Flathead, Middle Fork

We paddled this section of the Middle Fork Flathead on days three and four of a five-day packrafting trip from Granite Creek to Blankenship Bridge. Our itinerary included one night camped just downstream of Muir Creek and another near the end of the Nyack Flats. Although flows were low at 750 cfs, the river remained fully navigable. We encountered a few other groups on overnight trips, including an outfitted party on their last run of the season. At this level, float time for the reach was approximately six hours.

Roughly a mile downstream of Paola, the river leaves the road corridor. We camped near Muir Creek, where we were able to locate public land on river left just above Brown’s Hole. The next morning we floated past the rapid, but at this flow there was no sign of it—only a couple of class II gravel-bar riffles broke up the mellow current.

The big bend downstream of Brown’s Hole, where the river swings farthest from the road, held a nice camp that was in use by an outfitter. For the next couple of miles downstream, river left was entirely private land. After this we passed a well-used site at Lower Burn Camp just upstream of Coal Creek, where several groups were camped before taking out at Cascadilla.

From Coal Creek, the river parallels the road for about four miles as you pass the Cascadilla Access before entering the Nyack Flats. As we approached the braided section, we followed the advice of a local river guide and stayed left at the first major split, keeping to the channel nearest the railroad tracks. Route-finding was relatively straightforward, though we scraped bottom a few times in the shallow gravel bar sections. We saw wood in several places but encountered no significant logjam hazards.

Near the end of this section the channel divided again. The right braid carried the flow, while the left channel—clearly the primary course in recent years based on satellite imagery—went subsurface shortly after the split. We camped nearby, just upstream of where the river bends back toward the road near the Moccasin Creek Access.

The next morning we pushed off and continued downstream, floating through the canyon whitewater and on to our take-out at Blankenship Bridge.