Having both very much enjoyed the dam at Thompson Falls more than I thought we would - and having already completed two stages of the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route over the course of the day - we had no aspirations to make it deep into Stage 7 before settling down for the night. Rather, our only hope was getting out of town. If we found a nice spot with a view, that would be icing on the cake.
As they'd been earlier in the day, the roads started out smooth. Pavement - and then newly laid gravel after that - carried us the first ten miles to Graves Falls. These falls, cascading down the mountain in a narrow gash in the granite, weren't as spectacular as being a point of interest on the official MTBDR route implied, but we still hopped out for a quick look.
Still keen to find camp - and a little underwhelmed with the falls - we were soon back in the Tacoma and racing higher into the hills. As I watched the road, @mrs.turbodb worked the GPS, searching for spurs that appeared to terminate in promising places.
Her task was made more difficult by the terrain. While we'd put enough miles between ourselves and town to be rid of any riff-raff, we'd entered an area that'd clearly been heavily burned. We'd later discover that this area had burned in the 2021 Thorne Creek Fire - managed as part of the West Lolo Complex - which was started by lightning and consumed 38,688 acres of forest.
Now, five years after the burn, camping along this corridor came with an entirely new risk - windowmakers - that we weren't ready to gamble on. As we pushed deeper into the Cabinets in search of green, a promising spot - Two Trees LO - materialized along the route. Two miles off the BDR, it was unlikely that others would venture so far to camp. And if nothing else, the name alone suggested a high point with expansive views!
It was 9:05pm when we reached the end of the road. With no lookout - and more than a dozen trees - we'd been obviously misled, but that mattered little; this was still the grandest campsite in a sea of green.
After a long day of driving, we were glad to have eaten a late lunch, negating the need for our usual taco-rrito dinner. Instead, an apple and a few nuts were plenty to tide us over for the hour or so that we putzed around before bed, backing up photos and brushing up on the history of the places we'd been.
It was still light - and a deer, surely displaced by our presence - curiously wandered through camp as we climbed into the tent. After setting my alarm and plugging my phone into the new USB charger I'd installed just before leaving home, we were asleep in minutes.
The following morning...
Our little Two Trees hilltop was the most pleasant night's sleep we had the entire trip. The silence - somewhat ironically, given that it was the Fourth of July - was absolute. The perfect amount of breeze drifted lazily through the tent. Temperatures were cool enough to warrant covers, and cool enough to be comfortable.
We awoke refreshed. Ready to start - what we hoped would be - our last day on the trail. The day we'd reach the most remote Canadian border we'd ever crossed. But first, breakfast.
As usual, I began breaking down the tent while my copilot pulled out the goodies - milk, cereal, and blueberries - that we'd use to start our day. Wheat Chex for me, I first poured a full bowl of milk so I could down half of it - I love cold milk - before adding my first handful of the tasteless cardboard squares.
The milk was delicious. But it also seemed, not warm... but not as cold as I was expecting. And that's when I noticed the fridge was off.
Unsure what was going on, I first checked the new 12v distribution box I'd installed at the same time as the USB in the tent. I didn't know how it could be the problem - my phone had been charging just fine overnight - but to my surprise, there was no power to the box at all. Wondering if I'd somehow muddled the wiring, I decided I ought to check the state of the entire electrical command center in the cab before digging too deep in one specific spot. Again, I was surprised. Nothing running on the house system had power.
It was suddenly looking like my wiring wasn't at fault. Instead - and quickly confirmed when I booted up the bluetooth app to check for error messages - it was the year-old LiFePO4 battery.
Not exactly sure what to do, I figured that following the instructions couldn't hurt, and disconnected the cable from the positive terminal of the battery. Nothing. Next, I flipped through the app settings, discovering both Reboot Battery and Reset to Factory Settings buried deep in the bowels of the configuration screens. Neither worked.
At this point, I probably complained about how all this smartness in these new batteries is so dumb. I also definitely mentioned that even if we couldn't get the battery going - to keep the fridge cool - it wouldn't be the end of the world, since this was our last day on the trail.
Finally, after a few minutes of wondering what to do, I glanced at my phone and noticed a single bar of service. Firing up the app store, I found and downloaded an update for the WattCycle App. Sure that it wouldn't be any different than the last time, I once again Reset to Factory Settings and Rebooted the battery.
Let's be clear about the technology here - updating the phone app should have changed exactly nothing. The battery reboots itself. The app - a glorified light switch - texts the battery a single command. The same command it'd texted before. Only this time, it worked immediately.
I have chosen not to think about this; it hurts my brain.
When the error didn't return after a few minutes, I buttoned up the interior of the Tacoma and - like the old man I am - chalked it up to "new-fangled technology." It was time to get on the road in our quarter-century-old Tacoma. With a stick shift. Get off my lawn.
Of course, this entire episode meant that we were pulling out of camp nearly an hour later than usual. Hopefully not a problem, but something we'd need to keep an eye on throughout the day if it looked like we might not make it to the border before dark.
Five minutes later, we made our first stop. The glassy surface of Fishtrap Lake was more than I could resist.
