Rattlesnake Wilderness

Ever since we moved to Missoula we have wanted to hike in the Rattlesnake Wilderness just up the valley from where we live. Well, last weekend we finally went and had good 4 days mountain biking and hiking up and down valleys, over ridge tops and mountains and camping along mountain lakes.

As you may know we live in the Rattlesnake Valley. About 2 miles further up the valley is the Rattlesnake National Rec. Area and even further up the valley is the wilderness area. I (Erik) have mountain biked in the recreation area quite a bit and wanted to access the wilderness area on our mountain bikes for three reasons. One, to pass quickly by lower and less scenic elevations; two, to get up to the high country easier than hiking up and three, just to do something new. I only had to convince Tonya of my infallible plan. :)

She agreed to the trip including the mountain biking pretty easily. Despite not having carried a full pack (25 - 30 lbs) on our backs while mountain biking before, I figured we could do it - assuming we put in some miles on our mountain bikes before hand. Tonya's not the biggest fan of mountain biking so I wanted to make sure she was ready for the effort. So we went on several mountain bike rides to build up our biking legs. As a fail safe (for me), she promised me that she wouldn't have a "melt down" on the biking portion after I expressed concern in early June that we weren't getting enough mountain biking miles in. Both were important, as our first day was a long day.

The picture below are of Tonya at the start of our ride and of me about 1/2 way into our ride up to the wilderness area.

The mountain bike ride was on an old forest road that is now closed to vehicles and involved approximately 18 miles of biking starting our from our house. It took us four hours for steady climbing up a gradual incline following the Rattlesnake Creek until we reached the wilderness boundary. Since you can't bring bikes into a wilderness area, we ditched our bikes in the woods and hiked about two hours to Carter Lake before calling it a day. It was a long and tiring day with about 3000 feet of elevation gain (2000 on the bikes).

Below left is Rattlesnake Creek at our lunch spot (about 1/2 way into our ride) and to the right is me (Erik) swiming in Carter Lake after dropping my pack and kicking off my shoes. The lake water was cool, but not cold, and very refreshing after a long day.

Below is a video of Tonya biking up a portion of the trail.