Luke S, Spencer D, my wife M and myself did the Bobwhite loop a this past weekend over three days. The route begins and ends at Benchmark, hiking over Stadler Pass, floating Danaher Creek and the South Fork of the Flathead, before hiking up the White River, over White River pass, floating the West Fork of the Sun River, and hiking the CDT back to Benchmark. Around 75 miles total, which we did in three days.
I'd never been over Stadler, and only floated Danaher a number of years ago on a snowy and cold late May day, so the first day felt pretty new to me. The hike isn't especially remarkable, but does go through a great variety of forested terrain. The flowers this summer have thus far been exceptional, and the beargrass did not disappoint. I picked a very bad line of bushwacking to access Danaher, which burnt some time in an unnecessary fashion, but soon enough we were on the water the headed downstream. Neither Spencer or Luke had been on a proper, wilderness multiday raft trip before, and they did well coping with the constant threat of wood and the handful of portages we found. As the sun was getting a bit low we hit a particularly large wood jam a mile before the S Fork confluence, which coincided with a nice gravel camp spot, which we took. I even flushed a bull moose out of the brush looking around for a good tent site. A few trout, easily caught, made a nice addition to dinner.
We had a lazy morning to facilitate putting on the water once the air had warmed up a bit, and had a great float. The South Fork was in fine form, high enough to make for efficient travel, but still clear and relatively warm. There are quite a few new wood jams above Big Prairie, and the Burnt Park rapids have been reshaped quite a bit. One of these ends in two channels coming back into one, forming an impressive horizontal standing wave flushing into a snag on river right. I took a poor line here, swamped and was almost flushed out of my boat (an Alpacka Scout) and barely avoided the snag. Spencer was behind me, flipped, and swam under the snag, with his boat hanging up on it. M and Luke took a better line and avoided the snag, and we freed Spencer's boat easily before continuing. The hike up the White River was very hot in the afternoon, and we barely needed sleeping bags that night.
We started early the next morning, to get a jump on the big climb before it got too hot. Also a newm section for me, this hike was very nice, and surprisingly gentle for a 2500+ foot climb. We hit the pass about 10 hours ahead of Ryan Jordan and his scouts (follow their live updates at ryanjordan.com, a very impressive route) and headed down to the river. We hiked a little past Ahorn Creek to avoid wood, before putting in with sore feet, and enjoyed an outstandingly fun paddle, with great scenery and a few cool little rapids. The hike back to Benchmark seemed long, but burgers in Augusta called and we all made it eventually.
This is a great route, and one could easily do it in twice the time. I wouldn't want much less water in either Danaher or the W Fork Sun, however. Spencer and Luke did a great job on their first wilderness packraft trip, which is certainly a different critter than just backpacking.
Photos to come.
