Missouri
Breaks Canoe Trip
July
1-9, 2021
Note: My dad had read about this canoe trip on the Missouri River through central Montana almost 25 years ago, but we could never get a trip organized. Everything finally lined up and we made this trip happen on the year he turned 70. We paddled 149 miles on the Missouri River from Fort Benton, Montana to James Kipp Recreation area, following Lewis and Clark's route. Little development has occurred on most parts of this section of the river and most days we saw few to no people. In essence, it feels like you are going back to the time of the Corps of Discovery's expedition on the river.
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| Finally made it to Fort Benton |
Thursday, July 1: We left our home around 7:30am. We stopped at the $50,000 Silver Dollar
bar/store just inside the Montana border so the kids could buy some souvenirs. After a stop at the Costco in Helena and
dinner in Great Falls, we finally arrived at Fort Benton around 8pm (MST). It was still really hot outside, so after we
set up camp at the canoe launch, the kids went and played in the river. The zipper on the girls’ old REI Half Dome
tent finally busted after 25 years of use, so we will need to get a new tent
before we get on the river.
Friday, July 2: I woke up around 6:00am and went for a walk around
the town of Fort Benton and along the river.
It is a really nice small town with lots of history. Since it was the furthest up the Missouri
River you could go with steamboats, it became an important trading area and one
of the first towns in Montana. After breakfast
I drove back to Great Falls with the boys to buy a new tent. I decided on a Mountainsmith four-man tent,
which Becky and I will use and the girls will use our new REI two-man tent.
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Cooling off
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When
we got back to Fort Benton, the whole family went for a walk to the BLM visitor
center to learn more about the area and the trip. Shortly thereafter, Dad, Sally, and Steve H.
arrived with the canoes and most of the gear.
We unloaded everything in the heat (it was still over 100 degrees). After that, dad, Steve H., and I shuttled
cars over to the James Kipp recreation area (the take-out point). It took us almost 5 hours to shuttle cars
(about 140 miles each way). Once we got
back to Fort Benton we ate a big spaghetti dinner and prepped the canoes for
the launch tomorrow.
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| Prepping the Canoes |
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Making dinner
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Saturday, July 3: We got up at
6:00am, ate breakfast and started staging the canoes and the boat ramp. We finally pushed off and left Fort Benton at
10:00am. We began our trip by floating
through town, under some of the bridges and along the old dike.
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| Getting ready to push off from Fort Benton |
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| Paddling through Fort Benton |
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| Quick lunch break |
We ate lunch along the river at river mile
10. During the day we saw lots of bald
eagles, deer, pelicans, and other birds.
It was still hot, around 100 degrees.
The kids cooled off with squirt guns as we were floating down the river. We floated into Black Bluff rapids camp
around 4:30pm. For the day, we covered
19.4 miles and averaged around 3 mph. We
ate a tasty stir fry for dinner and some of the kids went for a swim in the
river to cool off. In the evening, Steve
H. and Sally saw a rattlesnake down by the river.
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| Arriving at Black Bluffs |
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| Long day on the river |
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| Getting dinner ready |
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| Black Bluffs |
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| Some of our canoe flags. They were great for checking wind direction. |
Sunday, July 4: We got up at
6:30am, broke camp and ate breakfast burritos.
We were on the water by 9:30am.
We did a lot of paddling today (and it was still very hot outside). We saw even more eagles along the river
today. We pulled in to Coal Banks
landing around 4:30 pm. Overall, we
covered around 22 miles today (the last few seemed to take forever).
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| Breaking down camp |
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| Nestle trying to stay cool |
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| Lunch stop |
All of us got in the river to cool off for a
bit. Most people start at Coal Banks, so
there is a neat log cabin visitor center and large campground. Since it was so hot, no one else was camping
there. The visitor center host was extremely
friendly and helpful and let us hang out in the air-conditioned visitor center
and store some of our food there. He said the river was only running about 4,500 cfs (cubic feet per second), when it should be about 9,000 at this time of the year. The boat launch there wasn't even accessible. We
decided to camp in the shade right next to the visitor center, even though it
wasn’t really a camp site.
