Day: 138
Date: Saturday, 21 September 2024
Start: Pentagon Creek
Finish: Strawberry Creek
Daily Kilometres: 35.3
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 4011.9
Weather: Very cold early, then cool and mostly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts/Muesli
Lunch: Protein Bars/Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported
Highlight: Nothing in particular.
Lowlight: The crossing of the Middle Fork Flathead River turned out to be both time-consuming and frustrating. When we arrived at the river it was obvious, disappointingly, that it was not rock-hoppable as hoped. We did not want to wade through so, after some investigation, found a log jam downstream that looked a possible crossing option. Just as we were about to try, another CDT hiker, “Owl”, turned up and walked down the main log across the river with aplomb. To fall off the log would have been catastrophic given the jumble of logs below and the fast-flowing water. Julie went across more carefully, but Dave decided he didn't have the agility or balance to justify the risk and returned to where the trail crossed and changed out of his boots into his sandals and waded across while Julie waited on the other side. Once there, Dave dried his feet and put on his boots before we began walking along the trail again. In less than 100 metres, we came to a second crossing of the river and both had to take our footwear off to wade across. Extremely annoying and the whole exercise cost us nearly an hour.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5am and began hiking around 6am in pitch darkness. First we had to rock-hop across the Pentagon Creek which was not easy in the dark by headlamp and Julie ended up with one very cold wet foot.
Then we had a 3000’ climb up to the aptly named Switchback Pass (7792’) over the next 10km. It took us nearly four hours and had seemingly endless switchbacks and false summits, though the grade wasn't too bad and the forest lovely.
At the Pass we stopped for breakfast in the sun and admired the views with craggy rocky summits on either side. After the Pass came a long descent past some picturesque lakes and beneath craggy cliffs on trail that had been badly cut up by horse traffic. We had seen some horse riders with pack horses on our way up to the Pass.
The trail improved as we got further down and began following Clack Creek for many kilometres along the valley floor, mostly through meadow.
We left the creek to cross the Middle Fork Flathead River (see above) then follow it upstream for some kilometres, finally rejoining the CDT (from the Spotted Bear Alternate).
We had dinner at the trail junction, then walked another 5km through a burnt landscape until we found a rare place to camp on a tiny island with Strawberry Creek flowing on either side. It will be cold tonight and it looks like we will have to ford the creek first thing tomorrow morning.
We didn't get quite as far as hoped today because of the slow climb at the start and the time lost at the later river crossing.
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