The Most INCREDIBLE Natural Arch You've Never Heard Of!

[Music] good morning everyone I am riding through downtown Hamilton Montana right now this is a town in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana a little bit south of Missoula and I'm heading to the mountains and you might be able to see that there's some snow up there that is new snow it snowed overnight it was a cold night and uh I was kind of Frozen in my tent but I survived that's the main thing but like I said I'm on my way to the trail head I have uh let's see 5 miles of riding to go I think two or three of that is actually on a dirt road I hope the scooter can make it guess we'll see and that car just pulled out in front of me and this squirrel pulled out in front of me man the road is still wet from when it rained overnight so again it'll be interesting to see what the the dirt road is like with the condition of the dirt road road is it did rain on me a bunch overnight and I stayed dry in my new cheap Amazon tent if not exactly warm okay I think this is where it goes from paved to dirt or at least somewhere around here around this corner maybe yep okay I'm going to be taking this very carefully and slowly if you missed the last video I was going about literally five miles an hour on a on a little gravel road and the bike slid out from under me and so I'm not eager to recreate that experience and if you've missed the last couple videos I bought a scooter this is a 2014 Honda Forza 300 and I'm riding it from my home in Western Wyoming up to British Columbia up to Canada and seeing beautiful things doing fun adventures along the way as far as dirt roads go this is about as good as it gets this is nice and hard packed it's perfect nice little waterfall right there okay we made it the scooter made it to blet trail head in Bitterroot National Forest I don't know if this is the parking or if there's parking up here further I know there's a there's a campground up here is the trail head at the campground okay yeah this is the campground I think I need to turn around beautiful Creek I think I need to turn around and go back to the hiker trail head I'll see you guys there look at this beautiful view from the trail head and look at this beautiful bright red scooter I think I've locked up everything about as well as I can the helmet and the tunnel bag which is basically empty right now are locked to the handlebars the top case is locked this bag right here this dry bag uh I can't really lock it it doesn't have any kind of zipper closure I guess I could lock it to the scooter at self somehow but I think it'll be fine famous last words right in here right now is basically food water and then my writing jacket and my riding boots and I think I'm ready to go let's hit the trail this is a fairly popular hike this is a fairly popular Canyon because it's beautiful I've never been up this Canyon before but there is another Lookout over this Canyon that you can drive to and then hike to a little bit and it's spectacular I'll try to find that footage and put it here Cassie and I hiked there a few years ago and so this is fun for me cuz I've never been up here and most people who hike up here have never been to what I'm hiking to today my destination for the day which is a natural Arch high on the side of the canyon we'll talk about that more as we get closer to it but for now we have I think a TW mile hike just uh along the the main trail up through this beautiful Canyon not too far up the trail is a memorial to Don Macky who is a firefighter who died in Colorado in uh in 1994 a wildfire on Storm King mountain in Colorado killed 14 firefighters including Don Macky who is from this area originally just unbelievable scenery here it's a little bit windy a little bit blustery but overall things are going well the sun is shining and look at this just gorgeous water and these gorgeous Cliffs with some gorgeous snow up there this bridge is the major Waypoint that I've been looking for I've been hiking for a couple hours now and I've gone couple miles let's see I've been hiking for an hour and 46 minutes and I've gone 3.5 miles so to get to the arch the arch is over on this side of the canyon to get to the arch I can either St oh my gosh I can see the arch I didn't realize that I'll show you that in a second but there are two ways to potentially get to the start of the climb up to the arch the first is to stay on the other side of the bridge and bushwack my way along the the riverbank until I'm ready to go up the other is to continue across the bridge onto the trail that continues up the canyon and then cross back over the creek on a log which apparently there are several of uh and then go hike up the canyon that way that way has less bushwhacking apparently so I think that's what I'm going to try to do but who knows we'll see what the condition of the logs is along the way but let me show you this incredible Arch so here is the beautiful bridge over the beautiful Creek and if we look up we have it right there so let's zoom in on that thing and let me adjust the camera that is incredible I've never seen an arch quite like that before wow this hike is absolutely worth doing even if you just hike to this point hike to this bridge and then turn around just a spectacular hike and that that Arch is unreal and it's kind of intimidating because it's a long ways up there it is not close to the bottom of the canyon a fair number of people see this Arch from here very few people actually get up to it very very few there's really not much information online about how to get up this thing there's a very little and and the little information that I found said I think to go another 1/4 Mile roughly up the trail here on this side of the river and then start looking for a log at that point I reached I think the general area where I'm supposed to cross the creek we can still see the arch right there and I think I'm supposed to be going up this Talis slope once I get to the other side of the creek beautiful Meandering stream right here look at that color that's amazing what I