Opinion: Tunnel vision

So awhile back a friend from the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation mentioned they had reopened the Tunnel Creek Trail in the Middle Fork.

I tried to hike this trail more than 20 years ago and followed it for a short while before it disappeared into the brush, so I was intrigued a little bit about the route.

Recently we headed up there to give it a look-see. The Forest Service website said the trail is about 2.65 miles long, but my map said it was 3.5 miles long (the map was right). The map also delineated it with black and red dots, an ominous indication that it wasn’t used much and might be in less than stellar shape.

The journey started out pleasantly enough, with a well-made route through several small talus slopes, but then right around the boundary to the Great Bear Wilderness (there is no sign) it becomes wooded and progressively brushy. And not just your average brush, but Devil’s Club, stinging nettles and thimbleberry bushes that, in places, were more like small trees, towering above your head (I’m 6 feet tall and they were taller than me.)

Still, the trail itself wasn’t bad, which is to say you could feel it down there, you just couldn’t see it all the time. The route was rife with birds and the trail slowly but surely, gained elevation through the brush and forest into even thicker brush. The route was flagged out for awhile and we busted our way through until we reached the end of it in a wide basin below Mount Grant.

There it opened up into what would have been a pleasant meadow, if it hadn’t been plug full of thistles.

In the grass there was evidence of large animals having bedded down here, perhaps moose, perhaps bears, perhaps elk, though I saw no elk or moose poop or tracks of either critter. I did, however, feel my foot grease across a rather large bear turd somewhere down there on the trail.

On the way back I destroyed a pair of pants that caught on a branch and then took a header after a rock let loose on the side of the trail.

We were a mess by the time we got back to the car. Bloody legs, torn pants, numerous burrs in our pants (The poor boy’s shorts looked like he was a porcupine he had so many burrs stuck to him. His mother threw them out when she saw them.) and arms that were pulsing with the stings of nettles. Stings that, despite gobs of skin cream still itch two weeks later.

So yeah, I highly recommend the Tunnel Creek Trail to all my masochist friends.

You’ll love it.