East Glacier to Benchmark

First of all we wanted to go ahead and thank all of our family and friends for your continued support. All of your kind messages, conversations, and remarks are what help fuel us to continue hiking.

From East Glacier we set off on a journey into one of the most remote parts of our hike. This area is know offically as The Bob Marshall Wilderness, but we call it the "Bob". The Bob was 120 miles of probably some of the most challenging terrain we will see on the trail. It was to be described as pure bliss and brutality. We hiked out of East Glacier to just pass Highway 2. The northern part of the section was primarily a web of jeep roads and stream/river crossings. Can we say wet feet! The weather in the beginning was beautiful, we had several bluebird days that made for some pleasant hiking. We made our way South slowly. The terrain was very rugged especially as we approached the "gem" of the Bob, the "Chinese Wall". When traveling below the wall we spent about 6 miles post holing in snow and bushwacking through all of the avy debris that had rocked the area in the winter. We finally made it into horse country as we approached Benchmark, one of our resupply locations. We encountered many of Montana cowboys in this area. When we got into Benchmark we were a little turned around and a friendly cowgirl named Susan (see picture) befriended us. She drove us to the Benchmark Wilderness ranch to p/u our box of food and then took us back to her camp where she gave us a cold Coke (YUM!), and we got to meet her horse "Bronzy". Bronzy was a beautiful Tennesse Walker who liked nibble at the salt on our shirts (as seen in the picture). From Benchmark we headed down the trail a few miles and pitched camp for the night.