The Bob Marshall Wilderness Open is a yearly unofficial gathering of like minded backpackers who attempt an expedient crossing of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana in spring conditions. I’ve spent years building up my skills, equipment, and physical fitness to be able to do this event justice. 

This year’s start would be Swift Reservoir, on the northeast side of the Bob Marshall. The finish would be the Swan Lake campground, on the northwest side of the complex, across several mountain ranges and rivers, with only the grizzlies to cheer us on. There is no prize money, entry fee, sign up sheet, volunteers, checkpoints, or outside assistance. Just show up and get it done.

A big part of the learning experience, and the challenge, is designing your own route based on your skill, fitness level, and the predicted conditions. I plotted a straight line between the start and finish (right at 50 miles) and designed my primary route to hew as close to that line as possible, while using as many river miles as I could manage to speed myself up in my packraft. My route would be between 75 and 80 miles. Many others chose slight variations on this same route.

After the group dinner and a nervous night of sleep at the campground, I woke up at least an hour too early and started packing my gear. We would have 24 hikers this year, a record. Dave Chenault, the Bob Open’s father, arrived half an hour before the start to hang out and see us off. This would be the first year he didn’t participate. With a “Have fun, stay safe, don’t do anything stupid out there,” we were off.

Dan Durston, the perennial “fastest dude in the Bob,” peeled off with Will to head south toward Strawberry Creek right out of the gate. Rob and I led the pack up the north fork of Birch Creek toward Badger pass. As we began to climb, Tom joined us at the front. None of us needed our snowshoes, even as the the snow was several feet deep. It was consolidated enough that we didn’t posthole, but slushy enough that we didn’t slide, for the most part. I was happy to have these two ahead of me to kick steps and choose lines up the mountain, as I’m relatively inexperienced in these things. Not too many mountains or snowy passes in Indiana. 

Myself, Rob, Tom, Matt, Mike, Thad, John, Andrew, and several others all got to the top of Badger Pass at the same time. So did the rain. We all stopped to don rain jackets and then rocketed downward through the burn. None of us noticed Tom didn’t join us. With excellent navigation skills, Thad led the way as we countoured downward. I passed everyone else, but couldn’t manage to catch up to Thad. There was also a mystery set of Shift snowshoe tracks that came out of nowhere. Later I found out it was Tom, who had taken a more direct route from the pass and gotten ahead of us all. I followed these two all the way down Cox Creek, which had several beautiful open meadows. After several uneventful crossings of the creek, I reached the point where I would need to leave the trail and head toward the Middle Fork so that I could put my Yak on the water.

I reached the confluence of Cox Creek and the Middle Fork of the Flathead at 4:25pm, 8.5 hours after starting. This was 20 miles in, and my legs didn’t show any signs of fatigue or injury, which was great. I popped some Ibuprofen anyway, and began to inflate my raft to go the 5.5 miles to Schafer creek, where I would cross over and begin the ascent to the next pass. The float was easy and the river was moving 3-4 mph, so I paddled the entire time to speed myself up. It was really nice to get 5 miles off of my legs. As I came to Schafer, the entire group had caught up and were looking for a way to cross. Tom was already across, fully dressed and ready to go. He was encouraging everyone to join him, but he eventually had to take off up Schafer. As I approached, I yelled to Rob to see if he wanted a tow across the river, which was maybe 50 feet wide and deep enough to be scary. I could tell by his face that he did. He was almost done waterproofing his stuff for his planned swim across. Then I realized that I could actually fit him inside my boat, and he wouldn’t even need to get wet. He was already stripped down to his underwear at that point so he just hopped in with his pack and kneeled on the floor, and I paddled us across by sitting on the stern. We laughed and joked that I should ferry everyone across, but the price would be they had to strip down to their underwear. About that time Matt found a place to cross that didn’t require swimming. Rob followed Tom up the valley as I packed up. 

