Bryan Myers’ Gladiator with rooftop tent set up in a gorgeous Montana meadow at the beginning of the Magruder Corridor.
just as darkness descended on us. Jeff made steak fajitas and we ate like kings on the edge of an old burn with unbroken views of the skyline over an unimaginably large wilder- ness ahead of us. We went to bed not long after dinner, knowing that Sat- urday would be another huge mile- age day on much rougher roads, and with the worry that long sections of the road would have downed trees that needed to be cut out. >> Navigating the unexpected We woke early with the sunrise; Jeff and I in hammocks, Ken and Greg in tents, and Bryan in his roof- top tent. We noticed some new haze along the horizon and down in the Lochsa River Drainage below. Greg is a career wildland firefighter, and we quickly figured out there were a couple of fresh forest fires we would be skirting around toward the end
of our day. With how dry and hot it was, we made sure to keep a close eye on them as we made our way closer to ever-expanding plumes of smoke only a few miles from us. The Lolo Motorway is a histor- ic passageway that early settlers in the region used to traverse between the Missoula-area and North Cen- tral Idaho. It is a much rougher and less-improved road than what we had driven the day before — while we welcomed this, it slowed the pace. We had over 200 miles to drive and needed to arrive at camp at the beginning of the Magruder Corridor by that evening. We hadn’t traveled far that morn- ing before we came to a long section of downed trees in the road. Grant- ed, they had been cut to open the road, but with little clearance for a truck to drive through, leaving
most of the trees still in the road. This represents risk for traffic. My buddy Jeff Durocher single-hand- edly spent three days last summer with his chainsaw cutting open the entire Lolo Motorway and remov- ing hundreds of trees. Most of the area that this road travels through burned a few years back. For that reason, dead trees are constantly falling across the road, representing a nearly never-ending project. We spent a couple hours remov- ing more than 200 trees between the six of us using four chainsaws and a ton of teamwork. We did all of this in only a couple miles of road with at least 60-70 more miles of the Lolo Motorway ahead of us. We fi - nally decided we needed to aban- don our cause and only remove hazard trees going forward; ones that posed a severe risk to trav- elers, particularly BDR riders on
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