We took the Montana Boy Scout Council's canoes through the breaks and the badlands of the upper Missouri river. They outfitted us in fine comfort and style from the Scout Ranch near Hilger. What a great place! This was a time when the float of a lifetime became almost an annual Troop 228 event for a few years.
This is rough country, explored by Lewis and Clark following President Jefferson's 'Louisiana Purchase' from Napoleon in 1802. These are old pictures, recently updated with new narrative.
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In winter, summer seems far away and the feeling of sunburn or windburn is hard to recall, but each summer our scout troop canoes for a week through the Missouri River Breaks. The Missouri Breaks are badlands, waterless for most of the year except for the Missouri River itself. It can be harsh, hot and shadeless in July and bitter cold and windy most of the winter. We see a few derelict cabins, huts actually, which were abandoned many years ago by homesteaders, but there aren't many inhabited dwellings between the put-in and the take-out, and most of them are seasonal. |
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It was hot. We dried out impressively. Like raisins. We had close encounters with heat stroke and rattlesnakes. We spent a lot of time in the water. The evenings and early mornings were very nice although the bugs were sometimes troublesome. |
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The few of us who stayed awake all day saw animals many places, every day, not in the great numbers that Lewis and Clark describe in their journals, but abundant by modern standards. Mule deer and Whitetail, lots of birds; grouse, pheasant, geese, little yellow headed blackbirds, many bird species I've never seen before; we saw prairie dogs and rattlesnakes, including a fairly large one about three or three and a half feet long. He seemed huge to me -- and he had a very distinctive RATTLE -- which is what alerted me to his presence on the path I was walking. |
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Can you imagine what it would be like to be up there in midwinter? Most of the roads are seasonal, and so for much of the year the country is very isolated. In this photograph above, Citadel Rock rises on the paddler's right. We camped in beautiful spots, places seldom seen and not usually inhabited except by other canoe campers. |
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This remote place near the mouth of the dry wash called the Slaughter River is a spot Lewis mentions in the Journals where the Expedition made camp. We camped here as well, and despite the peaceful appearances of this picture,we had a tremendous thunderstrom later in the evening -- everything that wasn't properly tied down (including canoes and tents) blew away. |
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This is where we took the boats out, seventy miles south of Malta and more than a hundred river miles downstream of the put-in near Loma. |
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Some of these pictures were taken by my good friend and trusty comrade-in-arms John Linjanen of Helena, who has been my faithful floating partner and Finnish Guide for twenty years. He has hung in there with me through many experiences which might never have happened at all had good sense prevailed, or had I not listened to him. |
