I , along with a small group of some of my closest friends, have been completing a long-distance sea kayaking expedition for the last few years. We started with Lake Pend Oreille, then we completed upper and lower Priest Lake in the second year. On our third iteration, we de- cided we would step outside of North Idaho and head west to Diablo and Ross lakes in North Cascades Na- tional Park. Unfortunately, that one didn’t work out. Everyone but myself and my friend Dave Spoelstra, one of the original members of the group, had to bail out. Dave and I decided almost simul- taneously that Ross and Diablo lakes weren’t in the cards for this trip. In- stead, we chose a mystical, fairly ob- scure, yet stunning place in Montana named Hungry Horse Reservoir. Months earlier, we had plotted out the mileage, did some preliminary e- scouting, and had put it on the list of destinations to circumnavigate for a future trip. That future trip was now, and we were ready. >> Day 1: 16 miles With the day of the trip upon us, I met Dave at his house around 5 a.m. We would spend five days on the wa - ter and another night at the launch point, which was on a remote bay on the lake with no amenities. We would be finishing the trip late in the afternoon of the fifth day and camp - ing another night in the wilderness before heading home. We loaded the truck and set out. After several hours of driving, we navigated our way onto a lonely stretch of dirt road and headed into the unknown. This place was new to us and the only familiarity was from scouting via satellite imagery. We fi - nally pulled out of the forest where the road ended at what would be the water’s edge in the summer. Inter-
estingly, Hungry Horse is a reser- voir and the water is released from the dam on its north end in autumn to prepare for the following year’s spring melt, resulting in the lake be- ing drawn down about 20-30 feet. Dave and I were blown away by the beauty of the place. Looking south and west out of the tiny bay; the mighty Swan Mountain Range towered over the lake’s western edge. Little did we know that the mountains immediately to the east would be even more mind blowing. We were surprised to find that the forest in this part of Montana was much more like what we were famil- iar with back home; taller and dens- er underbrush between more closely spaced larch and fir trees. We locked the truck and lugged our 200-pound boats down to the wa- ter and set off knowing nothing other than the fact that we were embark- ing on another epic adventure. De- spite a late start, we had a relatively short 16 miles to paddle to our first planned camp on a tiny island on the northwest section of the lake. Since it was only Dave and I on this trip, we made a pact that we would aim to paddle at least 100 miles over the course of the trip, hugging the shoreline as closely as possible and paddling as many of the inlets as we could. Despite the numerous tree stumps that sat mil- limeters under the surface, we man- aged to stay within 25-75 feet of shore all day, every day. Laughing every time one of us would narrow- ly miss a stump as we paddled along the incredibly clear water. We heeded out of Emery Bay and headed west, then north in awe of this newfound beauty we were ex - periencing. There was the lightest breath of wind, taking a little bit of the edge off of the heat from the sun
overhead. We commented how we did not regret the decision to stuff the drysuits into the few remain- ing square inches of space inside the kayaks before setting off, as weather during the rest of the trip would not be as mild. We finally rounded a corner out of one of the many little bays on the lake and could see the northern ter- minus of the reservoir. The horizon line was filled by the gigantic con - crete megalith that was the Hun- gry Horse Dam. Built over five years and completed in 1953, the dam tow- ers 564 feet over the lower canyon of the South Fork Flathead River. The Morning Glory Spillway is the tall- est in the world, and the hydroelec- tric generators in the dam provide electricity for the surrounding com- munities. We paddled up to the log boom stretching across the entire lake about 300 yards before the dam itself, turned left, crossed the lake and began heading south. We would paddle consistently south for the next 2.5 days to the southern tip of the lake and the mouth of the South Fork Flathead. Four hours and 16 miles later, we paddled up to our intended camp- site for the night — a tiny island about 300 yards from the west- ern shoreline of the lake. During the planning phase, we decided we would try our best to avoid official campgrounds and people in gener- al, hoping for a more pure and iso- lated wilderness experience. We had no idea what to expect as we wandered up the beach to the top of that tiny forested island. Given that we were hammock camping, we needed the right tree spacing and a lack of brush to set up for the night. As we walked up into the middle of the island, there was a clearing we could see up ahead; quickly we real-
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