Solo Overlanding the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route in my 2024 Toyota Tacoma | First Truck

Now I really don't consider myself an explorer. I feel like I'm more of an adventure. I like to go out and replicate other people's explorations, but this time I feel like I'm going to be the first one. You doing all right? I've been looking forward to this all day long. This viewpoint is absolutely insane. I just got flagged down by a local sheriff deputy because things just got a little bit more serious. The hill has a really ominous feeling to it. Oh yeah, this alt route Now the official Montana backcountry discovery route opened up this summer. Only like two months ago was it actually passable. A bunch of people have been doing it on adventure bikes, but I'm gonna do it in this. Now the official start to the route is in Island Park, Idaho, which obviously I am not in right now. I'm actually up the trail a little bit. About 15 miles and the Montana border is just right there. Like it's across the road that I came up on, which is great because I feel this is the true start. I'm out of the town, off the pavement and in gravel and now it's all backcountry from here all the way to Canada. Now be sure to take all the bear precautions you can. I met a cattle rancher last night. She had one of her cattle die just over the ridge here. She put a game cam on it to see what was in the area and she had four grizzly bears in two days. That's why I'm carrying bear spray everywhere I go. All of Montana is bear country, but this area specifically being so close to Yellowstone, lots of grizzly bear activity. Also there's rattlesnakes down here. Be careful where you're walking. Now today is going to be section one of the BDR. I'm going from, obviously started at Island Park, and I'm going all the way to Virginia City. I'm going to camp every single section of the way. I will post all my campsites, so if you want to replicate this trip, I'm going to try my best to give you all the information that you need. At Island Park, you have grocery store, you have a gas station, so feel free. You can stock up on food and supplies there. Now all I have to do is tear down camp. I got my new 23-0 Horizon 2 Rooftop Tent that, by the way, was incredibly comfortable last night. I got the best night's sleep, so we have a big day ahead of us. Let's get on the road. Here we are at the official start. This is the Idaho-Montana border. We're literally right on the line on the Continental Divide, and this right here is the true start to the Montana BDR. Yeah, this country is just absolutely gorgeous. The only thing that kind of is not great about coming in August is forest fires. If you come earlier in the season when everything's a lot more wet, you are more likely to get caught in bad weather, but you are much less likely to get caught in this smoky forest fire season. You doing all right? Do you need like help? Because I can take you to the highway. It's probably five, eight miles that way. It's not feeling well. My stomach's just... Did you want a lift? Can I pay for gas? I'm not worried about it. About five minutes into day one of the trip, ran into a dude riding the Divide. He's bikepacking, and he's having a really hard time. His name is Paul, and he's having some stomach issues and just realistically not having a good time. Had a long way to go, so I actually drove him back to the start of the BDR in Island Park which is basically doing a full reset of my day, which is no big deal. It's good to help people out, especially when I've got the truck, I'm able to, and it's just a good kind thing to do. Just made the first right turn onto the technical section here on section one, and this is the turn off on Elk Lake Road, and apparently this is supposed to have some really great views once you get up into the mountains, and I can't wait. Right now we're kind of in like a low valley area. Everything that we're seeing as far as conditions go, the roads are all just gravel, graded, really great condition. You can move quick, but not too quick because people still live around here, and it creates a lot of dust. So I've been trying to stick around 25 miles an hour to be able to still make good time, but not create a lot of dust for all the residents here, because the last thing you want to do is be a menace, and then you know these roads won't get shut down, but the whole BDR could get rerouted away from these areas if there's a lot of uproar from the locals. So you definitely want to be kind and courteous, help people out when you can, and definitely slow down and keep that dust to a minimum. Well we are into the deep sand section now. Again in the truck, not a big deal. I can definitely see this a lot of work on a big adventure bike, and I definitely wouldn't call it silt, but it is really fine sand. Obviously just from just a ton of driving over. They really do a good job of trying to mitigate it