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| 4th of July Dinner |
Since
it is the 4th of July, we decided to cook and eat dinner down by the
river. At sunset we took a group picture
with our new Cabelas shirts. Most of us
were pretty tired after today. We sat on
the porch of the visitor center and relaxed.
There were some bats living in one of the beams of the porch roof.
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| 4th of July group picture in our new shirts |
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| Helping to fold the flag at the visitor center |
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| Relaxing on the visitor center porch |
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| Camping in the shade (a little too close to the outhouse though) |
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| Coal Banks Landing visitor center |
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| Watch for Rattlesnakes! |
Monday, July 5: We got up at
6:00am and started packing. There was a
lot of wind last night and the weather was a bit cooler in the morning. We topped off all of our water containers,
since we would not have access to clean water until we finished the trip. This meant we had to carry a gallon of water
per person, per day. I think we had over
65 gallons of water between the five canoes.
We pushed off around 8:30am.
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| Getting ready for the day |
For
the first couple of miles we faced a head wind, which meant a lot of
paddling. Around mile 52 we started into
the White Cliffs section of the river.
It is very pretty scenery. Lewis
and Clark were amazed by this section during their journey up the river. We stopped around mile 54 for lunch. We then tried to find Neat Coulee (a slot
canyon) around mile 56, but couldn’t find the trail. Steve H. and I got out to scout out the area
and thought we could see where the coulee started, but it would require us to bushwhack
a ½ mile or so through tall grass, which isn’t the smartest thing to do in
rattlesnake country at midday.
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| Entering the White Cliffs section |
We
continued on, passing Citadel Rock and arrived at our campsite at Hole in the
Wall. There were a ton of cattle along
the river by our campsite, so swimming was definitely not an option. We covered around 21.5 miles today and were
tired. We were going to hike to the hole
in the wall, but it looked too far and we didn’t want to run out of
daylight. The campsite had two nice log
cabin shelters which provided a nice shady spot to cook and relax.
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| Citadel Rock |
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| Great glove tan lines! |
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| Relaxing after a long day on the river |
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| Great log cabin shelter at the Hole in the Wall campsite |
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| Hole in the Wall Campsite |
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| Beaver close to the river bank |
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| The calm before the storms during the night |
Since
there were no clouds in the sky when we went to bed and still very warm, none
of us put the rainflies on our tents. Around 12:45am I started seeing a lot of lightning
and heard thunder. My dad saw and heard
the same, so quickly all of the adults got up and threw on the rainflies. As soon as we climbed back into our tents,
the heavens opened and a massive storm cell moved through our area. For about an hour we had a strong and heavy
rain, powerful wind (we estimated 40-50mph gusts), and thunder and lightning
that seemed to be hitting all around us.
The storm let up for a bit and dad and I went down to check on the
canoes. They all had 4-5 inches of water
in them, but they were still secure. By
the time we got back to our tents, storm cell number two rolled through the
area and was just as bad as the first.
For a minute I thought about ditching the tents and going into the log
shelters, but our weight was basically holding the tents down. Steve H.’s tent started leaking so he abandoned
it and slept in the shelter. Becky and I
took turns holding up the walls of the tent.
The storms truly tested the limits of all of our tents, but they all held
up well. Things finally calmed down
around 3am. None of us got a lot of
sleep.
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| Drying off tents after the storms |
Tuesday, July 6: We got up and
tried to dry things out from the storms that rolled through last night. After blueberry pancakes and sausage for
breakfast, we loaded up and got on the river by 9:15am.
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| Seven Sisters rock formation |
We had some headwind again today, but it wasn’t
too strong. Due to all of the rain, the river was a chocolate milk brown color, which made it very hard to tell the depth of the water. The scenery was great again
today, with many different formations.
Some of the formations were named, while others we came up with names
for.
