Usually when the sun goes down and there’s no storm imminent, the wind dies down. That was not the case over the weekend as we camped on a high ridge in the Sawtooth Range of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Not only did the wind pick up, it howled along at I guess to be about 35-50 mph, with some gusts so violent they threatened to bowl me over during a late-night bathroom break.

Multiple rocks kept our tents secured, but sleep was nearly impossible in those conditions with the tent fabric racking in the wind. I was actually pleasantly surprised that my relatively cheap MSR Hubba Hubba 1 tent held up in the wind. I thought for sure the rather thin graphite poles would snap in some of those gusts, which simply collapsed the side of the tent over top of me like a big cocoon. The boy’s Hilleberg got almost airborne a couple of times, but held up fine.

Having said that, the camp itself was absolutely gorgeous and we could have easily set up the tents in a grassy little patch in the trees out of the wind.

But it afforded none of the coveted photographer views and once the wind kicked up, it was too dark to move, so we suffered.

Such is life.

The route took us up and over the divide between the Middle Fork of Birch Creek and the North Fork of Birch Creek. I did this trip years ago and it was a stiff walk up through the trees, but at least there were trees.

This time around, it was an entirely different landscape, as the Strawberry Fire of 2017 had razed most of the landscape, which is slowly, but surely recovering.

Still, that meant a bit of route finding on the Tubby Creek side, where the trees in some places were jackstrawed over the already faint trail. Fortunately, about halfway up some kind soul on horseback had cut out the trail and just as importantly, all those horse tracks had re-established the trail itself.

Sprinkle in the heat of the day and it added up to a miserable little grunt to the top, where, thankfully, there’s a merciful spring gushing with frigid water out of the side of the hill.

All told, it’s about 1,400 vertical to the divide between Tubby and Blind creeks. The Blind Creek side is largely forested and the trail is easy to follow, albeit a bit brushy in some places.

The North Fork of Birch Creek, however, is completely roasted.

The guidebook says the complete route is about 18 miles up and over and then back to the trailhead at the Swift Reservoir, though it seemed a bit longer than that, with about 4,250 feet of elevation gain and loss (there’s quite a bit of yo-yoing on the hike as you go up one hill and down another).

The drive to the trailhead also involves about 18 miles of dirt road off Highway 89. The road is in good shape, however.