Fossil Collecting Trips - The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area

August 4-8, 2003
Collecting Cambrian Trilobites in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area

"The Bob". For the rest of my life those two words will conjure up images of pristine forests, beautiful scenery, and an awfully long hike to collect a few trilobites. It only took me a week to recover, but I can still feel my sprained ankle, and I can still imagine the sixty-five pound pack on my back hiking up and down trails that shouldn't be trails, and some that weren't. The way we figured it we hiked for roughly 55 miles, spending a little more than 40 hours on the trail. My rockhunting friends Arvid Aase, and Jake Skabelund went along for this journey. An experience that none of us will forget.

Because of the length of the discussion, and the number of pictures, I will retain all of my comments to the header from this trip.

We began hiking on Monday August 4 at 2:30 PM from the North Fork of the Teton River Trailhead found on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains about an hour outside of Choteau. That day we put about 10 miles between us and the trailhead, cleared one pass, crossed the continental divide, and entered the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area before bedding down for the evening.

On day two we headed toward Basin Creek, which, on the map, shows a trail up it. We also caught our first glimpses of Pentagon and Kevan Mountains. As well as some of the local frogs and toads. As a word of caution though when you see a sign that says "trail not maintained" I recommend paying attention to it, they aren't kidding. Within five or six miles from that sign we were "bush wacking". It wasn't pretty and while stepping down from a log I sprained my ankle. Nearly twenty miles from the trailhead, this is not a good thing to have happen. Luckily I had brought my trusty duct tape and within 15 minutes I had a nice little compression wrap on my ankle that allowed me to continue hiking. Within an hour though we had reached a literal dead end. A large cliff loomed above us with little evidence of a way around or over it. Jake took the task to find a way over the top, so he dropped his pack and took off. An hour later we heard him and saw that he had made it over. This was a bit of a relief and Arvid and I started hiking towards him. When Jake caught back up with us he didn't have good news. There was no trail, he had scaled the cliff. At this point we were pressed for time to find a place to camp for the night. We decided that we had to make it over the top and resolved to find a way to get up. We found the place where Jake had made it up earlier and sent Jake up far enough that we could pass our packs up to him. We continued this until we were able to slowly move us and our packs over the cliff. Then we rushed to find a place to camp near a stream. After over 12 hours of hiking we were finally greeted by a small stream and a relatively flat spot just as a storm hit us and it got dark.

The next morning we figured we were only a short distance from Pentagon Mountain so we broke camp, stashed our packs, and headed for Pentagon. What an awesome site. The only bad thing was that once we got close to the trilobite bearing rocks a large storm hit us. We sat tight for about an hour and a half, and eventually had to leave to get to our next camping spot before the end of the day. It was quite a disappointment to have gotten that far just to be rained out. We headed out again, crossed over Switchback Pass, across the continental divide again, and began our journey toward Lake Levale. As we dropped down from the pass we could see it in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful. By the time we arrived we only had a couple hours left in the day so we made the most of it and collected some trilobites. We hiked up the hill on the backside of Lake Levale and began working the scree slopes that contain shale from the Pentagon Shale above us. We all found some very nice specimens, spotted a mountain goat in the cliffs above us, and took in a spectacular view of the lake below us.

The next morning we decided that we had only a few hours before we needed to break camp and head for the trailhead. Jake ventured up the hill again and Arvid and I broke camp and recovered for the hike out. We each added about 15 pounds of rock to our packs and were on our way by 10:30. We hiked out a different trail that we came in on, thankfully, and went down Open Creek. The trial was in great shape in contrast to the trail we came in on. We looked over our shoulder a number of time only to see our trilobite sites get farther and farther away. After putting over a dozen miles behind us, we found another spot to settle down for the night and prepared for our final climb up the backside of washboard reef.

In the morning we readied ourselves for the final day of hiking. Little did we know how tough it was going to be. When we stopped at the forest service headquarters they warned us about Washboard Reef. Going up the back side wasn't too bad. The view from the top was spectacular. We saw our last glimpses of Pentagon Mountain, and enjoyed the spectacular view from what seemed to be on top of the world. The descent down the front of Washboard was a different story. It was nearly impossible to comprehend how steep the trail was. I would feel sorry for even pack animals that would have to make that trek. The knees were not made to be abused that badly in a single descent and we could certainly feel it. Though not tiring it was without question exhausting. By the time we had reached the bottom flat ground had never felt so good. The final 4 or 5 miles back to the trialhead were awfully long and by the time we reached it we were more than ready to shed the packs.

Unfortunately that was not the end of our troubles. On the way home I lost the transmission in my car. I won't go into too many details, but it made for an awfully long journey home. If you desire to journey into "The Bob" for trilobites shoot me an e-mail. I will be happy to share any thing that I can to make your journey a successful one. Just remember not to sprain your ankle.