Musings of a Backpacker

Friday afternoon finally came, and I was ready for an adventure in the wild country. For the six months that I was working a contract job in Missoula, Montana, every week was composed of the same pattern. On Monday, after getting out of work at about 1:30 pm, I would grab a map of the area and choose my next weekend backpacking destination.

The possibilities seemed endless. If I drove five blocks west of the house I was renting, then turned south, I was on the road leading into the Bitterroot Valley and the best backpacking trails on the planet....In my opinion. But there were fantastic possibilities elsewhere as well. Right on the edge of the city is the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area and beyond that, the Rattlesnake Wilderness. A couple of hours north of Missoula is an awesome wilderness area known as Jewel Basin. And if I drove just another thirty minutes, I’d be in Glacier National Park.

When the week finished its slow crawl to the weekend, my bag would be packed, meals planned, water bag filled and destination chosen.

I suppose Bass Creek Trail was a typical hike for me and was one of the first backpacking trips I’d ever gone on. Before going to Montana, I had never truly done any backpacking. But with places like Bass Creek Canyon so near at hand, I decided that backpacking would be my main activity while there. Well, that and fly fishing.

Bass Lake lay at the end of Bass Creek Trail in the Bitterroot Mountains. I pulled into the trailhead parking lot, grabbed my bag, tightened my shoelaces and hit the trail. The elevation gain over the nine mile hike was about 3,000 feet. I covered the first three miles in about an hour and was feeling fantastic. The trail was wide, straight and really didn’t seem to be climbing all that much.

At three miles, I stopped for a snack and a few minutes of rest. Two men about my age were doing the same except they were on their way down. When they heard I was going all the way to the Lake, they got excited. This was their trail, a place they returned to time and time again over the years. I learned from them about a rocky peninsula that jutted out into Bass Lake and was the prime location for me to set up camp.

In my mind, I visualized the place, a little patch of heaven on earth. So I strapped my pack on again and bade my new friends farewell. I was only a mile and a half from the waterfalls on Bass Creek, which marked the halfway point to the Lake. As I approached the falls, I saw a group of people making their way toward me on the trail. I stopped and spoke to these folks. There was a man and his wife, about fifty years old. There was another couple as well. They were the fifty year old man’s parents. Here we were, four and a half miles into a mountain canyon, and this eighty something year old Montana couple were hiking with walking sticks in hand and smiles on their faces. They were halfway through their own 9 mile day hike. The older gentleman was the first person to mention to me that I’d be getting into snow before long as I continued my climb to Bass Lake.

As I said before, the trail had not been climbing much up to the falls. Most of the 3000 foot elevation gain was still ahead. Soon, the switchbacks began, and the climb truly started. I had the option of camping on the way up, but I was too excited to stop. But the trail kept climbing, getting ever steeper. I finally got a glimpse of a mountain pass. That’s where I was headed and the lake was just beyond it according to the map.

My legs were beyond tired, but I only had a couple of miles to go, so I pushed my way onward. The trail changed, so that instead of a well worn, dirt footpath, I was hiking over jagged rocks. I was nearly to the pass, when I came upon a snow drift that covered the trail ahead. There were no footprints, so I was truly alone. I crossed the snow and ice and kept climbing until I gained the pass.

Bass Lake spread out before me, a jewel in the crown of mountain peaks that rose above her. The sun had already sunk below the western peak, and I still had to find the campsite the two men had mentioned. I hiked another mile along the slope bordering the lake and finally had to call it quits. My legs would go no further even though I was so close to my destination. I began searching for a place to set up my tent. Snow covered much of the area where there were no trees, so I ventured in among the firs until I found a relatively level spot. I struggled with exhaustion as I set up camp in a space barely large enough for my one man tent.

Finding firewood robbed me of any remaining strength, yet I still had to descend to the lake for cooking water and hang my food bag ten feet up on a tree branch so no bear would steal it. Finally I crawled into my tent. The climb to Bass Lake had taken a tremendous toll on my body, and I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.

I woke the next morning, sore, worn down to a point I had never known before and overcome with awe at the sight of Bass Lake in the early morning light. I broke camp with only a Cliff Bar for breakfast and began my search for that little bit of heaven on earth, the rocky peninsula prophesied by my friends on the trail.

The trail climbed high up the side of the mountain peak and at this point I began to be concerned for my wellbeing. Where was this place I could call home for the next two days, the place where I could lay down my burden and my own body and rest? Finally, through the fir green veil, I could see the grey of stone protruding into a glassy pool.

I descended to the place, loosened the straps on my backpack and dropped it onto the solid rock. I fell to my knees and rolled onto my back with my head propped against my bag. There I stayed for several hours.

At around noon, I raised myself up from the ground and took in the scene around me. I visually retraced my steps to the mountain pass, across the end of the lake and back along the other shore beneath the towering peak opposite my rocky sanctuary. The water was a mirror, indistinguishable from the scenery around and above me. A trout struck the surface, taking an insect back down into the depths. I suddenly found the energy to go on.

A few minutes later I was fighting the first of 23 cutthroat trout I would pull from the unspoiled water with my fly rod.

They say it's all about the journey, not the destination. But in this case, the promise of the little peninsula on the lake gave me the determination to go on in spite of my own limitations and the challenges of the terrain.

What did this journey teach me? On one hand, that a difficult path is made more endurable when I have a goal in mind; and on the other hand that the goal achieved would not be nearly so special had the trail been flat, the terrain even and the distance short.

And one more lesson learned; There isn't a trail so long and exhausting or a hill so steep and torturous that a few minutes with a fly rod won't completely erase it from one's memory.