Voyage Down Scenic Terrain

By John Krist,
Senior reporter

Traveling by canoe along the Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River in central Montana, paddlers have an opportunity to explore scenic countryside that has changed very little since Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through it nearly 200 years ago.

VIRGELLE, Mont. --We sorted gear by the light of a kerosene lantern, which illuminated the old wooden cabin with a softly golden glow that was romantic but inadequate for the task. Food was spread out across the beds. Clothes were piled in a dark corner. Cooking utensils, tents, sleeping bags and other bulky equipment were banished to the porch. Small personal items were heaped on the unlit cast-iron stove.

The night before an extended journey in an open boat usually is occupied by this deeply practical ritual. Equipment and food must be organized and stored in the canoe or raft or kayak so that you can find them when you need them, and so that they will be reasonably dry when you do. It isn't hard to imagine this same ritual serving as a bridge across time and space, a link between Polynesian paddlers in oceangoing outriggers a thousand years ago, French voyageurs plying the Great Lakes in the 18th century, rafting guides preparing to haul stockbrokers and retirees through the Colorado's churning rapids this summer.

Our adventure was more modest but still required the ritual of preparation. In the morning, a van would haul us and our equipment to a boat ramp a mile away. Our group would then push off into the lazy current and spend the next six days paddling canoes 108 miles along the Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River, following the trail of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark through a rugged, lonely landscape that has changed little since their journey nearly two centuries ago.

I had flirted with rivers before during my three-month trek last year along the explorers' path: prowling the Mississippi waterfront in St. Louis on a diesel-powered tour boat, sleeping aboard a replica of Lewis and Clark's wooden keelboat on an old elbow of the Missouri in Iowa, and kayaking for brief periods below dams in the Dakotas. But this canoe trip through the nearly empty heart of Montana would mark the first time I actually had followed the Lewis and Clark trail by water, replicating the mode of travel they employed for all but a few weeks of their 28-month journey. I had looked forward to it for months as a high point of my own journalistic voyage.

Sunset colors the Missouri River on a quiet stretch bracketed by towering sandstone cliffs. Although there are a few minor rapids, most of the 149-mile Wild and Scenic River consists of flat water suitable for even beginning paddlers.

Some things would be different, of course, between Lewis and Clark's journey through the area in 1805 and my group's in 2001. We would have more sophisticated gear than members of the expedition: canoes made from modern synthetic materials instead of hollowed-out cottonwood logs, lightweight and waterproof nylon tents instead of much-patched canvas, a gas-powered stove instead of an open cooking fire, comfortable clothing instead of grimy buckskin, food purchased from a supermarket instead of animals we'd shot and butchered in the field. We would be paddling and drifting downstream rather than laboriously fighting the current upstream as Lewis and Clark had on their first passage through this area (although they happily sped along with the Missouri's current at their backs on the homeward leg of their trip).

But other aspects of the journey would be the same. Once we started down the river, we would be on our own most of the time, with few opportunities to call for help in case of injury or illness (roads reach the river at only three points in the 149 miles between Fort Benton and Fort Peck Lake, and only one of those crossings offers a telephone or receives frequent automobile traffic). We would camp out regardless of weather, often at precisely the same spots described in the explorers' journals, which generally would lack the amenities found in developed campgrounds: picnic tables, running water, toilets. We would endure wind, sun, insects and the river's eccentricities, and they would determine the rhythm and pace of each day. We would pack and unpack our small, vulnerable boats each morning and evening, and would entrust our fate to them.

For nearly a week, our group would be paddling through countryside innocent of power lines and pavement, nearly empty of permanent inhabitants, beyond reach of cell phones and motors and electric lights. We sometimes would encounter and swap stories with other groups of paddlers, but most of the time the only sounds we would hear would be the splash of our paddles, the hiss of rapids, the hoarse cries of ravens, the crack of thunder, the song of wind strumming stiff grass and cottonwood leaves.

To reach Virgelle, I had driven from North Dakota across eastern Montana, following one of the loneliest stretches of highway in the United States: 300 miles of two-lane blacktop crossing rolling prairie that gradually grew more brown and desiccated as I moved west, the desolation broken by nothing but an occasional farmhouse or grain elevator. Reaching the relative metropolis of Great Falls -- Montana's third-largest city, population 56,690 -- I cleaned up at a motel, enjoyed clean sheets, and met several members of my family. Our party of five shopped for food, and then headed to Virgelle, boosting its population temporarily to seven.

