Amateur Gold Panning & Big Ol' Trees in Montana

That’s sounds like a perfect way to spend a weekend. As a kid, I was able to get a feel for gold panning at a local amusement park and it definitely took a bit of skill to not wash out the gold along with the silt.

I hope you have fun out there and look forward to the pics. 🤓

So far so good on the weekend exploring!  We took the easy way out on overnight with a hostel rental in Libby...  So right now we're roughing it with my second favorite Montana restaurant and later we'll retire to a patio on the river 😅  

The closest we could get to the river, snow is still waist deep which I proved several times while marching down to the river's edge.

Downtown Libby MT

Finally home,  now that I'm not on my phone anymore it'll be easier to post photos   🙂

The route we took was essentially this:

https://goo.gl/maps/nNC1myefYKDzmUM47

I wanted to check out the Bend Guard Station for future exploration,  the Libby Creek gold panning area also for future exploration and check out the Ross Creek cedar grove.

Really not much to see by the Bend Guard Station,  I believe the cabin there itself can be rented but we didn't approach it.  The roads were extremely muddy with light, "slappy sounding" mud anywhere from an inch to a foot deep above a firm bed.   Even though the truck is happy chewing through that at any speed I opted for slow because I didn't want to overshoot a corner and have a bad day.    We decided to come back in summer with mountain bikes.

Getting to the gold panning area involved a number of false starts,  there are multiple roads to get there and the first two we tried were not ready yet for the likes of us.   The passable portion of this one ended about 100 feet ahead:

 The last road in was not only passable it was plowed to somewhere beyond the gold panning creek.    The road to the campground was still impassable and almost unwalkable.   Thankfully we only really wanted to check out the creek and get an idea of what to expect when we return in warmer months.

The accommodations we rented were at Libby Hostel,  which didn't have any other guests at the moment so we had it to ourselves.   Very nice beds,  affordable and clean with an excellent host. 

Maybe not as serene as a riverside campout but this cost us $67 so we made hot tea and sipped it on the riverside patio until the last of the sun was gone.

Today (Sunday) we started the day by buying some coffee in Libby from a drive-up that was blasting the "WAP" song uncensored on their outdoors speakers.   If you're not familiar don't google it,  just an amusing choice for a couple girls working a coffee stand early Sunday morning but we all need to make the hours go by while we're at work so I'm not going to judge.

Service was good, coffee was hot,  road was slippery.   We accidentally passed the turn for the Ross Creek Cedars grove because it was a little bit buried in snow and gated off,  but saw a campground a mile or so up the road by a lake and headed in to investigate.    That ended up giving up our adrenaline rush for the day as the truck dropped into ruts and began slowly sliding down the hill in a pair of glossy smooth ice bobsled tracks.   With careful braking and steering I managed to nudge it out of the ruts onto crunchy snow and then inch to the bottom of the hill, turn around, and ride the berm of deep snow back up the hill.   Scary!    And as we were leaving I saw a truck behind me at the bottom of the hill.  Walked back to talk with them and they seemed unworried,  but they had a medium sized ~20' travel trailer behind them and just all season tires.    They were sure they'd get out,  but the gentleman asked me if we'd be in the area while - since we were,  I said I'd come back and walk down to check on them before we left.

Later in the day I did return to check on them and there was evidence they had successfully pulled out of there,  but not without first sliding back down the hill and knocking over the kiosk with their trailer.    I photographed the phone number of the local ranger station from one of the cards posted and will give them a ring Monday to let them know it was damaged. 

We dug around on the GPS for a minute and found the road to the cedar grove,  discovered it was gated and snowed & decided to go for a walk.   4.5 miles according to my wife's phone,  so about 9 round trip.      We were exhausted at the end!

But the views along the way were amazing!

This is the Western side of the Cabinet Mountains:

 There were a lot of nice big cedars to walk through but I didn't get much in the way of photos,  this one turned out kinda pretty

We're both 100% excited to come back in warmer months for this spot,  with a picnic basket and some time to kill - and not a nine mile walk in the snow next time!

After we returned to the truck & before I walked back to check on the folks from earlier I discovered we were stuck on the ice... on flat ground ten feet from the road 😆  all four tires had melted themselves little cups and the truck was doing a traction control dance when I tried to drive out.   

Easy enough to dig out since we were not really fighting gravity or much distance. 

We got home a little before sunset and like fools we started digging up sod for our spring garden... my legs and arms hurt now is this what getting old is like?   GRRRRR! 

Still looks like it was an awesome day. I recently bought my kids a "gold rush nugget bucket" It's a pretty cool little thing to play with while at the river. They get a kick out of scooping gravel, and then trying to pan. Never really found anything though. 

Posted by: @shovel

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The closest we could get to the river, snow is still waist deep which I proved several times while marching down to the river's edge.

Attachment : IMG_20210313_175804_115.jpg

Downtown Libby MT

 

 

  

Libby is on my list of places to visit this summer!

@shovel What an awesome post. This looked like a really great adventure and loved seeing how deep the snow was with the guard rail. I look forward to getting up to that part of the country this summer to visit Libby, Eureka, and a few other places in Montana, Idaho, and maybe Eastern Washington. Looked pretty mild for temperatures. Thanks so much for sharing!

Montana's beautiful,  I'm afraid last summer and this summer are going to be difficult ones for the area as international travel is still difficult and most of the indigenous communities have remained closed to outside visitors & don't have the resources to handle major public health threats.  

Sure a different environment here than Arizona! 

@shovel Yeah, for instance, you cannot travel all the way through Glacier NP due to the east entrance being on native lands. It is an in and back from the west only...which is what I did last summer you may recall.