when it gets wet. The deep sand section was maybe only 100 yards long. It does go over some mounds, there's some blind turns, and it definitely does turn. So I know it's going to be really difficult on an adventure bike, but again in the truck, super easy, no concern. Got some great video of the whole thing. Cool little area, but I can't wait to get in the mountains. Just got off the alternate route gravel road onto the road that says road impassable when wet, and I totally believe it. I've seen videos of guys trying to get through this when the roads are wet, coming through in June and July, and it looks gnarly. Luckily right now the road is bone dry and should be a really simple drive to some hopefully incredible scenery. By the way, tons of livestock around here, all kinds of cattle, and there was horses back there. This part of the route, it's a little tricky. It's definitely a lot of just hidden ruts that go laterally across the road. If you're not paying attention, they will definitely sneak up on you really quick. I got bounced out of the seat when I was too busy talking to the camera and not paying enough attention to the road, but now I am fully locked onto the road paying attention to what's going on because things just got a little bit more serious. This part of what I'll call the mud section, which isn't mud at all, is narrowing out drastically. Not impassable, just narrowing out compared to what we've had before. It's really off camber, so it just kind of like cuts the bank. I think that's to kind of let the drainage run off on one side of the road. So obviously these are, these truly are working roads. These are ranching roads. People need to get down here even if it's wet. They can't just take the day off because it's raining and the roads are crappy. So they have to kind of make the roads the best they can to be passable even when they're a disgusting sloppy muddy mess. Hello little cow. There's a lot of cattle on this section of the route. I mean, I went through one herd back there, a small herd right now, and then another larger herd up ahead. And yeah, I like cows, don't get me wrong, but they are filthy beasts. I'll be honest, they poop everywhere. And right now on the driver's side, I just stopped to grab a camera and I'm like, ah man, it smells like cow poop over here. That's because the whole driver's side of my truck is covered in cow ----. All right, that was comical. Finally got through that whole herd, but they wait until you're right up on them before they want to move. They're just all like, nah man, it's my house, hanging out. I'm gonna sit on this road if I want to. Cows are funny. And they do talk just like that, by the way. I have cow crap all over my truck. It's on the windshield now. So cool. Just turned off the technical section back onto the main track, fire service road 290 currently, and we're headed up. Yeah, that alternate route was fun. I definitely suggest if you have a pretty capable vehicle, at least on 33s, just because the ruts are pretty massive there that last like five miles. It's nothing challenging whatsoever. I have been in two wheel drive the entire time, airdown, 37s, Yokohama Geolander ATs, and I'm having no issues whatsoever. The Ironman 4x4 foam cell pro suspension that I'm running is just eating this terrain up. No concerns there. I mean, this truck is doing really well. One, I love the build. I built it myself, so that would make sense. Only thing I didn't do myself is the flatbed from Next Jump Outfitters, but I did help with that install. So I mean, I don't know, half a gold star for that maybe? I don't know. I mean, come on, are you serious right now? Look at these views up here on the mountain top. Top of the ridge line, there's a bald eagle hunting right over here. I mean, oh my god, this is absolutely incredible. I'm telling you right now, this is day one and I have seven more days to go, and I'm absolutely in love with this route already. Very rarely do you get on a route in section one. It just blows your mind. I mean, the vistas, this is just absolutely gorgeous. I love it. I just love it. Been driving on this four service road, kind of connecting the ridge line over there to this next ridge line we're coming up to. We kind of drop down into a valley and then back up. Passed by this incredibly awesome butte over here. It's black, it had snow still at the base of it. Just an absolute monolith of a rock formation mountain over here. It's just super cool. Another incredible viewpoint. This is Monument Ridge, and I mean, just amazing 360 views. It obviously would be so much better if the smoke on the Madison River side wasn't so thick so you could really see all the mountains, but I mean, right now it's muted out a little bit because of the smoke, but still it's absolutely gorgeous up here. Like, this is primo. 