But a friend of mine took me hunting yesterday, and I have to say that it was ten hours of the most punishing physical activity I’ve experienced in a long time. (No, we didn’t shoot anything. If we had, it would have been more like fourteen hours, and I would have died.)

Disturbingly, it appeared to be a cranky bear.

Consulting our venerable (seriously: published in 2001) Day Hikes Around Missoula, Montana, we chose Hike 25: Blue Mountain Saddle to Blue Mountain Lookout in the Blue Mountain Recreation Area.

The main problem for Amy right now is steepness, partly because—with about 50 percent more blood volume than usual(!)—it’s easy for her to lose her breath. Then there is simply the mechanical difficulty of lifting her legs high with all that belly in the way.

The description of Hike 25 indicated there would be a brief section of steep climbing, but then we’d be on gentler switchbacks the rest of the way to the working fire-lookout tower at the top. We stopped by Safeway for sandwiches and we were on our way.

After the 10-mile drive in on a rutted Forest Service road (Toyota should make a commercial about our Corolla), we parked on the pullout described in our book and set out. As described, the first section of the trail straddled a rolling ridge and was easy enough. Then came the steep section, a poorly-thought-out route that simply carves straight up the face of the mountain.

We were looking for a right-hand fork at 0.7 miles to take us to the switchbacks and thought we had found it when we saw a little sign for trail 3.01. This new trail cut to the right straight across the mountainside and so was much flatter than the route we’d been following, but after about 10 minutes we saw no signs of any switchbacks and decided we must have made a wrong turn. (If the route’s official turnoff was really 0.7 miles from the trailhead, I’d say this turnoff was at about 0.5.)

We walked back to the main trail and returned to clambering up the steep trail, at one point having to make a wide detour around some big downed trees. The whole time, we were treated to the droning roar of some ATVers powering up and down the mountain somewhere nearby, which was unpleasant but at least minimized the bear risk.

The trail was extremely overgrown narrow and after a while we began to wonder if we were still on the right branch. We picked out a dead pine about 50 yards above us and decided we’d turn back if we couldn’t see anything promising from there. But a little past the pine we found a right-hand fork that quickly matched the description of the switchbacks we’d been looking for.

This part of the trail was no better maintained than the lower section. Along one 30-yard stretch, branches from plants on either side of the trail had grown completely across to meet in the middle. It had rained recently, so the branches were wet, and pushing through them was cool and refreshing.

Because of the poor visibility in all of that brush, it seemed (to this admitted ignoramus on the subject) like the kind of place where one might surprise a bear, so I unholstered my pepper spray and held it in my hand as I moved into the lead.

After a few more switchbacks, we found ourselves at Blue Mountain Observatory, a green, cinder-block building with about the same size footprint as my garage and a smooth metal dome on top, all locked up today tight as a drum. About a tenth of a mile distant stood the lookout tower.

We made our way over. According to the book, the lookout is about 50 feet tall. A smiling, white-haired man with a beard came out on the walkway to greet us. He didn’t invite us up, but he certainly seemed friendly enough and probably would have been amenable if we’d expressed interest.

The problem, of course, is that in situations like this what looks like a nice old man from the bottom of the tower often turns out—once you climb to the top—to be a serial killer wearing the Forest Service employee’s skin. Plus, as Amy observed, the tower looked kind of rickety, so we decided to just circumnavigate it and then rejoin the trail that had brought us up. As we looped back around the tower, the man called down.

“You came up the hard way,” he said.

He directed us to what he described as an easier trail. We sought it out and found that it was the other end of what we had earlier decided was a wrong turn, trail 3.01. Sure enough, this was a much easier route back, taking us on a long, single switchback before doubling back toward the original trail. This mostly level route took us through gloomy firs and across an avalanche chute right in the thick of the forest, a spooky vista of dozens of huge, jagged snapped-off trees above and below the trail, all pointed downhill.

I think this alternate trail probably added to the 2.2 miles of our book’s described route, but the ease of the return route made up for any increased distance. With frequent stops for breathers and water, Amy did just fine, and we were back to the car no more than two hours after we’d set out. We were both glad to have finally completed a hike for a change.

I’ve been exploring Crazy Canyon lately and have a hike I like to do when I have about two hours to spend, a loop starting from the parking lot on trail 302.3, picking up trail 302 at junction B, and then coming back to the parking lot via trails 302.3, 302.6, and 302.5. (As of Tuesday, the map box at the parking area was stocked up, which is the only way I knew how to do this.)

The real fun, of course, is getting off-trail, which I like to do with an uphill bushwhack just before trail 302 makes its last sharp right turn toward junction F. I climbed to where some yellow markers on trees indicated I’d reached the edge of the National Forest boundary and took a seat on a big downed tree to take in the view back in the direction I’d come from: the back of Mount Sentinel to the left and the wall of the ridge line connecting it to University Mountain, panoramic in front of me, everything dusted with snow, the air cool and crisp.

