The Adventures of Bim Ewok

Climbing Mount Jackson Mount Jackson had been in my sights for a while. It is pretty much the deffinition of a peak I am interested in. It is big (7,000 vertical foot climb), long but not too long (around 20 miles round trip), and generally pleasant (no bushwhacking or boulder hopping). Although it was on my list, I didn’t have any specific plans to climb it. A few weeks previous I had crashed my mountain bike and was still feeling near constant pain from the resulting cracked rib. Working in the woods all week felt okay, and I thought it was time to try my first big hike since the crash. So, I texted Kat and tried to make some plans for the weekend. It was starting to get late in the season for big climbs, considering the shortened days and more unpredictable weather, but this also results in delightful temperatures, incredible color combinations and reduced crowds. Looking at the forecast gave me a bit of pause, though. There was a weather system moving in and we could easily see th...

Fear on the Falls Creek Trail Falls Creek is a tributary of the Dearborn River in the Scapegoat Wilderness. Floating the Dearborn for the first time was transformative for me. Although I have always felt a deep connection to the water from my first Montana hobby of fly fishing, I never appreciated the wild beauty of these features of our landscape until my first overnight float, on the Dearborn in 2013. The allure of the headwaters of that river was ever-present in my soul for the last 8 years. In late winter, after a long warm spell and after getting tired of familiar and tame hikes in Missoula’s open space trails, I decided the snowpack had set up enough to climb a mountain in the Dearborn headwaters via snowshoe. The stats for the hike were modest, and I had no doubt in my mind my dog and I would be home before dark. I was wrong. The snow had not set up yet and all it took was 2,000 vertical feet of postholing with snowshoes to remind me I am a fickle visitor to the big mountains...