100% primo. This is incredible. Another cool thing over here, there's a bunch of sheep down there grazing in the pasture. There's like six sheep dogs. They're super white. The sheep are like kind of a tannish color, but the sheep dogs are like white, and there's a group of like five or six of them down there wrangling the sheep around. It's just super cool. There's actually the sheep herder lives at a little hut he pulled up here on a trailer. I mean, it's, this is Montana. This is incredible. I love it. By the way, huge shout out to Primo Works for this armrest. This thing is incredible. I use it all the time, like right now. Well, I unfortunately had to backtrack like five miles to get this. Fell off the front of the truck, and yeah, just didn't want to be on the truck anymore, so I decided it was going to leave the chat. I got it back. Only lost about five miles each way, so not too bad. Pete's losing an entire GoPro and mount because they're not cheap. Well, we went from really beautiful meadows and the mountains, and really quickly with just a few switchbacks, dropped down to the valley floor here where we are in some really nice farmland and approaching Virginia City. We're getting pretty close. Actually, we're a lot closer than what I was thinking we were. Might get some dinner in town and maybe wash the cow poop off the truck if I could find a car wash because that'd be awesome because it still smells terrible. It's drying out a little bit, but it's still, yeah, it's gross. But that was really cool. Just saw an entire herd of antelope. Don't see that every day. Whole herd of them with babies too. That's really cool. Place is unreal. I mean, this trail just, one, it's awesome. Never lets up. We went, I thought we were done for the day. I thought we were just gonna run the roads into Virginia City and that was gonna be it, but nope. I was definitely wrong because it went from like gravelly neighborhood-ish type roads back on to like regular Forest Service roads and now we're back on very primitive Forest Service roads and we're only three miles from Virginia City according to that sign back there. So this is pretty epic, I would definitely say, because today is 137 miles from Island Park to Virginia City and I would say all but 10 of that has been on trail, which is really impressive. Just got gas here in Virginia City and I'll tell you what, this place is really cool. Only one gas station that I can tell, so I had to go back and get gas because definitely to fill up, the Tacoma's only got like a 200 mile range tank. Super tiny. Let's see what Virginia City has to offer because this is pretty freaking cool. You know what? Pizza place back there looked pretty good. I think I'm gonna get some pizza. Super cool little town. Got gas, got a couple pieces of pizza in me at a local pizza joint there and everyone is super friendly. Super cool town. Good vibe and I ended up leaving town and heading straight to the alt route here. I just got flagged down by a local sheriff deputy saying that they had a search and rescue incident up here not too far and they were saying that apparently they had a motorcyclist have a bad injury. He's being ambulanced out this way. He said I'm free to go this way, just be super cautious. So I'm assuming a BDR guy probably had an incident on this and wrecked on his bike and here's the ambulance. When you leave for the alt route, you literally have to take like a side street out of town to get into this canyon here. I'm following it kind of up. Apparently it switchbacks a lot. My whole idea is basically to get some place with a really great campsite. Oh the side-by-side with the injured cyclist just came passed by. Definitely got out of that guy's way to give him lots of room. There's a mine entrance right there. How cool is that? We've officially entered the really rocky section. This would be really challenging on a big heavy adventure bike. Obviously Tacoma's eating it up. Just a slow grind up. It is really loose though. I'll give them that. The peaks ahead of us are absolutely insane. This looks just like Colorado. Wow. Just ran into the group of guys where their rider went down and uh about eight of them and real nice guys. This is their first day on the BDR and they're a little disappointed. They're going to run their buddy's bike down in Virginia City, store it probably at the police department there and then come back for it later. But they're going to continue on their BDR adventure. So good for them. It sucks their buddy. He ended up breaking his like lower lower leg or lower ankle. Which really sucks for him. But they're just going to keep on pushing through without him. There's an off camber section there. I've been in two-wheel drive the entire day. Ended up having to not only go on four high but four low. Oh man this is really narrow right here. Now this is why I put the wrap on. Protect the sides of the truck. Oh yeah. His alt route is totally worth it for the views. Well after an hour of driving up here at Alder Gulch it looks like I have