At Missouri River Speed

By Jean Arthur Marketing Correspondent

As soon as we launch from the Bureau of Land Management’s Coal Banks Landing, the river pushes our canoes at a rolling four miles per hour. Right away, trout dapple the surface in a frenzied sup for bugs.

At river right, a great blue heron ignores us, focusing instead on its sub-surface prey — fish or frog, salamander or snake — yummy delights to a 50-inches-tall bird that nests in colonies, sometimes 80 feet above waterways in the trees.

Giant cottonwood leaves shimmy in the breeze, and we dip paddles into the “Mighty Mo,” the Missouri River of northern Montana.

My family and I paddle canoes into the deep green swirl of the Missouri, downstream of Ft. Benton, Mont., a wild west town of 1,443 residents, including Nicole Fugere, owner/operator of Missouri River Outfitters from whom we rented canoes and a vehicle shuttle and garnered some advice too.

“People always ask what’s the best time to paddle,” Fugere says. “It depends, I answer. Everyone has a preference for what they want in a river trip. Is their number-one preference warm water or cooler days for longer hikes? Do they seek wildflowers, birds or a secluded trip? These all play a factor.”

Early summer for wildflowers and cooler hikes give way to late July and early August hot days and hot soaks, while

May, September and even October see few floaters. MRO’s guided trips include gourmet meals, “locally-sourced gourmet meals including garbanzos, lentils, barley and local ranch meats. We preserve treats like wild service berries, chokecherries and even serve pickled cattail.”

Cots and wall tents, plush pillows and warm sleeping bags accompany the outfitters’ trips. A paddling historian narrates tales of Native Americans and Lewis and Clark, fur trappers and farmers. Some MRO trips even showcase musicians. Other trips showcase surprises. “Guests were enjoying morning coffee when we all watched a coyote tackle deer in the river,” says Fugere. “We heard the deer screaming. The deer and coyote parted ways once the predator recognized that we were there as witnesses. We’ve heard baby screech owls, watched fledgling bald eagles learning to fly and watched porcupines mating—quite a sight.”

While we hear great horned owls nearly every night and see a barn owl, no porcupines punctuate this trip.

We paddle 47 river miles over four days to the Judith Landing take out. The river map reveals that the Missouri stretches 2,341 miles from headwaters in Montana’s Centennial Mountains to spring then creek and tributary. Waters rush north, merging the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson Rivers at Three Forks, rumbling on to Great Falls and Fort Benton, where the “Mighty Mo” doglegs eastward. The watercourse joins forces with the Yellowstone River near Montana’s eastern border. The Missouri famously soaks wild lands and farms from the Dakotas to Missouri, playing touch-tag with 10 states. It joins the Mississippi River near St. Louis.

We see remnants of dreams past, sunken barn, busted corrals, failed homestead. Angus cow-calf pairs flick flies with tails’ switch. A makeshift bench angles between trees. Six months from now, summer grasses will freeze under a foot of snow, scoured by minus-40-degree zephyrs. Yet zeal for Missouri River ranching continues.

According to the “Missouri River Basin Fact Sheet” from the Bureau of Reclamation, the Missouri “has a watershed of more than 500,000 square miles, and encompasses approximately one-sixth of the United States.”

What we cannot see from river’s froth are modern family farms and ranches, ag operations above the river’s shoulders where wheat, barley, lentil and cattle, hog and chicken operations help feed America.

We revel in the vast, remote and isolated watershed with no other humans in sight and exceedingly little evidence of human implements as we float further—a rare solitude even in a state with 147,040 square miles housing a bit over a million out of the camp. Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument volunteers planted a more than 850 saplings in the past decade for the restoration project and ask visitors to help nurture the native species, watering can by watering can.

The Hole-in-the-Wall rock formation entices us to hike up the cliffy punctuation, made of sandstone. I wish I’d brought hiking shoes instead of just river shoes. As we ease downriver, we forget what day it is, what tasks we have in store. No cell service, yet lots of lovely scenes quiet our frenzied lives. We float at four miles an hour and revel at the sights, the eagles, the clouds, the denim sky.

More Info

Missouri River Outfitters’ shuttle Coal Banks to Judith Landing is 168.4 drive miles, $225 per 1st vehicle. Discounts available for additional vehicles. Shuttles are also available to/from other waypoints. mroutfitters.com/ 866-282-3295

Coal Banks Landing, BLM contact station (406) 622-4000.

Upper Missouri River National Monuments https://www.blm.gov/programs/ national-conservation-lands/montana-dakotas/upper-missouri-river-breaks offers both primitive and developed campsites and dispersed camping on the 90,000 acres of BLM lands on island and adjacent to the Missouri River.

The Grand Union Hotel https://www. grandunionhotel.com/ is an excellent pre and post paddle legendary landmark hotel with fine dining and upscale lodging. Central Montana tourism information centralmontana.com/ residents.

What we do see are coulees and cottonwoods, willows and Woods rose, boxelder and bulrush as we enter the White Cliffs, 9.5 miles from put-in, the Wild and Scenic section of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument.

On other Missouri River trips, I’ve camped at several of the developed boat camps including Little Sandy, Lone Tree and Eagle Creek, which feature pit toilets and sometimes benches or picnic tables.

Eagle Creek, the largest campsite and our lunch site today, lures us onto trails that traipse and climb the sandstone, past the “Horse Petroglyph,” a hundreds-yearsold indigenous etching.

It’s here too, on a previous trip that a rattlesnake stole shade under a portable camp table, and like many camp stories, I can tell you that rattler was at least 20 feet long!

For our late-June trip, we paddle hard to reach Hole-in-the-Wall boat camp. We’ve encountered rain and wind. This boat camp and a few others offer roofed, three-sided shelters, a luxury and a way to dry out a bit. We wake the next morning to glorious sunrise over the famous Hole-in-the-Wall rock formation. As coffee brews, we take turns dipping a watering can into the river and nourishing camp-side cottonwood saplings, out of reach of a herd of cattle that are fenced

In a 2022 Spokesman-Review story, the woman in charge of the Lego camp, retired teacher Lorna Kropp, explained that “Lego is a really educational tool. The reason that we do this is to provide an opportunity to be creative and solve problems.” (Unfortunately, all Discover Lego camp classes for summer 2023 are already full, but interested campers can be put on a waiting list.)

While all camps tend to offer their own degree of fun, some offer participants serious direction toward potential future careers. One example is the series of baseball camps offered by Premier Mitts Specialized Infield Camps (www.premiermitts.com),

Since 2008, Premier Mitts has been holding its summer camps, aimed at ages 8 through 18. Founder Kenny Eilmes, a former Central Valley High School all-star, stresses the fundamentals of infield play for athletes who already have a foundation in the sport.

The value of his camps, Eilmes says, is that they give participants “an understanding of what they’re going to be up against if they want to play baseball beyond high school.”

But regardless of the subjects offered, or the level of recreation, there’s little doubt that summer camps in and of themselves offer school-age children experiences that help shape their futures in positive ways.