Hiking in Montana

It was a beautiful February day, clear skies and the temperatures in the mid 50′s…that is correct 50′s. Sad to say our snow pack levels are wwwaaayy down and with the warm weather, Tom and I were anxious to hit some of our favorite mountain trails. We didn’t know if we could make it to the trailhead in our Smart car, but figured is was a nice day for a drive and would go as far on the forest service road as we could.

Well to our surprise and pleasure we were able to drive to the trail head with no troubles. Like I said it is scary because we should not be able to get a non 4 wheel drive vehicle to that elevation, 5,000 ft at trailhead, in February!

Peyton, our 2 1/2 year old black lab, was very excited to be out in the forest. She was so excited that when it came time for the photo shot I got a little nervous of her being on the cliff edge. So being the over protective one in the group I held onto her collar during the shot. In all reality if she would have run forward it would have just meant we both went over the edge, and any dog person knows that dogs know the boundaries better then we humans….it just made me feel better.

Looking back to the "city" of Hamilton

The Bitterroot valley is one of the great treasures of Western Montana and the trail we took today gave us the best of both worlds. Looking back from where we had came was the valley and the town of Hamilton, but before us was the Blodgett canyon. Known for its jagged peaks and glacially craved canyon over 4,000 ft below.

Blodgett Canyon...a Montana treasure

With my winter blues gone and my spring fever beginning, it was another glorious day in Montana no matter what season you call it!

Nancy catching the spring fever!

The early wild flowers in bloom where so spectacular, with the fresh mountain air. The creeks are flowing heavy and COLD with the winter snow melt, it was just warm enough out that it tempted you to stick a toe in the water. However our 8 month old black lab thought it was plenty warm enough to enjoy a dip.

It makes us excited to reach our goal of hiking everyone of the hikes in the book “Day hikes around Missoula Montana” by Robert Stone. There are 85 hikes in this book, all within one hour or less of our front door! We have done probably half of them and love getting out in the great outdoors. The book is great in letting you know what the elevation gain is and how long it will take to do the hike. We did the Larry Creek hike today, and it was a nice easy hike and great to start the season out.