found the perfect campsite. Maybe perfect. It has the views I'm looking for but it is kind of windy and it's already getting cold. It's down into the low 50s. So yeah we'll see. I feel like this is it. I think if I go any further I don't really know what's there but I know this is good. I think this is it. What do you guys think? The sun is setting fast. Temperatures are dropping. Camp is all set up and I am completely whooped. Today was absolutely incredible. The Montana BDR is definitely living up to the BDR moniker and I mean it has just been jam-packed full of adventure. This last section here coming up to this gulch was by far the most technical part of it. Definitely doable. You will get pinstriping because the trees are pretty tight and be sure to have at least four-wheel drive and 33s because there's a lot of loose rocks, steep inclines and off-camber stuff. So give it the beans. You'll get up just fine and man I'm beat. Going to bed. See you guys tomorrow. Good morning to day two section two of the Montana BDR and what a beautiful day it is becoming. Got up at 7 30. Trying to get up earlier. Couldn't make it happen but it was pretty cold last night and it was really cold this morning but it's warmed up very nicely. I'm in a flannel. Super comfortable. The sky is clearing out. A lot of the smoke is gone which is great. It's going to be a beautiful day. Does take me a little bit longer to camp. It is almost 10 o'clock. About to hit the trail. Camp is all broken down. Had a few housekeeping things. I basically go through and just check the suspension. I kind of check all my components in the vehicle to make sure everything is nice and tight so I don't have a failure down the road. Also rattles. Rattles annoy the bejesus out of me so luckily I went through and I found my solar panel was actually rattling against my fridge. Forgot to strap that down so pulled out a roller cam. I had an extra nine footer so I wrapped that around it. I got that nice and secure against the cargo kits rear seat delete molly panel and now everything should be nice and tight. No more rattles. And today section two itinerary is Virginia City all the way to Butte, Montana which is about 140 miles. Luckily I'm about 10 miles in to the alt section of section two so I'm about 10 miles closer. Right now we're going to jump on trail and head to the valley over my shoulder here which looks like just a forested paradise. I don't see any kind of civilization minus the trail we're about to take and hopefully today is an incredible day just like yesterday. Well today is shaping up to be an incredible morning already heading down into this valley. The switchbacks are tight. The trail is very loose and rocky and pretty narrow with a lot of really low tree coverage so we're just kind of scraping through everything. We're making it through just fine but it's just beautiful out today. Already saw some cattle. Saw a doe with her baby deer. This right here is the Marietta mine and it looks like it's been defunct for quite a while but I mean the mining history up here is just incredible. This is the mine itself. It's also quite collapsed. I'm not much of a mine explorer. Too many stories in Arizona of kids going into mines and getting trapped and dying and that's not really my thing but so much cool history here. Would you look at this processing center here from the old mine? I mean this is crazy well preserved. I mean for something that's obviously collapsed from snow but I mean you can see a solid wall here with the window. There's a full-on staircase up there and then the whole upper structure is still for the most part intact. This is just so cool. I love this kind of Montana mining history. Just had quite the major clunk out of the front end so I stopped to make sure that one there was no damage. Really wasn't too worried about that between the Ironman 4x4 Apex triple hoop front bumper offering tons of protection and the full Ironman's front skid plate. I have no concern that I'm not going to that I'm going to hit a rock or something that would damage the engine or the oil pan or anything important under there. I was more worried that maybe some of the suspension had come loose and I just didn't catch it this morning so I stopped looked. Only thing I found was a freshly broken stick so it must have wedged its way under that skid plate and just broke under the pressure but it sure made one hell of a thud. These guys over here with the backhoe they're actually cleaning out the cattle guard. The cattle guards will get full of dirt and then they get level and they kind of are pointless at that point so they basically pull it up they clean it out with the backhoe and then they replace it so there's a nice big trench underneath it to keep the cattle where the cattle belong and it's a lot of work but they're actually going to move their truck and the cattle rail to the side to let me get past. There's really no way