Over the course of eight days, near strangers backpacked over thirty miles together through the Scapegoat Wilderness of Montana. Each day was a new adventure and each night we slept in what felt like a different world. This trip brought us from strangers, to classmates, to friends. It’s a wonder what eight days in the wilderness – with only our legs for transportation and each other for company – can do.
We began our trip at the Double Falls trailhead campsite. A pleasant, quiet place with an abundance of Douglas fir and Engelman spruce around. A creek ran along the edge of our site with a two tiered waterfall just upstream, the campsite’s namesake. With only one other family in the campsite, we made ourselves at home starting with a dip in the creek and ending the night with a gear explosion in preparation for the backpacking trip to come. One of our group members was lucky enough to walk away from that campsite with a little Donkey figurine she had found buried near a tree. This was an exciting find not just for Sydney but for the whole group.
Our first official night on the trail, we set up camp at the junction of two trails. Tents were set-up in a meadow just a few minutes up the trail from our kitchen for the night. The kitchen, classroom, and ‘living room’ were down near the creek. A dead log lay parallel to the creek and made for an excellent backrest during class and meal times. We were in a wooded area with many more deciduous trees than the previous night. Two of our group members were woken up that night, one by a deer in distress and the other by the screams of a mountain lion in the distance. Our first campsite on trail proved to be a cozy home for the night.
The next day was a journey, a voyage, a trudge. For the first part of our day we traversed through mixed deciduous forests with an amazing amount of living whitebark pines. Around 2:30pm, we climbed the saddle underneath Crown Mountain. This was my first time above treeline and the barren landscape was overwhelming. We could see for miles down the valley, looking down at all of the landscapes we had passed through. Looking the other direction we saw the burn zone that we would soon pass through. We were on trail for twelve hours straight.
The next leg of our day was completely different than the morning. It was a lodgepole pine graveyard – a wildfire had passed through relatively recently – with the new baby trees creeping in below. We found our home for the night at Green Fork Guard Station, a clearcut area with a cabin, corral, hay shed, and pit toilet. A different creek than the night before ran around the outside of the site where many of us cooled off and washed our clothes. This was our home for two whole nights!
After leaving life in the burn zone, we cruised into Halfmoon Park, a lovely little place with just the right amount of evergreen trees to keep us cool during the heat of the day. Our designated kitchen was right on the creek for easy water access and, man, did that kitchen have a view. The most spectacular view I’ve ever seen for a kitchen, actually: a view of Scapegoat Mountain itself. We had another layover day at Halfmoon Park. It was a cool morning and our mission for the day was to find a spot with enough vegetation diversity to complete our Plant Study assignment. This mission brought us on a short hike up a pass in front of Scapegoat Mountain. As we climbed, it got cooler and the wind began to blow hard. That wind brought with it a cloud. It was an eerie day spent in a foggy mist in a graveyard of burned spruce and whitebark pine trees. That night we warmed up with a bowl of miso soup and curled into our tents with Nalgenes full of boiled water to keep us warm.
From Halfmoon Park, we had our eyes set on the next ranger station, called Welcome Creek. That day of hiking was magical. The sun was shining and a gentle breeze carried us at record pace through meadows and lodgepole growth all the way to camp. We had class by the river and enjoyed rice and beans for dinner. The ranger station was surrounded by thick forests and the cabin was built in a meadow. Everyone was happy to see another pit toilet and bathe in the river.
The next morning we knew we had our final big push ahead. The final long day of backpacking would bring us back to camp at the tail junction where we began our trip. It was a day of mostly downhill, through many trees, meadows and valleys. After our two-hour lunch and a run-in with a bull cow, we had our final push over a stretch of private land. This land was home to the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen with green algae creeping up the walls of the carved out limestone walls and gorgeous blue water. Then we went straight uphill in the beating sun before returning to a familiar campsite – where it all began.
Our journey into the Scapegoat Wilderness brought us to incredible new places! We slept in spaces that felt so entirely different from the place the night before or the days following. We learned and lived on a landscape most of us had never experienced before. I wonder if the Missouri River will have as many different landscapes as the Scapegoat Wilderness.