Luckily, the lakebed was reasonably firm, and we had no trouble extracting ourselves after a quick photo. This is an exercise that's always been a little nerve-racking - ever since we inadvertently drove onto a muddy lakebed on our very first BDR - but I assure you, we are much more careful now. Now, we would never get stuck inadvertently. Now, I drive into the lakes on purpose.
Today, though, the forest was smiling in our direction, and soon we were once again making good time on dusty dirt roads, headed toward Libby.
As had been the case the previous day, the route through the Cabinet Mountains was underwhelming. Montana is known as Big Sky Country, but the BDR through the northern half of the state is squarely focused on tunneling through trees.
As such, any opportunity we got for a view - sometimes just a clearing - we took full advantage.
We reached pavement - some 70 miles into the stage and 30 miles south of Libby - at 8:30am. The time we were making was almost unimaginable, until you realized how mind-bogglingly boring the terrain had become; we were simply trying to save our sanity!
Which is, I'm sure, part of what led to the next decision we made. You see, the MTBDR had been released in early 2026, only a few months before we decided to tackle it on the first day the roads opened for the season. The fact, then, that this final stretch of Stage 7 already sported a designated re-route - around two washed-out bridges - was a little surprising. Certainly - for us - it was an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.
Because what is a washout to a motorbike might just be a bit of fun in a Tacoma. (More on that, later.)
And so, ignoring the instructions to follow a more heavily travelled bypass along the flanks of US-2, we dove - once again - into the tree tunnels of a more remote route.
As we pushed deeper and deeper into the woods, my navigator cataloged the points at which we might find ourselves turned around. There were seven stream crossings, and as we ticked off each, our confidence grew. A mile turned into five. Then ten. Other vehicles - travelling in the opposite direction - implied that a reroute might be altogether unnecessary.
It wasn't an impassable point in the trail that stopped us in our tracks. It was a sign.
The Libby Creek Recreational Gold Panning Area is located 23 miles south of Libby, Montana, within the Kootenai National Forest. The public is allowed to pan for gold within this area and any gold you happen to find is yours to keep. Some rules do apply, but this is a great recreational opportunity for the whole family.
The gold-bearing gravels found in the area were deposited as a result of alpine glaciation between 10,000 and 130,000 years ago when glaciers gouged rock off the mountain peaks and carved the valley bottoms. The glaciers left deposits of till and moraines at the edge of the retreating ice. Water from the Libby Creek, Howard Creek and other streams has reworked portions of the glacial moraine concentrating the gold in the channels of Libby Creek and what is now known as the Libby Creek Recreational Gold Panning Area.
The history of gold prospecting along the Libby goes back to the early 1860s. By 1867 there were between 500-600 miners working on Libby Creek in a mining camp named "Libbysville". Mining activity was short-lived, and by 1876 only one miner was reported to be working the creek. Placer mining activity ended in the mid-1880s.
In 1885 a second rush began in the area of Libby, Poorman and Bear Creek when miners filed claims on Libby Creek and hundreds of miners worked the area. A tent camp was established in the Libby Creek Mining District by 1886 and named "Lake City" or "Oldtown". A store in the mining camp was supplied by a packstring that brought supplies in via a trail from Thompson Falls. Mining on the Creek hit its peak from 1889 to 1909.
Mining activity and claims were located in the vicinity of the Gold Panning Area through the late 1880s and early 1890s, but no major mining development took place. The mineral claims in the gold panning area were surveyed in 1901, and ground sluicing began in the early 1900s. Hydraulic mining operations began around 1909. The claims were sold in the 1930s to the Libby Placer Mining Company which installed hydraulic mining equipment and flumes on their claims on Howard and Libby Creek. There were 15 men employed to work the operation.
Cabins were built in 1932, the remains of which can still be seen near the bridge crossing over Libby Creek. In 1938 a dryland dredge worked the gold panning area and remained in operation until 1940. Hydraulic operations were utilized in the area until 1947.
The present gold panning area was acquired through a land exchange in 1987 and opened to the public in 1988. The gold found today is basically overlooked or left behind by the earlier dredging methods. It is estimated 10 to 15% of the original gold remains so the odds are fair for the fledgling or expert gold panning prospector.
Now, we can get into all manner of conversation about the intelligence of placing a sign informing people that - should they desire a bit of gold - they ought to pan in one particular spot.
As literal owners of the public land, we appreciated the USFS identifying where our gold had been stored. We also recognized the possibility that the designated panning area was an elaborate decoy protecting the nation’s real strategic glitter reserve. Naturally, this required field testing.
Back in the truck, we were 16 miles into the woods - and well out of the gold-rich ground - when we saw the first Road Closed sign. It was 50 feet in front of a bridge that didn't look quite right. I stopped the truck and got out for a closer look.
Why this sign, or its twin, wasn't placed approximately 16 miles closer to the highway - given that there were exactly zero other routes between that point and the washout - is beyond me. Still, the hunt for the washout was fun enough to warrant this little adventure, a nice distraction from the endless tunnels of trees that we would now have to endure for a second time.
We rejoined US-2 just after 10:15am, and pointed the Tacoma north, toward Libby. The City of Eagles. The start of the final stage. We hoped, briefly and stupidly, that we had seen our last tree.
The Whole Story
