Crew rafts 98 miles in one day

By CHRIS PETERSON / Hungry Horse News

It's a trip Montana Raft Co. guide Jeff Soyland has wanted to do for awhile — raft from Bear Creek down the Middle Fork to the mainstem Flathead River and end the day in Bigfork.

Last Saturday, Soyland a crew of other guides and friends did just that.

"It was a long day, I tell you," he said.

But they got it done, all 98.3 miles of it. They started at 4:51 a.m. on the longest day of the year and their journey ended more than 15 hours later when they pulled out at the Eagle Bend boat launch in Bigfork at 8:51 p.m.

Soyland has been a guide at Montana Raft for 18 years. It's a trip that's always intrigued him, but things came together this year when high water and enough daylight to do the trip coincided.

In most years, water levels have begun to drop by now. But this year, with a wetter and colder than normal spring in the mountains, runoff is still going full tilt.

So Soyland talked colleagues and friends Mike Block, Kim Lindstrom, Dave Stephens, Keith Meehan and Ben Wolfe into the excursion. He also got some help from willing shuttle drivers Todd Piraino, who ran them up to Bear Creek at 3 a.m. amd Charlie Logan, who picked them up that night.

They were able to run the main rapids between Bear Creek and Essex with just enough light to see, he said.

Soyland and his crew have run the river hundreds of times over the years, so they felt pretty comfortable, even though they could only see the waves as they met them. It was too dark to look downriver.

Waves weren't his main concern however — it was wind. A big wind can stop a raft dead in its tracks.

He said they caught some wind heading into Blankenship and bigger breezes still in the Bad Rock Canyon, but the water was so high and fast they were able to paddle through them.

The raft has a stern frame, which allows the man in back to steer and paddle while those in front just paddle. And paddle. And paddle.

"When we were done we could barely walk," Soyland said.

Soyland said he considered leaving an outboard in Columbia Falls at Teakettle to get them down the rest of the river, but decided against it.

"If we were going to do it, we were going to do it by manpower," he said.

There were no potty breaks either. If you had to pee you went over the side.

They turned the other way when Lindstrom had to relieve herself.

He joked as they made it to Bigfork that they should keep going to Polson. No one laughed.

Soyland used a GPS to track speed and determine the best route — the lower river braids into many different channels and they could have dead-ended in a slough or shallow water.

He said the top speed was about 13.8 miles per hour — that's cooking in a raft. But their slowest speed was a paltry 1.5 miles an hour — a testament to wind effects.

Soyland is already considering another journey — a one- day trip from Schafer Meadow in the wilderness to West Glacier, possibly even Columbia Falls.

That trip poses some logistical challenges — for one, you have to walk for fly into the wilderness just to start the trip.

Secondly, the rapids in the wilderness are class four and approaching class five in some stretches — that's a far cry from the class twos and threes from Bear Creek to Essex.

Still, Soyland is pretty confident it can be done — the mileage is actually less than the trip they just completed.