Tourists are a more reliable cash crop than grain in parts of Montana. This restored homesteader cabin is part of the bed and breakfast operation at Virgelle Mercantile and Missouri River Canoe Co., a starting place for float trips along the upper Missouri.

I had arranged lodging, canoe rental and shuttle services there from Don Sorenson and Jimmy Griffin, the town's only full-time residents and owners of the Virgelle Mercantile and Missouri River Canoe Co. They have restored the defunct settlement's 1912 store, moved a handful of century-old homesteader cabins to the site from ranches throughout the region, and operate it all as a bed-and-breakfast lodge. They also offer guided river trips, and rent canoes and other gear to do-it-yourself travelers. We spent the night before our departure in a pair of restored cabins, each outfitted in period furnishings and lacking electricity and plumbing (a lighted bath house was a short walk away).

That evening, we barbecued chicken while being peppered by desultory raindrops. After the brief storm passed, we sat on the cabin porch and watched the slanting light of sunset illuminate pale sandstone bluffs and leafy cottonwoods that marked the course of the river nearby. In the foreground, a tractor sat motionless on reclaimed bottomland planted in hay. It was the only sign of civilization visible beyond the boundaries of Virgelle.

The absence of settlement does not reflect lack of effort. People have been trying for well over a century to make a go of it in central and eastern Montana. Virgelle is the forlorn ghost of a hope that a community would take root there in the early 1900s, when demand soared for American wheat to replace European grain destroyed by World War I battlefields, and when federal homesteading laws were liberalized (see related story accompanying today's series installment at www.voyageofrediscovery.com).

Remoteness and an unforgiving climate, however, eventually extinguished all but the most devout optimism. Although Virgelle at one time boasted a general store, post office, school, bank, and grain elevator, it was mainly forsaken by 1930. Homesteaders in the region left abandoned log cabins and weathered frame houses scattered across the landscape like windblown litter, and the doggedness of those who refused to be driven away seldom persisted among their descendants for more than a generation or two. Parts of the state are less populated now than in 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau declared the frontier closed because it could no longer locate any area it considered unsettled.

Just how empty is it? If you drive the approximate route of the Lewis and Clark trail from the eastern Montana border to Fort Benton, as I did, you will cross six counties (Garfield, Prairie, McCone, Richland, Petroleum and Fergus), all of which shed permanent residents between the 1990 and 2000 census counts like cottonwood trees casting seeds upon the prairie wind. The most densely populated of these is Fergus County, at 2.7 people per square mile. The sparsest is Garfield County where, statistically speaking, you have to scour four square miles to scare up a single human being.

Bad news for farmers and community boosters has turned out to be good news, however, for history buffs and those who love the wild western landscape. Few places along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail remain as they were described in the explorers' journals (see accompanying story), and none is better preserved than the countryside bracketing a 149-mile stretch of the Missouri River between the old steamboat port of Fort Benton and the upstream end of Fort Peck Lake.

That's the countryside that beckoned to us from our cozy, dimly lit cabins in Virgelle.

After a breakfast of freshly baked raisin bread and sticky rolls in the homey kitchen of the mercantile building, we went over our river maps with Griffin, who has guided many float trips on the Missouri and pointed out the good camping spots, the interesting hikes. He all but promised bighorn sheep in the vicinity of Chimney Bend, something pleasant to look forward to in this land where cows now constitute the dominant herbivore. Then all was a flurry of motion, as we filled our water jugs (unlike Lewis and Clark, we would not attempt to drink from the river, and no potable water was available along our route), and dragged coolers, duffels and waterproof dry bags to the van.

We drove to Coal Banks Landing along a gravel road, slid our canoes into the water and loaded them with gear. A Bureau of Land Management employee with a clipboard wandered by to register us and make sure we were aware of some of the hazards we might encounter on the trip, hypothermia, rattlesnakes, lightning, thirst. We set off at around 11 a.m., five people, me, my wife, our two children and my wife's sister, and a couple hundred pounds of food, water and camping equipment in two rented canoes and the kayak I had hauled all the way from Ventura.

