Part 2

The Bob Marshall

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Dogleg, one of the folks Ice Cream and I met at the end of the AZT, was at Looking Glass Base Camp. He gets around, which is good, since he’s a source of good advice and trail magic both. He told me that he knew someone that quit the CDT because of COVID, as I sat outside in a plastic chair, trying to social distance, wrapped in my fleece liner, with COVID, probably. I never got tested, but the symptoms matched; I couldn’t smell a thing for one, and felt like death for another.

I was one of the early guinea pigs for the vaccine, and over the course of two or three years probably received five doses. I just got them when I got the flu vaccine. Easy peasy. But I wasn’t vaccinated now, and had picked the bug up somewhere. No one escapes forever, and COVID is part of life now, like the cold or the flu.

Stubbornly, I only allowed myself one zero before joining the rest of my tramily for the hike to Two Medicine. It was a short hike, only ten miles. How bad could it be?

On the climb up the slopes of Mt. Henry my mantra was, “I can breathe, I can breathe, breathe, breathe.” I barely could. My pack felt like it was loaded with rocks and misery, my body was lead, my lungs, death. Like Smaug from the Hobbit, I could produce a list of all of the parts of me that were no good.

The boys were long gone, far ahead, but Ice Cream watched from behind as I zombied up the mountain. I let my hands hang loose at my sides—less effort that way, somehow—and swayed back and forth. Between ragged breaths I would sometimes imagine laying down and dying. Melodramatic, yes, but also a tempting thought at the time.

In fact, that thought was so tempting that I did my best to do just that. Not even taking off my pack, I half sat, half lay down and did nothing else. Had I not felt so awful, it would have been the most relaxed I’d ever felt. I had no energy for any muscle tension whatsoever. Just breathing. Ice Cream, the angel, the perfect, sat down and shaded me with her umbrella and waved away the flies when they landed on my face. If ever there was a reason not to lay down and die, she would be it.

The death-rest worked well, and after a while I was able to get up and go again. It helped that most of the climb was over. Nearby was a blue blaze to the summit of Henry, but we passed it by. That stretch is already beautiful enough. Later came the baby bighorn sheep and their ragged-looking mothers, their winter coats still clinging stubbornly into June. The sheep on this trail are accustomed to people, and barely flinch when hikers pass by.

Down, down to the road and to Two Medicine shortly after. It looked different than it had the first time. The little ranger hut was there, and no doubt the beleaguered ranger Marcy was inside trying to sort out hiker’s dreams for too little pay. We didn’t go in. Toolman said we didn’t need permits for this campground, after all.

Instead we walked into the campground and tried to find the spots reserved for visitors without vehicles. There are a few. Certainly the boys would be there, already set up. They were not. After an hour of circling and not finding them, and getting no response from our Garmin messages, we decided to talk to Marcy after all.

She was there, about ready to close, hoping to eat her lunch, hours late. Despite that, she offered to help us out, since Two Medicine does, in fact, require permits, even for the walk-in sites. We told her to eat her lunch, and that we would hitch back to East Glacier. It was one half dozen or the other for us, and Marcy was too sweet to take advantage of.

Before hitching out we walked the short distance to the camp store. Toolman and Frito were there. They’d been there for a while, having never visited Two Medicine at all. It was obvious that Ice Cream and I were salty as the sea about this, but in the end, it wasn’t that big a deal. I just made a note not to count on them for team-related plans if they were in the front, which they undoubtedly would be.

Under a flag of unspoken truce, the four of us hitched back, once again, to Looking Glass. I was beginning to feel like a fly stuck to fly paper. Nearly one hundred miles hiked and we were still at the start.

I was still coughing up a lung, so we zeroed again. The boys may not be overly proactive, but they are good and loyal friends.

The next day we left for the Bob. Still sick but able to breathe better, I fell back to my old mantra, Stronger Every Day. It got me through IT band syndrome on the AT and it would get me through COVID now.

The Bob Marshall doesn’t begin right away. Two days of basic northern forests. The Bob Marshall Wilderness, named after pioneering conservationist Bob Marshall who advocated for preserving vast natural areas in the 1930s, encompasses over a million acres of pristine Montana backcountry. Established in 1964 under the Wilderness Act, it forms the heart of a larger 1.5-million-acre complex that includes the Great Bear and Scapegoat wilderness areas, all maintained as roadless zones where motorized vehicles are prohibited, allowing only foot, horse, or mule travel.

