Paddling the Lower Flathead River

The River

It was a bucket list trip. The lower Flathead River begins at the southern end of Flathead Lake and ends up 70 some miles later joining the Clarkfork River. We (Nancy, Walter and I) covered 54 miles from the Buffalo Bridge outside of Polson, MT to the Perma Bridge at Perma. The river is wide and blue and meanders through some amazing landscapes. It was so lovely that my mind goes back to it multiple times a day.

We had planned on spending 4 days on the river. Our friend Janis helped us with the shuttle so that we would only have one car to deal with at the end. We took the big canoe (19 feet long) so we could take comfort items. We also took along 12 gallons of water, almost 100 pounds, because I just could not bring myself to drink the river water even if filtered or boiled (lots of agricultural run-off). The river runs through the Flathead Reservation and a tribal permit is needed for camping and for floating. I think for the two of us it was around 60 dollars. Camping is where ever you can find a spot. The Mission Mountains are visible for most of the trip, as are steep and rugged white cliffs similar to the Missouri River. We did not see much in the way of mammals, except for LOTS of cows, but the bird life was amazing. We lost track of the bald eagles. There were also hawks, osprey, heron, buzzards, killdeer, kingfishers, ducks and geese, tons of swifts with their mud nests up on the cliffs, and cormorants hanging out on the branches of dead trees. Every raptor nest that we saw had orange bailing twine wrapped in it. The water was a clear aquamarine and the sky was robin egg blue. It was magic.

The first day we paddled about 16 miles in a little over 2 hours. The river was a lot higher than I had expected and running really fast. The west side of the river was full of cows but we did find a nice spot on the east side among the juniper and sagebrush. Best thing of all, there were no mosquitoes!!!! Because of the fast river we decided the next day to take a lot of swimming breaks and we slept in and did not leave our campsite until around 11 am. But as we paddled we started talking about making the trip a bit shorter and maybe spending the last night at a campground. Then we started wondering if we could cover the last 38 miles in one day and it became a challenge, especially after we thought about heading to Glacier Park when we were done. Crazy, but that is what we did. The scenery flew by and we did very little paddling until the last 5 miles or so when the current basically died. It took us 8 hours to complete 38 miles and that was with numerous stops for photos, swimming, and bathroom breaks. Walter was fantastic the whole time, curling up in the boat and sleeping.

We arrived at the take out at Perma around 7 pm and just slept in the suburban in the parking lot. We watched a great lightening storm to the north and shooting stars through the windows. Next morning we got up and drove to West Glacier.

The end of the line with Perma bridge in view

Unloading

The Park

I have been to Glacier Park many times but Nancy has only been there once. It took about 2 hours for us to get from Perma to West Glacier with a stop for gas and to use a real bathroom. Our lovely house sitter Jamie agreed to stay on the job for another night so we had two nights in the park. Because we had Walter with us and it was warm during the day we did not go on any hikes. We drove up to Polebridge and the wonderful bakery the first morning and then spent the rest of the day at Apgar campground just lolling around. The next day we drove to the Going to the Sun road to Logan Pass where we were unable to find a parking spot so we turned around and headed back down, stopping along the way to look at pretty things.

The Range

On the way home we drove through the National Bison Range, which we could see from the river during our trip. We took the 19 mile scenic drive which was cool. It went up on a high ridge and we could see our river. We saw way more antelope than bison but it was a totally cool experience. The entire trip was so wonderful and it was cool to just wing it and deviate from the plan. I could have spent another week or two just roaming around.