Day: 136
Date: Thursday, 19 September 2024
Start: Straight Creek/Benchmark Trailhead (but staying in Augusta MT)
Finish: Burnt Creek
Daily Kilometres: 30.0
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3939.0
Weather: Cool to mild and partly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Microwaved breakfast burritos
Lunch: Meat & cheese rolls
Dinner: Rehydrated meals.
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles with his chronic left ankle being particularly sore today for some reason; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: As we walked the mile through town to the Benchmark Road junction at dawn, we worried about how long it would take to hitch-hike back to the Benchmark Trailhead along the rough dead-end forest road. We reached the turnoff and had begun walking along the forest road, when a pickup towing a large horse trailer passed us, then stopped 50m up the road. The passenger walked back to us and said if we were willing to sit in the tray of the pickup, they could take us to the trailhead. Then he (Dave) and the driver (Bill) reconsidered and moved everything (saddles, etc) from the back seat of their dual cab into the tray of the pickup so we could sit in the back seat. We then had a very interesting drive out to the trailhead learning about the two weeks they, who were from Wisconsin, were to be working as volunteers for the Forest Service in the Bob Marshall Wilderness repairing corrals, gates, etc. In the trailer were their two horses and two pack mules. They delivered us to the trailhead around 9am, the earliest we could have hoped for when we left the motel.
Lowlight: Nothing in particular.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We left the motel around 7am, walked through Augusta, and managed, against expectations, to quickly get a ride back to the Benchmark Trailhead (see above).
We were hiking by 9am and soon in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and following the Sun River upstream which turned out to be what we did for the entire day until we camped. The trail was well-used and somewhat muddy not helped, judging by the evidence, by frequent horse use. We passed through occasional meadows, but were mostly in lovely pine forest, with high mountains rising on both sides. It was a very clear day and the views were fantastic. Along the way we saw some very large bear tracks and some bear scat, but no bears. We did see a few hikers.
Dave was struggling with a sore ankle and the usual post-town heavy pack, so our pace was not fast, but we managed to get done what we had hoped and found somewhere to camp around 7:15pm.
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