{"id":646,"date":"2016-09-09T05:54:39","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T05:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=646"},"modified":"2017-07-10T14:43:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T14:43:22","slug":"where-is-benchmark-ranch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/09\/09\/where-is-benchmark-ranch\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, September 9 Where is Benchmark Ranch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>After walking through many miles of dead forest (the only good thing about that kind of hiking is the nice views of the mountains), we reached green forest and the turnoff for the Straight River shortcut to Benchmark Ranch.<\/p>\n

It was a fine trail (very pretty views of the river) and by 3:30pm we had reached the “Benchmark Valley”. But where was the Ranch? We were looking at our maps while standing at the intersection of the campground road and main road, when along came an old guy in a red pickup. He offered us a ride to the Ranch!<\/p>\n

Just as we were climbing into his truck, along came 2 more hikers who’d walked down from the official trail. Meeting the truck guy was a wonderful thing both for us and for them!\u00a0 It turned out that to get to Benchmark Ranch, we needed to turn right from the campground road, then the Ranch is just beyond the airstrip, on the left.\u00a0 Nobody was around when we got there, and apparently that’s the way it usually is.\u00a0 All our hopes of “shower\/bed\/etc” were instantly completely dashed.\u00a0 The Ranch is just a “main cabin” and a couple of other cabins. On the porch are a bear box and other bear proof containers, all full of hiker boxes. There’s a big picnic table for sorting, and garbage cans, too. The truck guy waited for us and drove us back to where he picked us up! Thank you, truck guy!\u00a0 And thank You, Lord, for sending him at the perfect time!<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong>Elusive passed us this morning just as we were rolling up our tent and breezed by with a cheery “Hello!”\u00a0 He and we are both eager to reach Benchmark Ranch, get our resupply done, and head for East Glacier.<\/p>\n

After only a little bit of hiking this morning, we entered a large area of dead forest.\u00a0 Was it the beetles?\u00a0 A fire?\u00a0\u00a0 We could not tell.\u00a0 It was very sad to see the thousands of dead tree skeletons.\u00a0 The only bright side of all this is that we could SEE the beautiful mountains around us.\u00a0 If the trees were alive, we would have been in a green tunnel.\u00a0 The weather was gorgeous–a cool, sunny, beautiful fall day, wonderful for hiking.<\/p>\n

We finally reached green forest again, and at that point, the CDT went straight, but our shortcut alternate turned off and followed the Straight River, straight to the road that goes to Benchmark. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 The alternate trail was a good one, through green, pretty forest (though a bit muddy in spots from the recent snow\/rain).\u00a0 There are still some wildflowers blooming, and the aspens are occasionally showing a tiny bit of fall color.<\/p>\n

We followed the route down to where the campground road intersects what we guessed was the “main” road.\u00a0 And at that point, we were very puzzled.\u00a0 We could not figure out where the RANCH was.\u00a0 On the map, there was the airstrip (off to our right) and there was the Benchmark Work Center (off to the left), but we didn’t know where the Ranch itself was.\u00a0 (Actually, I had marked the\u00a0 location on our map, but with a tiny note in the map margin, and as we were standing there puzzling, for some reason I did not notice my note!)\u00a0 We had just decided to try walking to the airstrip (correct choice!) when along came an old guy in a red pickup truck.\u00a0 He stopped and offered us a ride to the Ranch!\u00a0\u00a0 Awesome!<\/p>\n

We tossed our packs into the back of the truck, and were just getting in, when along came two more CDT hikers.\u00a0 They had followed the official trail, which passes by the Benchmark Valley some distance to the north, and they were walking down the road headed for the Ranch.\u00a0 So they climbed in, too, and the guy gave us all a ride.<\/p>\n

Turns out that Benchmark Ranch is just beyond the airstrip, and on the left.\u00a0 It’s very cute.\u00a0 The “main house” has a little pond nearby, and a big porch with comfortable chairs….and bearproof containers full of hiker boxes.\u00a0 I had to look through all the containers before I found ours (I was beginning to get a bit worried!).\u00a0 There are picnic tables for sorting your stuff, and garbage cans for the garbage.\u00a0 The old guy with the truck offered to wait for us–wow!\u00a0 But that meant we felt obligated to work hard ‘n fast to get our resupply organizing and pack reloading done.\u00a0 Fixit has no idea how to help with this, so he just sat and talked to the old guy while the rest of us worked as fast as we could.<\/p>\n

Turns out that pretty much all the time, NOBODY is there at Benchmark, so no hope of any showers or soft beds.\u00a0 If it were raining and nasty, it would certainly be possible to camp on the porch and be dry, but that’s about all.<\/p>\n

When we were done packing up (ouch–6 days of food–heavy!!) the truck guy dropped Fixit and I off where he picked us up, and gave the other hikers a ride back to the trailhead.\u00a0 Just after the truck left Benchmark, we passed Elusive walking down the road.\u00a0 Since he was almost there, all we could tell him was where it was and what to expect.\u00a0 He was disappointed–he had been hoping to rent a cabin and take a break.<\/p>\n

Once Fixit and I reached the trailhead campground, we stopped and ate supper and got water before putting in another 2 1\/2 miles or so, on very muddy trail that was all torn up by horses.\u00a0 There were also warning signs posted about “bears” and “flash floods”.\u00a0 The guy with the truck had mentioned to us about the bears.\u00a0 He said they were becoming a problem OUTSIDE the valley, too.<\/p>\n

Well, camping options were few.\u00a0 We were back in a dead tree zone, full of tangles and blowdowns.\u00a0 We finally found a spot that would sort of work.\u00a0 Sort of.\u00a0 We are really looking forward to seeing the famous Chinese Wall tomorrow!\u00a0 And we are very grateful to God for sending the guy with the truck–not because we needed a ride (though that was nice) but to show us WHERE the Ranch was!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 After walking through many miles of dead forest (the only good thing about that kind of hiking is the nice views of the mountains), we reached green forest and the turnoff for the Straight River shortcut to Benchmark Ranch. It was a fine trail (very pretty views of the river) and by 3:30pm we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1077,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}