Adventures at the Gates of the Mountains
10:00 am, mid-June, the present: Our intrepid blogger and wife leave the Helena Farmers’ Market, navigating the unfamiliar streets of Helena.
350 million years ago: A cephalopod dies. Its body drifts through the shallow sea, finally settling in the thick mud of the sea floor. The sea recedes. The cephalopod and mud dry and harden, forming a layer of limestone as much as 2,000 feet thick. The rock heaves and buckles through volcanic, tectonic and glacial tumult. The Missouri river rushes through.
10:30 am, the present: Having successfully (albeit slowly) navigated the Capital City’s streets, our blogger turns onto I-15, headed north. They eat kettle corn purchased from the farmer’s market.
1,300 years ago: Using buffalo blood and red stone powder, a shaman draws intricate pictures on an outcropping of rock above the Missouri. Draw by the rugged, inaccessible beauty of the place, natives of the area will venture into the twisting canyon, in search of spiritual inspiration for the next thousand years and more.
11:00 am, the present: Our intrepid blogger and his wife have turned off I-15, driven a few miles east and parked in the Gates of the Mountains parking lot. They purchase tickets for the noon boat tour.
209 years ago: Meriweather enters the area, William Clark takes a small party on foot, and Lewis stays in the boats with the rest of the crew. He writes: This evening we entered much the most remarkable clifts that we have yet seen. These clifts rise from the water’s edge on either side perpendicularly to the height of 1200 feet. Every object here wears a dark and gloomy aspect. The tow[er]ing and projecting rocks in many places seem ready to tumble on us…it is deep from side to side nor is there in the 1st 3 miles of this distance a spot except one of a few yards in extent on which a man could rest the sole of his foot… from the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the rocky mountains.
11:45 am, the present: Our heroes wait patiently for the noon tour. They are patient people.
106 years ago: Samuel Hauser begins construction on Holter Dam, downriver from the Gates of the Mountains. The dam is completed ten years later. It raises the water level but does not otherwise alter the canyon.
Noon, the present: Our intrepid heroes board the Canyon Voyager. They spend the next two hours hearing stories of the canyon, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Mann Gulch Fire, and the Hilgers who used to own the area. They see a bald eagle, merganser ducklings, a deer, and a vulture. They take pictures of rocks. They get, despite the application of sunscreen, slightly sunburnt. They have a delightful time, and later eat Wilcoxson’s huckleberry ice cream sandwiches.
