Selway Bitterroot Wilderness - Day 2

I opened my eyes. It was dark. Went back to sleep. Woke up again. Still dark.

I woke up again an hour after sunrise, decided it was time to keep my eyes open, and sat up. I hadn’t slept well; the ground sloped gently down towards the river and I was off-balance all night. I swung my feet out of the tent, pulled on my boots, and stuck my head out. It was a cool cloudy morning, and I welcomed the respite from the sun as I packed up and moved to the trail.

The section I raked clean at bedtime was empty except for two messy prints that I couldn’t identify, and an impressively large ant-lion hole. The messy tracks were medium-sized - perhaps a deer - and it looked like the animal had been moving fast from the way the sand was sprayed out in one direction.

I felt driven to reach the ranger station so I retrieved my food bag and set off. I figured I’d stop on the next nice beach to make breakfast and wash up, but no beach appeared so I ate some peanuts and kept going.

In a few miles the trail came down into a small flat where a dozen large cedars roofed a small glade of pine needles. It was the only cedar flat on the map, and I recognized it from Dave's description. I lay on the ground beneath two large trees and looked up at the sky through their branches. It was a good spot - soft ground, quiet and peaceful. Small birds flitted in the branches high overhead.

Somewhere soon I would pass Dave's sixth campsite, where he slept under a lone cedar on the day that he came down from Three Links Creek. When I passed Three Links I had skipped ahead four days in Dave’s timeline, and the Dave that I now followed was more experienced and trail-hardened than the Dave I had known yesterday. He knew how to set up a good campsite for himself, knew how to integrate his movements with the rhythm of his days. He was getting a little sick of his food - rice, jerky, honey, biscuits - but he was happy and comfortable on the trail. Someone less driven than Dave might have yielded to the temptation to go home after coming down from Three Links - but he pressed on.

The Selway was noticeably steeper here - instead of running over cobbles, there were more large boulders and more sections of real whitewater. I scouted them over the edge of the trail, picturing the line I’d take with one of the big eighteen-foot rafts from the Grand Canyon. Some of the drops were straight-forward, but some were pure chaos of boulders half-buried in current without clear lines. I was starting to get excited about the possibilities when I looked down onto the next section of river and saw a raft upside-down next to the far bank. There was nobody in sight. I took off my pack and felt adrenaline kick in. This was a bad spot to cross the river - from where I stood there was a steep rocky cliff dropping perhaps 100 feet to the river, which was running very fast in a narrow section. I went through possible scenarios in my head, trying to think of a way to get more information without being too risky.

At that moment a weary-looking man in a drysuit and ragged wetsuit booties came around the corner. “Is that your raft?”, I asked. He sighed, leaned on his paddle, and told me the story. Two friends finally getting a permit to run the Selway. The river higher than usual, an unexpected flip in an easy rapid, and then a long walk to the ranger station. Nobody injured, luckily. Waiting at the ranger station for the next group of rafters to help them recover. We stood and watched as the rescue rafters came around the corner and began the recovery process. It was slow, and I was already thinking about camp, so eventually I headed up the trail while he headed down to rendezvous with his recovered raft.

The last stretch of trail to the Moose Creek confluence was interminable. I struggled to stay focused on the trail in front of me. Finally I saw a large point of land splitting the river, and as I came closer I saw that it was Moose Creek on one side and the Selway River on the other. They were identical in size. I crossed the timber suspension bridge over Moose Creek and stood looking upstream into the valley for a moment. The trail continued up onto the point of land, then split - one fork going to the ranger station and one going down to a bridge over the Selway. I was sweaty and dusty, so I dropped down to the Selway and found a good beach to wash up. The wind was picking up and the sunshine was spotty, but I stripped down and got soapy, rinsed off, and even washed the clothes I’d been wearing. As my hair dried I started gathering twigs to heat some coffee. The cold water had given me new energy and optimism.

Right on cue the wind began to gust hard through the trees and the sun went behind a particularly foreboding cloud. I did not want to spend the rest of the day there, so I abandoned the firewood and got back on the trail to the ranger station. I wanted to hurry but didn’t want to sweat so I paced myself carefully, but soon enough crossed under a windsock at the end of the ranger station runway. After a final stretch through a tall pine forest, I came out in a cleared area across from a log-fenced compound with a few log buildings painted “Forest Service Log Building Brown”®. The clearing around the compound was carpeted with impossibly lush grass and surrounded by mature pine trees. The paddock was empty of horses, but a lone doe worked nervously at the ground, eating spilled food or perhaps a salt lick.

A bearded man saw me and came over to introduce himself as the volunteer campground host. We talked for a fair bit. I was already feeling rusty from two days on the trail but he was a willing conversationalist. It was probably in the job description. He invited me to make myself at home and to set up a camp anywhere outside the fenced-in area.

I set up on the edge of a large cleaning just past the compound, out of sight of everything manmade except for a weather station. The tent door faced north-east, into the looming empty space on my map. Tomorrow I would step into that space but for now I was done. I collected twigs and fired up my stove. In a few minutes I was slurping down a hot bowl of noodles and broth, then a bowl of cereal. It was still early and I considered getting a few more hours of hiking done; but I was tired and a rain shower gave me an excuse to stay put. I lay down and opened my copy of “In the Shining Mountains” to re-read Dave’s meeting with Emil Keck, the Moose Creek ranger in the 70’s.

From the little I know about Dave and Emil, I believe they immediately found common ground in their love of wilderness and their feelings about the human system. Emil detected signs of Dave’s limited food supplies and offered him a huge homemade meatloaf sandwich, which Dave devoured even as he felt that he should stick to his jerky and rice. At this point Dave had been out in the wilderness for seven days, and it must have been a pleasure for him to enjoy human contact with this kindred spirit. They talked for an hour about the country, and when Dave continued up the trail he left with a detailed oral knowledge about the country ahead.

One thing Dave says here gives us a clue to his goals. He promises to write Emil after he gets out - implying that Dave was still fairly confident about making it over the pass and exiting into the Montana side of the mountains. At the same time, Dave must also have felt comforted by the knowledge that he had a friend at the ranger station in case anything happened up the trail.

I went to sleep just at sunset to the sound of light rain hitting the tent. At some point in the night I was awakened by the sound of cracking, splintering wood. I came fully awake just in time to hear the deep boom of a huge tree slamming into the ground. The sound reverberated off the hills, then absolute silence came back to the clearing. It hadn’t been too close - perhaps on the other side of the ranger station - but I was very awake and mentally reviewed the reliability of every tree around my tent site. Eventually I went back to sleep and made it through the rest of the night.