Trip into the Bob with Steve, Andrea, Adin and Zia

Gary and Dona's Trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness

with

Steve, Andrea, Adin and Zia

August, 2012

(Part 3)

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After our two day ride and hike to the confluence of Young's Creek and Danaher Creek, the official start of the South Fork of the Flathead River, we were happy to be in the same spot for a few days.

The morning dawned clear but a bit smoky. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, watched the geese heading off to their feeding grounds for the day, and generally made up for traveling hard the previous two days.


Camp, S. Fk. Flathead		Saddle Rack


Steve and Andrea, Planning their day	Geese	Relaxing after Breakfast Dona, Zia and Max

Then Steve and Andrea and the kids took four horses and headed down to Big Prairie to show the kids where they spent some of the happiest times of their lives. They met there, working on trail crew, and fell in love.


	Andrea, Zia, Steve and Adin


Heading North to Big Prairie Andrea, Zia, Steve and Adin

Dona was nursing a sore back and wanted to spend the day relaxing down by the river. I thought about getting on Sambo and going up the Danaher a few miles, but decided to spend it with Dona. We moved down to the river; she read, and I fished and generally poked around.


Dona Relaxing	Cooling Off and Exploring

There was a fire burning in the next valley to the east of us, and as the afternoon wore on it started to blow up.


Fire in the Valley East of Us	South Fork Flathead

I fished the river a bit, then crawled up the far bank and climbed through the maze of fallen trees from the past fires until I got to Gordon Creek. I found a snake with a small cutthroat in its mouth; I have no idea if it could actually consume all of that or not. It didn't look like it, but then snakes are pretty amazing creatures...


	Snake Trying to Eat Fish

I did catch a few fish during the day; nothing particularly big, but most were pretty feisty. I got a good picture of my lens cap and the head of one. We were hankering for fish for dinner so towards the end of the day I kept a few in the legal slot size. They were yummy, cooked over the fire in tinfoil with olive oil and some spices.


Lens Cap, Cutthroat	Sending Him Home	Fish for Dinner

Towards evening the wind came up in some pretty good gusts and we could hear trees killed in the previous years' fires starting to come down all around us. After a bit Steve and Andrea and the kids returned, (Hey, Andrea, send me some pictures!!!) having made it through without having to cut out anything but being concerned about stuff falling all around them. We arranged the hard panniers to serve as a windbreak, and Zia worked at getting a fire going so we could cook the fish.


Dona and Zia Starting a Fire		Andrea, Dona and Zia

After a fun day of messing around, no one was sure exactly what they wanted to do the next day, so we all decided to sleep on it and just crashed. (Next)