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| Camille Consolvo photographs the fresh snow that had fallen on Mount Frazier |
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| The flank of Mount Werner |
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| An old steam engine from the workings of the gas well above Muddy Creek Falls |
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| A typical scene in the Blindhorse Canyon area beneath an unnamed peak |
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| Camille Consolvo in an aspen grove lit up by Fall color |
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| The view on our descent into Clary Coulee at the end of the hike |
We were greeted with late Summer snow on our 13-mile "Grand Tour," hike on the Rocky Mountain Front Thursday.
It dusted the ground at the Blackleaf Canyon and coated the north-facing mountain slopes, but didn't hit Choteau Mountain and we found dry conditions at our Clary Coulee conclusion.
This is a really tough hike logistically. Since it is a point-to-point there needs to be cars on both ends unless you're fortunate enough to do a key exchange with hikers coming from both sides.
It is 26-miles between Clary Coulee, where we dropped a car, and Blackleaf Canyon, where we began the hike.
It was raining as we drove to Blackleaf and mud caked my wheel-wells and was thrown up onto my windshield. When we stopped we used our hiking poles to free the debris from the wells.
We had to get an early start to do this hike, taking off before sunrise at 5:30 a.m., and I didn't get home until 8:30 p.m., after dark.
The drive up was harrowing because of the many deer. I had a near miss with two deer just before we entered Choteau. I discovered that my car's ABS system works beautifully.
On the Teton Canyon Road we were delighted to see about a dozen elk that (thankfully) had crossed the road before we approached.
I hadn't remembered much about this hike that I had last taken in 2003, except that in the Blindhorse Canyon we had to do a 200 feet steep Class 3 scramble to reach Trail 177 that leads to Clary Coulee. Had we stayed on 153 all the way we would have taken Pamburn Creek that dead-ends on private land and taken the road back to the car.
It is interesting that earlier Forest Service maps had shown 153 and 177 intersecting. The latest Bob Marshall Wilderness complex maps shows the gap at the steep canyon. There never has been a marker pointing to 177 from 153. The National Geographic's Bob Marshall map shows a clear connection.
The 18-years since the last hike fogged my memory, and despite looking for the canyon, I overshot it by nearly a mile before I realized my mistake.
We should have backtracked.
Instead, I reasoned, we could get to 177 up another draw up the trail.
So, we thrashed around on a steep bushwhack, but did find some consolation in the beauty of that stretch of Pamburn, eventually arriving at the trail about 3-miles above our car. We had lost about a mile and a half of 177.
But, we had enjoyed a tour of the Blindhorse drainage, an expansive grasslands that sits below several unnamed peaks just north of Choteau Mountain. One of those peaks I'd love to see named for Choteau-native A.B. Guthrie, the author of the "Big Sky."
The trail between Blackleaf and Blindhorse is in deep old-growth forest with trees more sizable than one usually encounters on the east side of the Rockies. About 2.5 miles from Blackleaf on Muddy Creek there is the debris from an old natural gas well, and a couple of steam-engines. This area has been overrun with cattle grazing, but has a beautiful campsite setting on the creek.
We passed an old trail just behind this site that we think leads to the head of Muddy Creek Falls and we made a mental note to return and check it out.
The Blindhorse area impressed all of us for its remote beauty beneath high peaks.
I had remembered that about 20 years ago this area had been targeted for oil and gas development and that there had been plans to drive semi-trucks into it.
Unimaginable now.
Thank goodness for all those who worked to preserve the Front and got those leases canceled and the Heritage Act passed.
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