By Eric Hardwick

Date: August 18th, 2023

Fools Gold Canyon

The sign read the following: “WARNING! Sirens or lights mean get out of the water NOW! Water will rise rapidly”. 

That's always a good sign for a canyoneer looking for a new technical drainage. Luckily for me, I was going to be underneath the warning zone which is the Madison dam. 

Which, yes, you guessed it. The Madison river is the fairly famous body of water in the fishing community. People travel from all over to fish it's cold waters before it deposits into the three forks which make up the Missouri. 

I, however, was there to climb around into one of its small tributaries in an area called Bear Canyon. Which is an unusually deep gorge for Montana standards. This trip was also a solo trip. So I needed to be extra cautious. 

Thankfully, as I pulled into a parking lot filled with flash flood warning, department of homeland security and energy signs, a very violent thunderstorm rolled in. 

Great.

Time to sit in my car and wait it out. It’s 2 PM. I have plenty of daylight to get myself into trouble.

Soon enough, the weather parted after about 30 minutes of constant downpour. Awesome.

Well, now it was time for me to go up my small drainage. I quickly found out however, the department of energy gave me one small problem. 

A 20 foot tall water pipeline with no ladders. In fact, I wasn't even sure if I was legally allowed to go near it. Oh well, I found my drainage which they built a bridge over for the pipeline and I jumped into the creek. I crossed under the big pipe and was on the other side.

Wahoo, brush and some small falls, up to 8 feet, but nothing spectacular. 

I fought up the drainage, staying in the water path the best I could. I found bones, wild strawberries and a whole bunch of thick algae on everything the water touched.

Even better, that indicated I was in a drainage that had been mined. Hopefully I don’t get poisoned. 

Well, I kept going.  

Finally I ran into a falls, it was slabby, streaked with fools gold and was about 50ish feet. Impassable. Looks like I found the end of the road. One drop to 50 feet and 800 yards of brush that made you wish you were in the PNW. Not exactly the best prospect. 

Oh well, it was a good day anyways. I fought the brush back to the car. Drove home and pondered if there was any better drainage in that area. 

Who knows, I had enough scratches to be a blood donor. Fools Gold Canyon it is.