I passed him as he set up camp in the rain later that evening along Schafer Creek. I followed Tom’s tracks up toward Whitcomb Pass, but ran out of steam an hour or so after dark in the snow as I began to slow down too much. I pitched the tarp between two trees and laid out my NeoAir XLite on the snow at 6300 ft, having covered 34 miles in almost 15 hours. I changed into my sleeping socks and put all my clothes on, but most of my clothes were wet. I slept inside my 20 degree quilt, my feet cold as I tried to shift down around in the quilt. It didn’t work, so I stuffed the foot end of the bag into my empty Porter and put DCF stuff sacks over each foot, which helped. I drifted off to sleep as the rain gently pattered on my tarp. When I awoke four hours later, my clothes were all dry but that moisture had moved into my quilt. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to use it again on this trip. 

At 4:45am I was up and hurrying over Whitcomb pass, following Tom’s and Matt’s tracks. Going down the other side in the morning fog was beautiful and slippery. It must have been difficult doing it in the dark, as good meso-navigation here saved me a bunch of side hilling. I came to the forest road, and then went off trail near the Spotted Bear to my put-in point. 

The Spotted Bear was moving at about 4 mph, with quite a bit of current and was in a pushy and splashy mood. Much more so than when I had scouted it a few days beforehand. I tried to avoid most of the whitewater because I was getting colder and colder. I took out on the right before the waterfall and portaged, but ran everything else. It was a good heads-up class II run. I paddled hard to warm up, but it didn’t help that much. The rain also didn’t help much. I stopped and put on my final layer, my new Nunatak Skaha Apex, a very warm synthetic puffy. I had wanted to keep it dry in case I got dumped in the river, but I was forced to wear it to stave off hypothermia. Layered under my rain jacket, it absorbed a lot of water in the wrist areas and a little water everywhere else, but it kept me just warm enough to continue paddling. 

Paddling the Spotted Bear River westward, and then the South Fork of the Flathead northward to Soldier Creek took about 3.5 hours to cover a distance of 19 miles. A nice speed. I also purposefully took several eating and drinking breaks and arrived at the takeout well-fed and with rested legs.

The sun came out for a few minutes as I packed up my rafting equipment, and I took the opportunity to stay there for an extra 10 minutes to allow things to dry out before I packed up and headed west on the Soldier Creek trail. I lost the trail near Sullivan Creek but bushwhacked in the general direction and found it again. I passed over Sullivan Creek on a bridge. It was big and fast and gorgy, and I was glad for the bridge. My plan was to take the forest service road west up the north fork of Connor Creek and then move off-trail to the next ridge, but I scrapped that as soon as I saw the condition of that forest service road; overgrown and challenging. I bailed to the Connor Creek trail, just to the south. 

Now the Connor Creek trail is marked as “unmaintained” on the Cairn map, and that has a meaning which I now understand. The trail is an old two-track that has since been overgrown with slide alder, a terrible plant that manages to grow horizontally across the surface of the trail, and then transition to vertical growth at the edge of it. The going was so slow that I bailed down to the creek and tried to walk up it with no luck, only to try moving up the bottom of the valley. When that was too slow, I reluctantly moved back to the “trail.” I personally touched every single slide alder plant on that trail, either stepping on top of it, or moving it out of the way so I could pass under it. I crawled and climbed and slithered westward at a glacial pace, frustration mounting. I started cussing and yelling. I had to leave the trail and re-find it. I developed a terrible attitude. I wished I could quit right there. There had to be a better way. But there wasn’t. All the wildlife in the valley scattered and the storm clouds retreated before the profane onslaught of my lamentations. The slide alder, however, was unfazed. With no other option I continued onward. Someone’s footprints (I thought Tom’s, but later learned they were Dan Durston’s) ahead of me showed me that it could be done. To keep myself on an even keel, I kept telling myself, “The dude abides.” It became my mantra, for some reason which I now struggle to understand.

