Bob Marshall South Fork Flathead River
— — a river that runs sixty miles before it sees a road.
Not only on a wall.
“The South Fork of the Flathead rises in the headwaters meadows below the Continental Divide and runs north through the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness for the better part of sixty miles before reaching Hungry Horse Reservoir. There are no roads along it. Floaters pack rafts in by horse from the Benchmark trailhead, and the river runs clear enough that westslope cutthroat hold visible over the gravel. The current is steady, the banks are conifer and willow, and the air carries the cold of snow that fell on the Wall. — from the studio
Bob Marshall South Fork Flathead River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The South Fork of the Flathead River drains the western slope of the Continental Divide in north-central Montana. Its headwaters form at the confluence of Youngs Creek and Danaher Creek inside the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and the river runs roughly 100 miles north to Hungry Horse Reservoir in the Flathead National Forest. Most of its length lies within designated wilderness, with no road access along the corridor; the most common put-in is reached by an eighteen-mile pack trip from Benchmark trailhead near Augusta. The South Fork is the largest tributary of the Flathead River system.
The river is a Wild and Scenic-eligible trout fishery and one of the last strongholds of pure westslope cutthroat trout, Montana's state fish. The cold, clean flow off the limestone of the Chinese Wall and the Swan and Flathead ranges keeps water temperatures suitable for native fish through summer. Bull trout, federally listed as threatened, also spawn in tributaries such as Youngs Creek and Big Salmon Creek. Floats often run from Mid Creek down to Meadow Creek Gorge, where the river constricts into a steep walled slot above the reservoir.
The South Fork corridor is part of the 1.5-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, which together with the Great Bear and Scapegoat wildernesses forms one of the largest contiguous roadless areas in the lower 48. Travel is on foot or by horse, and most parties spend a week or more on the water. There are grizzly bears in the drainage; food storage uses bear-resistant panniers or hangs. The dominant sounds are river, wind in lodgepole and Engelmann spruce, and at night the calls of common loons that nest on a handful of the larger oxbows.