Three Days in the Bob Marshall Wilderness

That’s gonna leave a mark, I thought as the saw went through the branch and briefly, (but still long enough) hit my leg. Sure enough, my pants started to bloom with blood.

Funny thing is, I was just complaining about how the Silky saw was starting to lose its edge.

The cut wasn’t all that big, but it was bleeding into my sock so I stopped and got an Band-Aid on it.

We then kept on down the trail, which had tree after tree over it. Such is life in the Bob Marshall this summer. There’s a cool Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation/Forest Service website with all the trail conditions in the Bob and unless it says a trail has been cleared, it hasn’t and this one hadn’t.

Still, we gave it a go and there were roughly a 100 trees, maybe more, in the 3 miles to the lake. The lake wasn’t even in the plan, because originally we were going to head up Switchback Pass to the Continental Divide, a challenging, but rewarding jaunt. (Switchback Pass, like the name implies, is just loaded with ‘em and is fairly relentlessly up and up).

But it hadn’t been cleared and the route from Pentagon Cabin to the Switchback Pass Trail also hadn’t been cleared. We got up the drainage about 3 miles and it just kept getting worse so we turned around and opted for the high mountain lake, which meant backtracking 3 miles then heading back up another 3 miles to the lake.

The lake trail hadn’t been cleared either and was admittedly miserable in the late afternoon heat, but we made it.

The lake was full to the gills and places I suspected were usually shoreline were under 2 to 3 feet of water, based on the cottonwood trees. 

It was a pretty and pleasant little place and more importantly, not a soul around, save for a lone harlequin duck.

We ate supper, read a little bit of a book I brought along “The Catcher in the Rye” of all things. After about a half hour of Holden Caufield tales I could no longer keep my eyes open. I forced myself to take a short walk, but the Boy and I were both in bed by 8 p.m., July light or not.

It was the next morning heading down that I stuck myself with the saw.

Trying to clear the trail with two of us was like peeing in the ocean, but we still tried to hit the worst spots, either by trimming the nasty branches off big dead down trees or in this case, cutting a hole in a nasty dead lodgepole so at least you didn’t have to tear a hole in your pants trying to get over it.

At any rate, we made it down to the Pentagon Cabin and the friendly Forest Service crew we saw the day before had the trail completely cleared out.

I wanted to stay another night and poke around the cliffs along the Spotted River later in the evening, but the Boy wanted to go home so we made the final few miles back to the car.

The dog caught a mouse, and found an elk shed along the way. She wanted to bring that elk shed home, a five pointer, she really did.

Instead she tried to bury it. You can probably guess how that worked out.