The woods were mostly silent, save the rough distracted grunts of occasional ravens, patrolling the tops of nearby firs. I watched two of these big black birds depart from my side of the valley, headed for the other side. One flew straight, true, and silent, as if trying to make time, while the other croaked repeatedly and seemed to be hazing the first one, flying in loops and buzzing in close again and again. As they neared the forested slope on the far side, the active raven let the other one go and returned quietly toward my side of the valley. It glided directly above my head to land in a tree about 20 yards upslope from me, and I was startled by how loud its wing beats were against the quiet stillness of the new-fallen snow.

After 15 minutes’ rest I started wandering downhill as aimlessly as possible, my eyes open for intriguing little clearings and meadows and stands of trees, just enjoying the way the snow lay on branches and drifted up against rocks and tree trunks. After I’d walked about 100 yards, I realized I’d left my hat hanging on a tree branch back at my rest stop and climbed back up for it.* In another mindset, I might have been irritated at myself for this, but I’d actually been trying to stretch out my beautiful downhill stroll, and the return to the top allowed me to pick another route down, so it was all for the best.

The intersection at junction F was well-trampled, but by the time I branched off from Crazy Canyon Road onto trail 302.3, I was breaking through snow as yet undisturbed except by two or three deer. The snowy fairy-tale woods were all mine, like I was my own Corps of Discovery of one. But across the Forest Service Road near junction G, the deer tracks and I were joined by a pair of phantom human prints, and the thrill of exploration was no longer mine, kind of like when Scott reached the South Pole only to find Amundsen’s crushed beer cans and used toilet paper. Kind of.

It was snowing again as I started to drive home.

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* My recent practice has been to carry all my hiking items in my pockets, but this incident underlined the advantage of a bag, which makes it easier to check on the presence of your equipment (first aid pouch, sunglasses, notebook, pen, phone, water bottle, weapons) before moving. Even with a bag, of course, the notebook and pen must probably remain in a convenient pocket, lest the bother of getting it out become an excuse for delaying (and thus, likely, forgetting) to make a note. Come to think of it, similar reasoning must probably guide the placement of the weapons, too.

“Work your way down the Bitterroot, one canyon at a time,” he said.

The Bitterroots are a range of mountains that are part of the northern Rockies, lying within a Forest Service wilderness area of more than 2,000 square miles, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. If you drive south from Missoula, the Bitterroots are on the right-hand side of the road, and their canyons point at right angles to the road, and most are served by trails. My friend’s suggestion was to get a guidebook and a map, start with the closest canyon, and go from there. If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for a systematic approach, so I immediately cottoned to the idea.

My plan is to make these trips every Sunday, or, failing that, at least once a week. (I’m a freelance writer, I can go any day I want, except for all the work I have to do this month…) Since I’ll just be making day hikes, I won’t be able to penetrate very deeply into the wilderness, but I’ll still be able to see territory unlike anything I could ever have seen back east.

Why just today, for example…

I wanted to get right on this plan, now that I was back from Arizona, so on Saturday I went to a local discount sporting goods store and stocked up on the necessary equipment. (Amy has all of our hiking stuff down in AZ.) I didn’t go too crazy, not that you could tell that from the bill, but I wanted to have at least a minimum level of survival and comfort gear. Just as there is territory here that is unlike anything back east, there are also weather, wildlife, and natural hazards unlike anything back east. I don’t want to be “that guy” on the news: “The hiker, recently arrived in Montana from the East Coast, was utterly unprepared for the conditions he encountered…” I bought a first aid kit, a compact “tube tent” for emergency shelter, water-purification tablets, a good compact flashlight, a compass, a Forest Service map of the area, and Hiking the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, by Scott Steinberg, among other odds and ends.

For my first hike, I picked a trail relatively far north (i.e., closer to Missoula) in the wilderness area, along Bass Creek. The Bass Creek trail runs about ten miles in one direction, along the creek, to Bass Lake, supposedly a good trout spot. I knew I probably couldn’t do a twenty-mile round trip in one day, at least not without working up to it, so I decided to walk the first five miles to another trail which cuts over to the smaller Lappi Lake, for a round trip that I estimated at about twelve miles. Though Lappi Lake looked fairly obvious to me on the map, I was excited to read in Steinberg that the lake is “little known.” I had visions of pristine clear water surrounded by mountains and trees, and no one around but me.