It was a gorgeous day, warm and clear, not too hot yet, although the afternoon would be scorching. The river was calm and grayish green, and moved silently between pale banks. The water was cool but not too cold to swim in and smelled faintly of wet earth. We made 14 miles that day and halted for the night at Eagle Creek, where Lewis and Clark camped on May 31, 1805. It was a beautiful site, surrounded by huge old cottonwoods and providing a grand view of the soaring sandstone cliffs across the river. A gorgeous sunset, which splashed sky and reflective river with vermilion and violet, provided a fitting conclusion.

The day the Corps of Discovery camped on the same spot had inspired one of Lewis' most effusive journal entries. Because they were paddling upstream, and we were floating in the opposite direction, his entry actually described the scenery we would see the following day. I had brought an abridged copy of the journals and read enough to stir our anticipation.

"The Hills and river Clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance," Lewis wrote. "The bluffs of the river rise to the hight of from 2 to 300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular; they are formed of a remarkable white sandstone which is sufficiently soft to give way readily to the impression of water ... the water in the course of time in decending from those hills and plains on either side of the river has trickled down the soft sand clifts and worn it into a thousand grotesque figures ... As we passed on it seemed as if those seens of visionary inchantment would never have an end; for here it is too that nature presents to the view of the traveler vast ranges of walls of tolerable workmanship, so perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry had I not recollected that she had first began her work."

Reality managed to live up to Lewis' overwrought prose. The second day of our trip was spent floating between spectacular white sandstone cliffs that towered above the river and sometimes pushed right to the water's edge.

During a break from the river, hikers explore Hole in the Wall, a famous local landmark found amid eroded sandstone formations in the White Cliffs. In his journal, Lewis likened the rock formations to vast buildings and walls, writing, "I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry had I not recollected that she had first began her work."

After lunch at a campsite just downstream from Citadel Rock, a prominent river landmark often depicted by landscape painters and photographers, we put on hiking boots, packed water and camera gear, and hiked to the top of Hole in the Wall, a natural window eroded through a prominent white cliff about 500 feet above the river.

The afternoon was very hot, especially away from the water, probably over 100 degrees, and the trail required some climbing up vertical slabs of stone, but it was worth it -- the landscape behind the cliff was fantastic, broken and eroded, with many spires and columns and arches. A rill of dark igneous rock shiny with mica formed a hogback atop the ridge, which offered an expansive view of the Missouri River and its wild, rugged surroundings. Our distant canoes, beached near a large, solitary cottonwood, appeared as insignificant specks, fragile and insubstantial. Since they were our only connection to the rest of the world, the sight was sobering.

The rest of the day was a long haul. The current slowed and we had to paddle rather than simply drift with the steady two-mph current. There was little wind to cool us, and no clouds to dim the intense sun, so it was blistering hot. We saw beavers for the first time, swimming in a side channel. We pulled in late, around 7:30, beaching the boats on a muddy bank much trampled by cows. The cottonwood-shaded camp site was in better shape than the river bank because it had been fenced to keep out the cattle, but the air was heavy with stink and flies.

We were awakened at sunrise by the bellowing of cows. Much of the countryside along the Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River is grazed, with little distinction between private land and the public land administered by the BLM. For paddlers, if not for cattle, there is one relevant difference: It's OK to camp on BLM land, but generally not on private property, and ranchers have been known to convey that message at gunpoint to trespassing boaters. The ability to read a map delineating ownership patterns comes in handy.

Ranching is, however, one of the few occupations for which this part of the Great Plains is suited. Early settlers often tried farming first, and after losing crop after crop to drought, hail, frost or locusts, shifted to livestock. Before setting out down the river, I had picked up a guide to local history ("Montana's Wild & Scenic Upper Missouri River," by Glenn Monahan), which described the experiences of the homesteaders whose abandoned cabins still lie scattered along the banks.

The entry for the Sluggett Homestead, about 70 miles downstream from Fort Benton, is fairly typical: "Twenty-four-year-old Lester Sluggett settled here in 1924 with his wife and two daughters ... in 1929 he harvested 300 bushels of wheat from his cultivated land. This might seem like a small yield from 80 acres, but in 1930, '31 and '32 his crops failed entirely. In 1933 he cut 25 tons of oat and wheat hay, and afterwards he shifted to livestock as the means to earn a living."

