49 - 7/11/2011 - Blackfoot (Montana)

Confluence of the Clearwater and Blackfoot

We got up and repacked the vehicles and then headed down to Missoula. We stopped off at a rafting outfitter's place to get river info, and then headed to the takeout. We consolidated into one vehicle and headed for the put-in. On the way up, we scouted the hardest rapid from the highway bridge, and thought it looked big, but relatively tame. The put-in we had originally planned to use was closed for maintenance, so we went to another downstream.

Because the new put-in was on a tributary - the Clearwater River - we didn't lose any length of the trip, and we got to run a different river at the beginning. The Clearwater didn't exactly live up to its name. The water was tea-colored rather than clear, but it was not as muddy as the Blackfoot.

When we reached the confluence, we found a much bigger river. The currents were powerful, and we had to work pretty hard to go where we wanted. Most of the rapids were big wavetrains. Then came Roundup - the rapid we had scouted. As we headed down the rapid, we saw that we had missed the biggest waves when we scouted from the river. These waves were under the bridge, and were easily 10 feet high. I got sideways going over the top of the biggest one, and I thought for sure I would flip, but I braced and held on.

As we continued down the river, we were warned by a guide about a recent death, and that made us extra careful. The rapid that caused the death had a huge hole, and I could see it flipping a boat, but there was plenty of room to avoid the hole, which we did. There was one big rapid we were a bit anxious about - Thibideau Rapids, which was featured in the movie "A River Runs Through It". At the high water we had, this rapid also had plenty of room around it.

This was a very long run, and we finished pretty late in the day. Cynthia and I ran shuttle, and it rained on us, but luckily it didn't rain much on Lee at the takeout. After the shuttle, we headed up and camped at Thibideau.