It’s something like two days from East Glacier to the wilderness boundary for average hikers (hi, it’s me, average hiker). The space in between isn’t memorable at all, except that Toolman took a tumble again, going, as he described, ass over tea kettle. On a steep and muddy slope he slipped. This time he was a few steps behind me. Once again I heard Frito say, “Toolman!” I whipped around to see that, somehow, he had slipped in the mud and then flipped down the hill. Again the plants were his friends, and some thick bushes caught him. He climbed out, brushed off, checked his gear and soldiered on without injury or complaint, as always.

Most hikers know the Bob as the place with bad blowdowns. For us it wasn’t. Maybe word got around and the Chainsaw Bois showed up to trim it. Maybe it was aliens. Nothing is 100% certain. Therefore, less parsimonious explanations carry equal weight to more sensible ones, AMIRITE?

Anyway, whatever the blowdowns are like any given year, the Bob does have a load of stream crossings, and since Glacier had been constantly wet, we hiked the first 200 miles of trail with wet feet. Squish, squish.

Other than the Chinese Wall, which is much cooler in person than in photos, I don’t remember the Bob that well. I was grumpy and sick. I fell into another death-rest once, and again Ice Cream patiently took the lead with camp setup, navigation and Man-Flu maintenance. There were some pretty views, I do remember that, and a chick named after Legumes, and another that judged Ice Cream for carrying a bear can rather than an Ursack. Legumes was sweet and memorable, Judge Dread was not.

There were also sporadic ranger cabins where cowboy camping on the porch is gray-area permissible, and where, wonderfully, privies can be found.

We strayed onto our first “alternate” beginning the lasting trend (for Ice Cream and I at least) of routing ourselves with Gaia rather than sucking the motherly teat of FarOut.

There were a lot of burned lands, and some rain, and some thunder and lightning (very, very frightening me. Galileo). Flies abounded, and would attack in legions whenever we stopped. I counted at least eight different species crawling on me at any given time, most didn’t bite. They just crawled around annoyingly and gave disgusting, tickly kisses with their proboscis.

A group of army veterans on horseback passed at a water source. All wore western gear, and most wore guns. They were Chads, their horses were Chads, their guns were Chads. One’s name was actually Chad, and he had hiked the AZT when Ice Cream and I had, though we never met him.

At times, Ice Cream and I caught the boys, even were able to hike with them for a while before Toolman’s machine-like stride took him away. Toolman is 99% sure a wolf passed his tent one night as he camped alone. There was a lot of sound, and a fresh dog print too big to be a dog.

Then, without much warning, there was a parking lot. A tiny cardboard sign said, “CDT trail magic.” The boys were already in Augusta, MT. Ice Cream and I planned to get there the following day, so we went to check out the trail magic.

There are times in life when I feel simultaneously surprised and not surprised all at once. This was one of those times. The trail magic was, of course, Dogleg and Trip from the AZT, and half a dozen other cool folk. Dogleg had a camper setup and was hosting a gaggle of tired hikers. He had drinks, made stir fry and hotdogs. Herman’s blessing upon him.

Other cool people were there, too, like Spruce Goose, attempting to be the first woman to walk in a continuous line from Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Argentina to the top of Alaska. Having made it to the CDT and following it “since it was convenient,” she was doing a great job of it. She had been working the project since something like 2017 and had dealt with the worldwide shutdown for COVID, Mexican cartels, perilous jungles and who knows what else. She also had a dog, Chicken Inspector, who she had picked up as a pup specifically for this trip. The dog knew nothing else. If I ever get the chance to reincarnate, I want to be a dog that belongs to someone like Spruce Goose.

Based on quality information from Dogleg, along with offers of pancakes for breakfast, Ice Cream and I decided to camp nearby and hitch in to Augusta in the morning. As my grand-pappy used to say, “Why do it now when you can do it later?” A wise man.

We hung out, we chatted, we laughed, we slept, and in the morning we rode into Augusta with a man wearing a thousand yard stare and a pistol, but that’s a story for part 3.

Unless given express permission for their use, all names and trail names in my articles have been changed. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental. If you enjoy my writing, please feel free to subscribe or buy me a coffee using the Tip the Author button.