around this so they're being super cool kind of letting me get through here without having to you know wait till they're done so I greatly appreciate them and all their hard work. We're down out of the gulch and back into modern civilization just past the house back here. Once you get down to a certain level the roads really clear up but this area is beautiful very reminiscent of Colorado, northern Arizona kind of like that high desert feel a lot of scrub brush a lot of open terrain you can see Ruby River Reservoir down ahead of us. If you like fishing be sure to bring your pole here at Montana BDR Ruby Reservoir you can get right up on the water with your truck and just fish all day if you want it's absolutely beautiful. About 50 minutes of just basically traversing all the different ranches in the lower valley here to get us to where we are now in the foothills. Traversing that section was really simple the roads are very nice they do create quite a bit dust though so definitely don't go too quick. Stopped and had lunch at the Big Hole River. What an incredible scenery that is that big river just going right through the canyon super impressive nice crystal clean water you can see the rocks just absolutely gorgeous and then you follow the river for a ways. Today kind of the whole morning has been basically just accessing between cattle ranches and farms to kind of get back to the mountains. Just left the Glendale smelter site and what a cool piece of history where they brought the ore down from the mountains and processed it there now we're climbing up onto this kind of a mesa headed deeper into the mountains and I tell you what this terrain is super rugged I couldn't imagine living here in the turn of the century trying to make a living mining must have been a daily challenge. Man do things change really fast here on the Montana BDR. We went from the high desert mesa past the ore processing area in Glendale there and then you drop down to this really deep canyon passing by Canyon Creek Ranch. I mean it is just rugged the trail got pretty serious pretty quick. These big beehive structures behind me you see here are the Canyon Creek charcoal kilns and what they did was they basically took wood they burned them to make charcoal and from here they took the charcoal to the Glendale smelter that we just passed up the road and that Glendale smelter produced 20 million dollars worth of silver and lead that is really impressive. Standing inside this kiln has a really ominous feeling to it the acoustics are super insane every footstep you take ricochets off of every wall comes back at you it's just really cool you can still smell the charcoal smell that's just baked into the walls of this thing this thing is so rad you have to see these in person what I'm showing you does not do them justice they are absolutely incredible. Currently we're on Canyon Creek Road climbing out of the canyon where the kilns were and what incredible views this viewpoint is absolutely insane you can see the kilns down there the mountains the whole valley this right here is my favorite part of section two I mean look at these views you definitely cannot argue with this. Saw a little side road when I got to the top of the canyon here and I was kind of curious where it went so I walked took a little hike so I'm out of breath and was hoping for like really good scenic view of the whole canyon guess what I got wow that's all I can say. I spent as much time as I could taking in the views of the canyon that was just absolutely incredible and then getting onto that mesa and just driving that for a while then dropping into another canyon making our way here to this paved road it's just been a really really epic day ever since we got in the mountains everything has just gone right the sky has cleared up there hasn't been as much smoke and it's just been a beautiful day it's currently 76 degrees and I'm driving the paved route to get to the next alt section here on section two of the BDR which I think there's a water crossing on this alt section can't wait well we're just a few miles into the dirt here passed by Hamburg Spires which are really awesome rock formations and right after the trailhead for that the trail got significantly more exciting definitely narrow it out it's pretty loose and it is a lot less traveled I have high hopes for this all-round small branch in the roadway figured a lot easier for me to just get out of my truck and move it so I just kind of pushed it out of the way a little bit it kind of broke in the metal it's still a little bit in the road but a lot better than it was I also didn't want to run over it and just you know you never know with a tree that's already anchored in it could roll a weird way and puncture my gas tank because it is plastic so you know better safe than sorry just moved out of the way also why I brought my chainsaw to uh larger trees help move out of the they have definitely