That was the unlucky Sluggett's second attempt at homesteading. His first, in 1920, had lasted only two weeks. He built a 12-by-24-foot house and strung a mile of fencing, and then it began to rain, which revealed a liability he had not considered. In surrendering his claim at the local land office in 1924, Sluggett wrote, "the land is not very much good, and I found that you could not get in and out of the place, as any road built to the place would wash right out ... with the first rain or snow melt."

As paddlers and not farmers, we were more concerned about one of the area's other liabilities: insects. We took our time loading the canoes at our cow-infested camp, and then dawdled all day on the water, having heard reports that bugs were becoming a great nuisance not far down river. The warning proved prophetic. Over the next three days, we were increasingly bedeviled by small biting flies, which swarmed all over us during the day, even managing to work their way inside the net headgear we had packed for just such an occasion.

As we continued downstream, the countryside changed from narrow, cliff-girt canyon to broad badlands topography, the river bordered by rounded slopes of eroded clay and shale, largely barren. As we entered the Chimney Bend area, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep grazing along the water1s edge, just as Griffin had predicted back at Virgelle. (These were Rocky Mountain bighorns, introduced into the area to replace the Audubon bighorn sheep of Lewis and Clark's time, a distinct species that had been hunted to extinction by 1916.) We saw more beavers, as well as a variety of birds, American white pelicans, golden eagles, great blue herons.

The most omnipresent form of wildlife, however, continued to be the biting insects, which grew more and more troublesome the closer we got to James Kipp Recreation area, our intended take-out point at the upper end of Fort Peck Lake. Their bites raised huge, itching welts, and almost nothing could stop them or stop the itching. It was a bit too much like the misery members of the Lewis and Clark expedition often experienced.

In his journal for July 9, 1805, Lewis expressed his displeasure in terms that closely mirrored our own sentiments: "Musquetoes extreemly troublesome to me today nor is a large knat less troublesome which does not sting, but attacks the eye in swarms and compells us to brush them off or have our eyes filled with them." Clark echoed him four days later: "Musquetors & knats verry troublesom."

Our sixth day on the river turned out to be the last.

We had planned to float 17 miles that day and save the remaining 9 for the next morning, but after a couple hours on the water we decided to push all the way to the takeout point at Kipp and call for an early pickup. The longer day of paddling would save us time spent ashore, where the bugs were much worse, and eliminate the need to repack the canoes again in the morning.

The country grew quite open in the final stretch; the river meandered more, and the cliffs and hills gave way to steep-sided banks perhaps 10 feet high. The current slowed as the river neared the upstream end of the vast reservoir impounded by Fort Peck Dam, and we sometimes had trouble finding the main channel amid the islands and sandbars. We alternated floating and paddling, and often scraped bottom in the shallow water. Where the river enters the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, extensive wooded bottomlands began appearing, with lots of cottonwoods and insects.

In the final few miles, we battled a headwind and the slow current, pulling in around 7:30 p.m. at the floaters' campground the BLM has built near the small boat ramp at Kipp. No sooner had we stepped ashore than the campground host greeted us, offering a spray bottle containing a blend of vanilla extract and water that kept the gnats away for a few minutes at a time.

We set up two of our tents and then treated ourselves to a feast of spicy East Indian food, which did much to lift our spirits. Just as we were finishing, we noticed dark clouds approaching rapidly, and heard a roaring sound. We could see trees beginning to whip around in the distance, and then an enormous cloud of dust lifted from the gravel road began billowing into the air and sped toward us through the woods like a gritty blizzard or the rush of ash from a volcanic explosion. We rushed to set up the remaining tent and stash gear under cover as the storm hit.

In an instant, winds of 50 mph slammed into our camp, and lightning crackled all around us, so many strikes that the flashes of brilliant blue light seemed nearly continuous, like a cosmic strobe. My son and I ran to the landing to secure our canoes, which the wind already was tumbling along the river bank like empty soda cans. Hard rain began to fall as I lashed the boats together and ran a line across the ramp to a signpost, the only fixed anchor I could find. Lightning danced all around us, and the thunder rolled almost unceasingly. The river's surface was turmoil, wind whipping it into a murky froth.