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| Seven Sisters |
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| Steve H. |
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| Cool lava walls with white rock (limestone?) |
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| We named this one either the Michelin Man or the Cobra |
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| Watching a storm pass on the horizon |
We finally rolled into Judith
Landing around 5:15pm, covering about 25.5 miles (it was a long day). The campground there is usually only used for
groups either taking out there or starting there, so there was no great place
to tie up the boats. We ended up just camping
over by the boat ramp. We stayed up and
watched a storm pass on the horizon.
Everyone is tired but having fun.
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| Breaking camp at Judith Landing |
Wednesday, July 7: We got up around
6:00am and broke camp. We loaded the canoes
and were on the river by 8:30am. The landscape
has changed now that we are in the Breaks section. Fortunately it was cooler today, but we did
have a head wind most of the day (more paddling).
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| Little green snake in camp |
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| Packing up at Judith Landing |
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| Entering the Breaks section of the Missouri River |
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| McClelland/Stafford ferry crossing |
We stopped for lunch at a spot right after
the McClelland/Stafford ferry. After
lunch the sky started getting dark behind us, so we needed to paddle faster (we
did not want to be on the river in a storm).
We almost missed our campsite. Dad
and I had a hard time finding our location on our maps. We thought we still had a mile or so to go,
so we kept paddling. I happened to look
over at the right bank and saw two trees and remembered that the campsite was
called “Two Trees”. There appeared to be
a sign against one of the trees, so I quickly got out my binoculars. Sure enough, it was the campsite! We pulled in around 3:45pm, covering 23 miles
for the day.
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| Two Trees Campsite |
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| Making sure the storm passes by us |
It still
looked like it was going to rain, so we got our tents set up and the shelter set
up over the cooking area. It got windy
and sprinkled, but we missed the storm.
After dinner Becky and the kids went and climbed up to some of the rocks
on the hillside. It is very quiet
here. Other than the people we saw at
Judith Landing, we haven’t seen a single person all day.
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| Looking down at our campsite "Two Trees" |
Thursday, July 8: We got up around 6:00am and packed. We had some really good apple cinnamon
pancakes and sausage for breakfast. We were
off and on the river by 8:50am. Most of
the morning we had a tail wind and a quick current and were averaging a little
over 4 mph. We ate lunch at Gist Bottom
campsite and saw a bull snake (we still have only seen one rattler the whole
trip).
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| Lunch at Gist Bottom campsite |
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| Unfortunately, Dad's dry bag didn't stay dry. Guns and water don't mix. He was able to get some of the rust off. |
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| One of the many bald eagles we saw along the river |
After lunch we were still making
good time and got to our campsite at Woodhawk around 2pm. We covered a little under 20 miles. At the campsite there were two people that
were canoeing the river and an older couple that had driven there. They were the first people we had seen in two
days.
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| Visiting the old Nelson Homestead |
After
setting up camp, we hiked over to the old Nelson Homestead and looked
around. We still didn’t see or hear any
rattlesnakes. After dinner we hiked on
the road up to the top of the hill. The
view was amazing right around sunset.
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| Nelson Homestead |
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| No rattlesnakes out here! |
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| View of the Missouri River from above our campsite |
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| Nestle claiming a chair |
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| Last day of packing up camp |
Friday, July 9: We got up early
and got on the river by 7:40am. Not too
much scenery today. There was also not a
lot of current in some sections, but we also didn’t have a head wind and it wasn’t
too hot outside. We were making good
time, covering a little over 4 mph. We
pulled into the boat ramp at Kipp’s Landing at 12:10pm. We covered 18.5 miles today, bringing the total
to a little over 149 miles. It took us
over two and a half hours to load up all of the gear and the canoes. We finally hit the road around 2:30pm. Dad, Sally, and Steve H. headed back to Fort
Benton, while we went to Great Falls and then drove straight home,
rolling into our driveway around 2am.
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| Last day of the trip... everyone survived! |
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Lots of flatwater the last day
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| Loading up at James Kipp Landing, ready to head home |
