Just south of the Alberta border, in Montana, three volcanic hills bulge out of the surrounding green, flat prairie. The name ‘Sweetgrass’ got messed up in the translation – the Blackfoot called them ‘sweet pine’. I drove 300km and camped overnight to join Carl Potter’s Missouri River group. I was the only non-paddler on the hike. Driving into the US, the border-crossing guard asked me how long we intended to take to do the hike. ‘Errr – hope to be down by 5:00,’ I said. Her answer: ‘A couple of the crossing guards here can do it in one hour.’We took 2 ½ hours to reach the top of West Butte. As with any off-trail hike, we started at the bottom and headed straight up - 800m, 1.6km. The lower half was covered in native grasses. Then the terrain changed abruptly to igneous rock…blackened by lichen.

At the top, we found a tall pole, a metal box with a registry book inside, some weathered animal horns and a broken beer bottle. We could have seen forever – 150 miles, I read somewhere – if it hadn’t been for the smoke and the haze. Awesome. Carl, Ken, Ron, Micheline, Colleen, Anita, Jim, Sharon (scribe)