Missouri Breaks Canoe Trip May 19-23 2014

[Slippery Pete]

Thanks for this, yellowcanoe.

I love a photo essay and detest clicking on thumbnails. Can you tell what you did to get the pics to display without the thumbnails?

thanks.

Cary

 

[yellowcanoe]

I uploaded from Photobucket and uploaded the page where each photo is shown on its own. I like the neatness of thumbnails but only if when clicked they assume a bigger size..
The main trouble with a photo essay is if unchecked in size it can take forever to load on some folks computers depending on their connection speed.

 

[riverstrider]

I uploaded from Photobucket and uploaded the page where each photo is shown on its own. I like the neatness of thumbnails but only if when clicked they assume a bigger size..
The main trouble with a photo essay is if unchecked in size it can take forever to load on some folks computers depending on their connection speed.

I need to figure out if something similar can be done from Picasa. Working on a trip report last night, I was able to load photos at a decent size, but had to do so by loading/inserting it as an "attachment" from my hard drive. It worked, but it was clunky and not intuitive (I'm no tech wizard). Maybe I'll play with that later.

-rs

 

[ppine]

I paddled the Missouri in 1999. We made only one mistake which was going in July during a heat wave. It was literally 112 degrees one day as measured by the BLM weather station on the route. I really enjoyed the historic aspects of the Mighty Mo. We read out of the Lewis and Clark journal every night and had some of the same campsites as the Expedition. There were some people the first three days, but last few days we saw no one. The bighorn sheep did not even lift their heads from grazing as we drifted by. We met wonderful people in Montana in Lewistown, unnamed towns along the shuttle and in the Little Belt Mtns on the way home. It was great to see that country much as it was 200 years ago.

I have been around cows a lot, and they do not bother me. I liked the shade of the big cottonwoods, and the free flowing nature of the river. The lower 70 miles above Kipp Bridge were downright lonely. It is hard to say what people expect to see in the big valleys of western rivers. They are low in elevation and have been settled for a long time. The Big Muddy had wilderness character for half its length which was worth traveling for. Some of our trips are "frontcountry" in nature but this one was backcountry even on the big regional river at low elevation. I have fond memories of drinking whiskey under the cottonwoods and setting up tarps for shade on the sandbars. We met a couple with a large aluminum canoe and a flat transom with an outboard. They looked like they were headed for Ft Peck Reservoir or N Dakota.

 

[yellowcanoe]

And to me most of the trip was frontcountry. ATVs could be heard from time to time. There were no sandbars.. I guess another reason for the non wilderness feel was the huge herds of cows and even larger gaggles of incessantly screaming Canada Geese. It was nesting season.

Its all big country out there but with fences etc I didn't get any wilderness feel. Thats a highly individual experience. Maybe if the Green had been after..not before

 

[ppine]

Yellowcanoe,
Cattle are part of the landscape in the West, even in wilderness areas. Geese are also very positive. Forty years ago we did not have many. By going in May at the peak of the snow melt you missed the sandbars on the Missouri. It is likely that the route has become much more well known now. Our wilderness areas in the mountains are full of fences. I agree with your comment about how these kinds of trips are "highly individual experiences." I will take MT over FL any day. It was worth it to me to go to MT for the bighorn sheep alone, not to mention all of that L&C history.

 

[yellowcanoe]

No It wasn't snowmelt. It was two historic flooding events in 2014. I suggest you go back there. We did not see very many people And none below Judith save on the ATV trails.

I disagree on the positivity of geese. Here they crap everywhere and hassle loons. Ill take Florida.. There is much wild canoeing there.. You do have to look.

 

[ppine]

I used to have a mule named Judith.

The annual hydrograph will show the peak flows on big regional rivers to be in May-June due to snowmelt in the upper parts of the watersheds. There may be flooding on top of that to increase flows even more. Some smaller rivers have their peak flows later like June into July. We have winter precip maximum out here which goes off the mountains in the spring and early summer. Many rivers are runnable by Aug/Sept.

 

[yellowcanoe]

When we drove from Moab UT to Great Falls MT we diverted to Yellowstone in May. Still an incredible snow pack there.
Did you mean unrunnable in Aug /Sept.. or not?

 

[Pringles]

I did that trip a number of years ago. I remember it fondly.

I had a great aunt who homesteaded out there in about 1910. She was unmarried. The "boys" ussed to come a courting, and help her put up fence posts. When WWI broke out, most of the men headed back to their home states to join up, and she bought their homesteads, so ended up with a lot of land. At least that's how the family story goes.

I was very nervous about finding a rattlesnake, but we did not. Whew.

Thanks for writing this up, and posting all the pictures. Pringles

 

[BWCA66]

This trip is on the schedule for June, 2016.

 

[Wyo George]

Nice report, thanks for sharing. We are planning this trip for possibly late summer this year or sometime in 2017. Our kids are finally old enough for multi-day trips it's just a matter of deciding which trips to cross off the list first since we can only really do one out of state trip a year.