting blowdown.  I don’t think anything prepares you for suffering through 5 straight miles of it :(  I lost Elliot and Tom within a half hour or so.  Without any shadow of a doubt it was the slowest 5 miles I’ve ever done, guessing the same for Tom and Elliot.

I did know that the trail to Observation Pass was real and after several hours I finally bisected it. And looking at the tracks, so did Tom and Elliot.  Between the very steep descent off the plateau and five miles of fighting blowdown, I develop a really bad tendonitis at the from hinge of the top of your foot and the bottom of your shin.  Bad enough I was limping pretty badly.

A few miles down the trail and nearly dark, I found Tom and Elliot camped next to the river.

I told the guys there was no way I’d make another two full days and decided to limp it out to Benchmark.  We were way behind schedule as it was and they decided to bail as well.

The next morning we slept in a bit, drank a couple of cups of coffee and headed for Benchmark.  One last pushy ford.

I didn’t set any speed records the last ten miles to Benchmark, but made it.  We ate lunch at the stock bridge and soaked up the east of the views.