By Eric Hardwick

Date: September 2nd, 2023

Big Pipestone Creek

sitting in camp chairs at a gravel pull off, about 100 feet off the highway near the big town of Pipestone Montana…

Okay, well I wasn’t in a camp chair. I was actually kicking around gravel while my roommate, Brady Cool sat in his camp chair as we waited for our third, Oliver. Who happened to be coming over the Homestake pass at the time. While we waited, Brady played over instagram reels that were filled with mind numbing content. You know, the kind that your nephew tried to show you at your last family gathering, but you couldn’t understand since it wasn’t a politically polarizing post or some disaccredited quote with an image of a philosopher. 

Anyways, after about 30 or 40 or 50 minutes of waiting, Oliver finally arrived in his red pickup and we headed up the Pipestone road. This area is about as close as it gets to Joshua Tree National Park in Montana. In fact, it's exactly like it, just without the flatness…

And the Joshua Trees…

And add more pine trees…

But keep the huge piles of stacked rocks.

You get the idea.

Well, about an hour of driving passed and we picked out a pull off that seemed suitable for our camping needs, which was anything flat and close to this drainage I had spotted from an old U.S. topo. We ended up being less than 600 yards from this drainage, however it was about 500 feet below us. 

Some time went by, Oliver jumped onto his dirt bike and flew off into the maze of dirt roads that stain the forest service landscape. That ended up being the calling card that I needed to grab some canyon gear and drag Brady down into the drainage. The hope was that there was a suitable slot canyon to explore and throw on the website, but that was not the case. 

Down we went, headed straight for the canyon floor, we climbed down car sized boulders until we finally reached the bottom. Once down there, we found a lot of water flowing through the desert. In a twisted form of fate, we also found a road. Oops, that wasn't on the map. Well, there's no reason to cry over spilt milk. The drainage looked promising, down the canyon the water poured over boulders, enough to be a rappel and to create some worrisome hydraulics. We weren't prepared for that, so we walked around it. The drainage then became very normal. The banks became steep and the vegetation grew. About a half mile into it. We had pretty much had enough creek walking for the year.

However, the human spirit is quite curious and I decided to go on another 100 yards to look around a bend. Sure enough, there sat a slot canyon that the creek flowed into. About 200 feet long and 40 feet deep, it looked very out of place. 

Quickly I ran back to Brady and brought him over. It was a pretty slot, but a straight corridor made of decomposing granite and the flow was about 15 cfs.

About 20 feet into it, you could see a boulder blocking the canyon and the water flowed under it. A siphon for sure. Looks like we were just going to go on the rim and look at it from above. 

After some steep embankment climbing, Brady and I reached the edge of the canyon from above and was able to count 3 siphons packed back to back in about 50 feet. As impassable as it was, never to be descended, it was very pretty in a place like pipestone. 

After taking some photos, we finally were ready to leave and had to make a small strenuous climb up a ridge back to the camp spot. Once there, we found Oliver working on his bike. Yay, time for some steak and beer.

Thanks again for a small adventure Brady.