don't see are logs all the way across I see like you know partially sunken logs like this this one goes you know 2/3 of the way across but uh going to going to have to poke around a little bit to find a proper log Bridge here I can't find any log to cross the Creon so I'm walking back to the bridge so I'm going to cross to the other side and then bushwack my way through the likely cold and wet plants bushwack through the wet foliage here to get to the base of that scree slope that I can climb up to the the arch yeah like this right here is probably the best log Bridge I've seen but it's just right next to the bridge so there's no no real point and I think we can take a faint Trail off this way let's see yeah I don't know how long this will last for but at the start here at least we have a little bit of a foot path and a dead ended after about 30 ft so I think we're just going to be bushwhacking on our own here wish me luck I'm gonna set the timer on my phone or set the stopwatch on my on my phone to see how long this this bushwacking portion takes well could be worse at least there aren't thorns on these trees ah I've been going for 12 minutes through the brush and I've just emerged on the edge of the creek the bank of the creek I didn't really plan this but the uh the path of least resistance kind of led me here although I think I have to dive back into the forest because oh yep my feet just got wet because the the ground is turning just watery marshy here here so well is it worth it do I get my feet wet in exchange for easier passage no I want to I mean my feet are a little bit wet already but let's let's dive back into the forest if we can try to keep our feet somewhat Dry still have hours of hiking left to do maybe I should on the way down on the way back out of here fly the Drone and see if I can find a better log Bridge maybe somewhere that I didn't look cuz that was just really unpleasant anyway I'm going to take a break here you might be able to see the the arch above me I'm going to have a snack have some water and then we'll get back to it but first let me show you this just incredible view this is an incredibly beautiful area an incredibly beautiful hike here's looking down Canyon at these beautiful Cliffs and the light is really pretty right now too you can see a little bit of the the creek down there right in the middle and here's looking across the canyon and up just a really epic place [Music] [Music] I've gotten into more bushwhacking and it's just it's just pretty pretty miserable to be honest it's very slow um it it's not fun I can see why more people don't do this but I'm committed we're going to keep going I'm about I don't think I'm even halfway there from the bottom so still got a ways to go unfortunately [Music] m [Music] [Music] oh [Music] I'm doing jumping jacks after flying the Drone because I am freezing it is so cold up here I got to get the blood flowing to my hands especially and that hike up was so darn brutal just all that bushwacking it was so Steep and just just unpleasant man I don't know if I can recommend this to anyone unless you are like me sort of a collector of beautiful obscurities in the Western United States because this is absolutely spectacular I apologize for the wind noise it is just ripping through the opening in the arch I'm getting blasted right now but look at this thing that is insane how this thing is still standing I have no idea but this is absolutely incredible this is a natural wonder for sure and look at this incredible scenery wow wow it's hard to convey the scale of this thing I think to you guys but hopefully you could see me standing underneath it in some of those drone shots it's surprisingly large and if you are so inclined you could haul climbing gear a few thousand vertical feet and like five or six miles up to this point and climb this thing uh it's relatively moderate it's like 5'7 Or 5'8 I think it'd be amazing to stand on top of this thing I don't think it gets climbed very often cuz I don't think there are too many people fo enough to to do that hike cuz that was so so rough and I am dreading the hike down and it's that took longer than I thought it would uh let me read to you the stats here if I can find my phone distance 5.3 Mi ascent 2,445 ft total time 5 hours and 25 minutes I thought it would take like half that I thought it would take only a few hours to get here it's taking much longer I'm running low on food I have plenty of water but uh I'm kind of irritable cuz I'm I'm hungry I'm going to be fine I'll be able to make it down I'm just I'm just dreading bushwacking down those steep slopes in those couple of places it's going to be terrible and so I'm going to leave you guys with this thing this beautiful crazy thing as a backdrop I am going to get out of here I got to I got to move fast to get out of here before dark I'm going to pack up and uh I'm not going to record on the way down I'm going to try to cross the creek in a different spot cuz that that lower bushwacking was just bad I mean I really don't want to do that again uh looking at at satellite maps and also looking at some drug footage I think I've found a log bridge that I'm going to try out but man I don't know if it'll if it'll work but I'll see you guys down at the creek crossing we made it guys took me an hour and 45 minutes to get down and it took me about 3 hours to go up um not including the half hour bushwack from the bridge to the start of that that Talis slope so I saved a good amount of time I found a slightly better way coming down it still wasn't like super enjoyable but it was better than all the bushw in I did going up there was still bushwacking but it was uh a little bit more manageable but I am at the log Bridge let me show it to you it's not super confidence inspiring if I'm honest the second half looks decent we have some some bigger logs and a couple of them for some stable walking but this initial section is just essentially this one log right here and so I don't know if I'll be able to do it without getting wet but at this point I don't really here