I set out from the house around 9 a.m. this morning and was at the Bass Creek trail head, south of Florence, less than half an hour later. I wasted the next half hour tinkering with my pack and trying to decide what I really needed to bring. The first aid and survival items were a given, of course, but did I really need the long underwear, sweater, and roll of duct tape? It was 10 before I finally set out, with a mostly full pack (including — obviously — the duct tape).

As I left the parking lot, I was thrilled to find myself in a cool pine forest with a rushing creek to my left. But — almost immediately — I was surprised to find myself really struggling and out of breath. This might be because I’m not used to walking uphill over uneven terrain with a pack on, or it might be because of the long hours I put in yesterday with a beer in my hand, first at the Garden City Brew Fest and then at a neighbor’s barbecue, or perhaps it was a little of both.

After the first twenty minutes or so, and after shedding some layers, I started to feel better and find my stride. And then, about 40 minutes into the hike, I found… snow. Though snow was almost entirely absent from the wooded areas beside the trails, I began to encounter long stretches of trail covered by 1-3 feet of dirty leftover snow. There was usually a narrow bind of particularly icy snow that, once I got used to the slipperiness, was a fairly solid walking path. But there were frequent less firm patches, and so every 4 or 5 steps I would break through the top of the snow and plunge up to my knee in snow, though this only rarely resulted in snow actually getting inside my boot.

To put it mildly, this took some of the fun out of the hike, not to mention slowing me down considerably. And after the initial hard going, I decided I probably didn’t have enough water along to make such an ambitious strip. I decided to just try to find the beginning of the trail to Lappi Lake and then turn back. But this trail, along with the one I was actually on, proved elusive. Well before I found the turn off, the main trail seemed to me to disappear in a confusing mess of snow patches and fallen trees. Perhaps once the snow melts, it will be easier to find my way, but today I had to give up.

Instead, I took a side trail that eventually led into an open area at the foot of a waterfall. The open area was completely snow covered, and covered as well with little 3-6-inch fragments of pine boughs, still green and strewn everywhere. What few trees were on this open area were saplings, and they were all bent severely toward the ground. Perhaps this was what was left in the aftermath of an avalanche over the winter. I made a strenuous climb up a wooded slope to one side of this open snow field, eventually gaining a rock outcropping overlooking the base of the waterfall, where I had lunch.

The walk back down the trail to the parking lot went faster — it was downhill, for one thing — but I found that my increasing exhaustion made it more and more difficult to recover from my periodic plunges knee deep into the snow. I made it down without injury, though, stopping near the bottom to soak my aching feet in the creek near a disused sluice gate. I was able to keep them in about 10 seconds before the chill turned to pain, and for several minutes afterwards my feet felt as though they were wearing a coat of tingling fur. I dried off on my pants legs and got moving again, emerging into the parking lot a few minutes later.

Back in Missoula, I stopped at the Reserve Street Safeway for some ground turkey so that I could make meatballs with spaghetti tonight. As I made my way up Brooks, a chihuahua came darting across the road, followed by a man on foot. It ended up in a grassy area near me, so I turned in to see if I could help. The man proved to unequal to the dog in a foot chase, though, and the thing wasn’t interested in coming closer to any other strange humans. It headed back toward the road, where more cars slowed and people stepped out to see if they could catch the thing, too, but the one constant in the dog’s behavior was its avoidance of anyone trying to catch it. Up and down the road it ran, causing dozens of cars to stop and drivers further back from the action to honk their horns, wondering what the damn holdup could be.

At first, I wasn’t going to get involved, but it happened that, as I pulled back out into traffic, I was just far enough back from the dog that I ended up following it for a while, and the thrill of the chase gradually overcame me. I followed the thing around for the next half hour, periodically leaving my car to try to catch it, encountering other people doing the same thing. At one point, thinking it might respond to food, I threw some trail mix out in the street, but apparently the dog didn’t like M&Ms and peanuts and left them lie.

Eventually, I teamed up with a man in a Nissan sedan who had the idea of trying to tempt the dog with the pizza he had in his car. We followed the dog down a side street and had it cornered in a fenced grassy area, but the dog managed to get around us and started heading down the street again. Thinking that it must be getting awfully tired by this point, and feeling a little frustrated, I broke into the fiercest sprint I could muster, which unfortunately wasn’t all that fierce, since I was (1) exhausted and (2) wearing heavy hiking boots. The other man was similarly inspired, and there we were, running as fast as we could down a quiet residential street, trying to box in the dog. We came close but it had greater endurance and eventually drew away again. Looking back now, I can’t help but think, if only I’d dived for it. But that kind of second-guessing will make you crazy.

The last I saw the chihuahua, it was running across the field behind Southgate Mall, headed for the train tracks, and there was no quick way to follow it in my car.

I drove home and drank about a gallon of water and then made spaghetti with mushrooms and meatballs.