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Donna left us in the morning to meet a friend in Missoula and begin the next phase of her trip, to Oregon; Dan and Lois left us for a separate Oregon trip; and Liz headed back to the east coast, where she had an academic paper to deliver.
The remaining six of us drove to Russell Gates campground on MT-200 to claim sites, then drove the washboard roads to unload at Ninemile access. I made the mistake of doing the shuttle on river-right dirt roads. On our return we used MT-200 and it was way faster and much more comfortable. The reason I took the dirt roads was that they followed the river and I thought that might have given us several options for taking out, but as it happened, the first reasonable option was where the river had looped back almost to the highway. I had been hoping to find a closer access point than Johnsruud.
This was a lot of river miles, but a beautiful Class I float, except for a few hundred yards of the Class II+ Thibodeau rapids.
Afterwards we all went into Missoula and met Donna at Tamarack Brewing, right next to Caras Park and the downtown playboat hole on the Clark Fork River.
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