cuz I do not want to backtrack I do not want to do that initial bushwacking section again so one way or another we're going to we're going to cross right here and I only want to do this once and so I I don't want to set up my camera and tripod on this side of the stream cross and then come back to get the camera and then cross back again I'm going to fly the Drone to capture this so I don't have to retrace my steps here I think I think once we'll be enough okay guys guys I'm recording the audio on my phone so you can hear what's happening so forgive me if this isn't the best in the world and I have my tripod out as a as a walking stick if I need it oh my gosh and that's my foot in okay could have been really I'm just worried about getting my camera gear wet I do not want to do that and so um if I get wet that's fine I just hope the camera gear survives I have good balance but still this is nerve-wracking but I think I think we're going to do it the the log is is solid it was just pretty small at the start there okay Hallelujah okay let's finish this up we did it my foot is wet up to about my ankle but that is not a big deal woo from here there's just one little stretch of bushwacking to get back to the main trail then I'll be home free and once I get to the trail I'm going to celebrate with a snack this is the last piece of food I have this little beef jerky thing so that'll be nice and then uh I'm going to go if I have enough time if I have enough daylight I'd like to get a pizza or a burger or something substantial cuz I think I've earned it today and then uh I'll me back up with you guys at Camp which you'll find familiar because it's the same place that I camped at at the end of last video my tent is still set up there uh uh my plan was always to go back to that campsite tonight so I think this will work out well so I'll meet you guys back at camp we did it guys we made it back to camp and everything was fine in my absence no one messed with the tent or anything and there's not much inside they could have been messed with I left my sleeping pad and my sleeping bag here and then there are things like stuffed sacks and a water bottle so nothing too crazy crazy I figured that even if someone did come by and rans Sack my Camp I wouldn't be uh wouldn't be in too much trouble so thankfully we don't have to deal with that problem but we do have to deal with another problem I got back to the scooter and turned it on and saw that this orange light was on that is the oil change light and two more things really quick before we get back to the scooter uh first i' I don't think I've I've said what the name of that Arch was it's called HSE head arch in case you were wondering I'm sorry I didn't say that earlier in the video and then for dinner as far as dinner went I went to Subway I didn't really have time for anything more than that so I went to Subway then I went to a gas station and got aes's and that was my dinner so back to the scooter by itself and in a vacuum an oil change light isn't a big deal the problem is that I just got the oil changed in this thing about 700 miles ago the service intervals for this scooter are 8,000 miles and so something is wrong somewhere if it's a simple fix great if it's like a and if it's like a few hundred great I'll pay that hopefully we can get it fixed soon and then we can get back on the road if it's much more than that I mean this scooter was only $2,000 something dollars it's not worth putting much more than that into it much more than a few hundred into it and so if it comes back as something major that's wrong we're going to have to reassess what our plans are as far as this trip and as far as the old scooter over there goes so we have that to look forward to in the next video I'm going to go drive to Missoula which is like an hour and a half away I think in the morning and uh hopefully I can be first in line there at the counter right when they open and see if they can get me in and out pretty quick but you never you never know anyway as far as today's adventure went what a wildly beautiful place what an incredibly beautiful place that was and what a royal pain in the rear end it was to get up to that Arch was it worth it yeah it was I mean that was that was a crazy Arch it looked like a glitch in The Matrix it looked like it had been rendered wrong like it just looked so improbable that it looked fake and uh you know that's something that very few people get to see up close and so I'm really I'm I'm happy that I was able to go there I don't necessarily recommend it if you watched this video and thought that looks awesome I have to go see that more power to you I hope you enjoy the hike up there more than I did the hike through the canyon stunning one of the best hikes of that kind I think in the country even if you don't want to hike up to that Arch just hike the two miles into to that bridge and I mean that is that is a fantastic hike and good luck to you if you want to go much beyond that as far as going up the side of the canyon the the main trail in the the bottom of the canyon keeps going for miles and miles and I've never done that so I'll have to come back uh when the weather's a little bit better when it's a little bit bit warmer and do that hike and share it with you guys but I hope you enjoyed today's Adventures thanks for watching let me know what you think let me know what your favorite part was let me know if you have any questions and I'll see you in the next one be sure to check out Adventure knoow my new site where you can gain access to a map of all of my free camp sites plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else learn more at adventuro how.com and for links to everything else SUV rving related visit SUV rving.com links to these 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Channel: SUV RVing

Views: 85,604

Keywords: suv camping, suv rving, travel, road trip, camping, camper, vanlife, vandwelling, truck camping, adventure, hiking, montana, horsehead arch

Id: 5liuA4OkIBs

Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 29 2024