Trekking "The Bob"

If you can't hike like Bob Marshall, then you can always follow along in spirit and get a good photo while you're at it.

That's how photographer Chris Peterson spent his summer.

He originally wanted to do a series of day-hikes for the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

The 17-year veteran of the Hungry Horse News planned on trekking 50 miles a day for five days, and had already completed one such hike in the Scapegoat Wilderness.

Then he came upon wilderness pioneer Bob Marshall's hiking journal, posted on the website of the foundation that bears his name.

It's a log, jotted in pencil, of an eight-day, 288-mile hike Marshall undertook in 1928 at the age of 28, traveling from the Swan Range to the Mission Mountain Wilderness.

For posterity's sake, someone transcribed Marshall's looping script on a typewriter, where the numbers lay clear the intimidating clip at which Marshall hiked.

He set out alone in the Jewel Basin and traveled all the way south through what's now the Bob Marshall Wilderness, crossed what's now Highway 83, and went "way back" into the Mission Mountains at an impressive pace.

"Bob was just an amazing, out-of-his-mind hiker," Peterson said.

He did the math, and estimates Marshall must've been averaging 4 to 5 miles an hour.

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