We ran back to the campsite and dived into the tent, huddling inside as the wind and rain and thunder created a din so loud it made conversation difficult. Constant lightning lit up the tent, blindingly bright even through the blue nylon fabric. Between flashes, the sky was as dark as midnight, though the sun had yet to set. Broken branches crashed to the ground nearby as wind thrashed the trees.

Gradually, the storm moved away, the interval between lightning and thunder slowly increasing. The rain lessened, but continued to fall for several hours, while we marveled about our good fortune in having already gotten off the water and set up most of our camp before the storm hit. Had it caught us on the river an hour earlier, where the banks were high and there was no place to land, the situation would have been much different. Wind, waves and rain might have swamped us, and the lightning would have been a serious threat if we had been in the open.

The risk posed by sudden Plains thunderstorms was well known to members of the Corps of Discovery, who very nearly came to grief when one caught them in the open near today's Great Falls, Mont., pummeling them with large hailstones and nearly sweeping them away with a flash flood.

"Soon after I arrived at the falls, I perceived a cloud which appeared black and threaten immediate rain," Clark wrote in his journal on June 29, 1805. "I looked out for a shelter but could see no place without being in great danger of being blown into the river if the wind should prove as turbelant as it is at some times ... soon after a torrent of rain and hail fell more violent than ever I saw before, the rain fell like one voley of water falling from the heavens and gave us time only to get out of the way of a toreent of water which was Poreing down the hill in the River with emence force tareing everything before it takeing with it large rocks & mud."

Later that night, I was awakened by a raccoon rummaging through our unwashed dinner dishes. When I climbed out of the tent to chase it off, I found the starlit sky clear and conditions calm, the storm but a memory.

At sunrise, the river was up nearly a foot, and the boats were all afloat. They would have drifted away if I hadn't tied them up when the storm hit. Logs, branches and other debris were floating down the river, and the water was muddy brown instead of the gray-green it had been all week.

We spread everything out to dry, and waited for our ride to Virgelle. The bugs were not as bad as before, but still a nuisance. When the Missouri River Canoe Co. van pulled up, everyone cheered and began quickly breaking down camp. By this time, we'd had plenty of practice and it didn't take long. In less than half an hour, we had loaded our gear into the van, stacked our muddy boats on the trailer and were luxuriating in the van's insect-free, air-conditioned interior. Thanks to previous arrangement, a small cooler stocked with cold drinks and candy bars awaited us, greatly lifting everyone's spirits.

It was a long drive back to Virgelle, where we enjoyed hot showers, followed closely by plenty of cold beer and barbecued hamburgers. Dinner was followed in turn by another thunderstorm. Although it was not as violently spectacular as the one the previous evening, we enjoyed this one more because we could watch from the cozy shelter of our cabins.

As the storm began to move off, the clouds parted long enough for sunlight to break through and send a spectacular double rainbow arching across the distant river bluffs. It was a fittingly vivid end to a week of memorable but endurable hardships, starkly beautiful scenery, abundant wildlife, and that gradual slowing of time and focusing of attention that comes with an extended river trip.

I found myself wondering whether members of the Corps of Discovery had likewise experienced a change in their perception of time and space while on the river. The life they left behind when they embarked on the journey of discovery was certainly slower-paced than the life of most who canoe the Upper Missouri today, yet they must similarly have been lulled into the Missouri's rhythms, its mesmerizing patterns of light and current. Despite the passage of two centuries, after all, certain things about wilderness travel remain unchanged.

Lewis provides an unintended illustration of this in his journal entry for June 7, 1805, written after a night made sleepless by wet weather, followed by a long day spent slipping and sliding on the muddy riverside bluffs in an effort to scout the route.

"We roasted and ate a hearty supper of our venison not having taisted a morsel before during the day," he wrote. "I now laid myself down on some willow boughs to a comfortable nights rest, and felt indeed as if I was fully repaid for the toil and pain of the day, so much will a good shelter, a dry bed, and comfortable supper revive the sperits of the waryed, wet and hungry traveler."