I finished up the last 12 miles or so to MacDonald pass.  On the way Pat texted me that he would pick me up and give me a ride to Helena.  Woohoo! When he texted me I was in the middle of a cross country bushwhack to get from a road I was on (that was going the wrong way) back to the trail at the top of a ridge.  The bushwhack required crossing a creek and then climbing through a thick forest to the top of a ridge. Sometimes these bushwhacks work fine, and other times they turn into a nightmare of fallen timber, marshes and unforgiving terrain. This one worked out great with a fortunate series of open meadows all the way to the top.

Pat got there too early and I didn’t want to make him wait so I went as fast as I could.  I cut road switchbacks, and took any possible shortcut. Of course because I was in a hurry I ran into one of the worst blowdown sections of the trail. At one point there were so many trees stacked on top of each other I couldn’t even find the trail and had to worm my way through the mess.

I finally came out on the mountain above MacDonald pass where a huge radio station or something sits with it’s array of antennas. The wind was insane up here, blowing bits of sand from the road into my eyes. Another few miles down a well graded dirt road brought me to the pass where I soon found Pat. He even managed to bring along a couple of cold A&W root beers – my favorite!  What a guy!

On the ride back to Helena I came to find out that Pat simply lost the trial as he descended from the top of Black Mountain. He became disoriented and wore himself out trying to bushwhack his way back to the trail. Eventually he decided to just head downhill on a dirt road back to civilization, where he called his sister to pick him up. The trail is so poorly marked up there I can easily see how this could happen. One small mistake coming down from the top of a peak can get magnified quickly. By the time you realize something is wrong you can be miles off trail.