lost a lot of trees in this wooded area I mean it looked like someone came through with a chainsaw and cut out probably 50 trees so good on them for taking on that workload because that was a lot of work I just cleared that area and kind of in a high desert area and tell you what this trail does not disappoint it is loose it is rocky it's got lots of ruts and runouts and just all kinds of good terrain get this suspension flexing and of course the Ironman suspension is having no issues whatsoever with it just soaking up the bumps as they come along and uh just running our course everything's looking really good performing well I have a weird squeak in the back though I gotta figure out what that what that's from we are finally here we are at the Moose Creek water crossing on the second alt route of section two of the BDR and I've been looking forward to this all day long because you know what I love a good water crossing I just there's not enough of that in my life I definitely need more so this one is going to be great not as high as it was in the spring however it's maybe a foot deep at the deepest maybe two feet um we'll find out here in a split second how deep it really is but it looks cool and I love water crossings so gonna be epic and I'm not going fast on this because I don't know what this truck is actually capable of water crossings this is my first one well that was cool well the section after the water crossing albeit very beautiful is super tight there's tons of downed trees in here and some of them you have to drive around the trees they didn't clear all of there's a lot of hanging branches like that one there that's just you know dragging across the truck and they kind of cleared this more for narrower vehicles when they chainsawed everything so I'm trying to do my best to not incur any damage because everything is just kind of high right now it's going to be body damage if it's any damage at all but I managed to squeak through with no problems at least that section and hopefully that's the last of the really tight stuff normally I'd be really nervous with all these branches just whacking into the truck because everything is just so low in here but luckily I've got the truck rack which is super solid and then the 230 horizon 2 mounted on top of that the horizon 2 has an aluminum top so it's really sturdy it can really take a beating obviously it's being put to the test today but I really have no concern that anything's going to get ripped off just because the truck rack is just such a solid construction rack made of all stainless steel I'm not worried at all it's almost seven o'clock it's getting late I'm hoping to get to camp before eight o'clock that'd be really nice to have some time to kind of decompress maybe actually set up the lava box have a campfire kick my feet up and drink a beer because last night I passed out I figured out that squeaking sound that I had pretty much since the afternoon I got a tiny little pebble between the rear headache rack and the box here on the next jump outfitters aluminum side boxes and it's just just gyrating back and forth and just squeaking like no one's business and it's driving absolutely insane so I am going to prioritize a car wash to one get all the cow poop off the truck that'd be really nice and to get that pebble out of there so stop squeaking like crazy and then we'll go to the Berkeley pits hopefully they're still open so we can see this massive hole in the ground from mining you know how I said I really wanted to get camp by eight well it's nine o'clock so that didn't work out I got to Butte late the observatory for the Berkeley pits was not open close to five we got there at eight and I basically just got gas washed the truck because that squeak was killing me but it's all fixed now which is perfect I went through Butte which is a really cool town I haven't spent much time in Butte but the parts that I saw were incredible like I love the architecture the houses just built the way they're built just super super cool definitely want to go back and check out Butte down the road and spend some time there take the wife there so I ended up just beat feeding through I stopped real quick at the overlook to kind of look at all of Butte because it was a cool overlook and then I drove about 45 minutes out of town where I'm at now which is basically on the side of the road where I'm camping tonight so sometimes you play Russian roulette with camping when you're primitive camping outside of town and last night I struck gold tonight I'm on the side of a road off a little offshoot road and this is kind of what I have to deal with tonight not a big deal still gonna make it a great night my solo attempt at overlaying the Montana BDR is going to be a four part series and this is part one be sure to stay tuned next week is part two where I tackle sections three and four and check out all the adventures that unfold see you guys then