  Eventually I ascended into the snow, which covered the bottom, horizontal part of the alder, allowing much easier passage over it on snowshoes. I was able to make good time again, until I couldn’t follow the trail under the snow anymore. It was raining again and I just put my head down and followed a bearing to the top of the ridge I was aiming for. As I crested the ridge and began to head northward, darkness fell. I didn’t carry any water for the duration of the race, choosing instead to camel up with my filter bottle only at sources. Almost every time I became thirsty, there would be a source within a few minutes. The dude abides, and The Bob provides. 

I had begun to notice my mental state declining due to lack of sleep. I was making questionable decisions and I needed to get to a trail or go to sleep. I really didn’t want to spend another night up high though. When I reached the top of the ridge Dan’s tracks should have turned north to follow the trail. Unfortunately, I saw that they turned south, and then west. Pulling out my map, I quickly realized what that tricksy guy was up to. He intended to shortcut straight down the cliff face to Bond lake. I had taken one look at that section while planning my route and concluded that it was impossible. Apparently Dan had reached a different conclusion. 

I had to choose between following Dan’s prints down a very difficult shortcut, or navigating my own way for miles above an invisible snow covered trail with a failing mind. I decided that I didn’t trust my own navigational judgement at this point, and committed to following Dan down the slope. I plunged downward, each forward step dropping me two or more feet downward. Dan had linked up snow patches, and the deep snow made traction on the steep slope much easier. I held onto slide alder branches where necessary, moving hand over hand downward. Then the snow patches became too far apart and in the darkness I lost Dan’s footprints.

The cliffs made their presence known at about this point. Moving left, I was able to go down a bit further before I was cliffed out again. This happened several times until I found myself balancing on top of a downed log on another leftward traverse. My flick-lock trekking pole collapsed as I was leaning on it and I began to fall down the hill. Dropping my poles, I managed to grab onto two branches from the downed tree. I held onto them as hard as I could and was able to arrest my fall. But I was stuck upside down on my back, unable to get back up without falling any further. I just lay there for a minute questioning every decision I’ve ever made in my life. After quite a bit of introspection, I managed to remove the backpack and struggle back up to the log. I put the pack on, reset my trekking poles, and finished the traverse.The snow returned and the ground flattened out a bit, and I was able to navigate by sound down toward the Bond lake inlet stream. Once I got down to the water I took a 10-minute drink and snack break, as I was shaking from low blood sugar and exertion. Maybe a bit of adrenaline too.  I had to put on every piece of clothing that I had to avoid going hypothermic at that point. As the cold crept by my defenses I knew it was time to start moving again. I have to give Dan credit for scouting this section entirely from Google Earth, as it saved quite a bit of time at only the cost of a little bit of terror.  

I was back in the snow, so I followed Dan’s snowshoe prints around the south side of Bond Lake and back to where the trail should be. I headed westward by the light of my headlamp. The rest of the trail, once it emerged from under the snow, would be gentle and slope downward. It was a cakewalk compared to what i had just done. With about 10 miles remaining, I began to notice faces on the rocks on the trail. Then I noticed that every single rock had a face. Some were funny, some scary, some very ornate. Even the tiny rocks joined with other tiny rocks to make the shape of faces. I was aware of the hallucinations and I used them as motivation to finish so that I could get some sleep. I walked beside the highway to the campground, finishing at 4:50am, almost 45 hours after starting. I traveled 77 miles according to my mapping software, but I would guess it was closer to 90 after counting all of my zig-zagging. Dan had beaten me in by over 9 hours, but I was very satisfied with my pace. Glad to be done, I rented a campsite and collapsed in a heap after scrawling my registration information on a piece of paper with the chocolate from a girl scout cookie, since I didn’t have a pen. Then I ate the cookie and slept. 

It was cool to talk to Tom and Mike and Thad and John and Andrew as they came in, and get to hear their stories. They had all done quite a bit of road walking, which I was able to avoid with my raft and the awful bushwhack up Connor Creek. Luckily I didn’t finish with any blisters, and other than horribly swollen ankles the next day, had no real injuries afterward. This was an amazing learning experience, and preparing for it forced me to build skills that I’ll have for the rest of my life. Next time I come back to the Bob, though, I can’t wait to take it slow. 

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