Tent camp in Montana hills exudes luxury
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Spring snow covers the Middle Fork of Monture Creek, below Deadhorse Lake, as campers from the Encampment at Bull Creek navigate the terrain. -
Tom Sabin fishes in Deadhorse Lake in Greenough, Mont., at 7,200 feet, still snowbound in mid-June.
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GREENOUGH, Mont. -- From where I sat, on a log in front of a crackling campfire near Bull Creek, deep in the heart of Montana's Lolo National Forest, all the world seemed wilderness.
Above us, the night sky was alight with stars. Beneath our feet, the piney scent of freshly scuffed earth summoned a long-forgotten memory, an echo from ancient days when primitive people gathered together after dark, not in front of a television but around a communal campfire.
Under any other circumstances, you'd have thought that the nine of us, a group of sometime-adventurers from California, New Jersey and Texas, were roughing it. But this was the Encampment at Bull Creek, the luxury tent camp run by the Resort at Paws Up, a guest ranch and resort 30 miles east of Missoula. Accessible only by horseback, the Encampment was a new concept, the kind I could get used to.
When: The Resort at Paws Up is 30 miles east of Missoula, Mont. The ranch is open year-round on 37,000 acres, at 3,700 feet elevation, with 12 miles of Blackfoot River frontage. Contact: 1-800-473-0601; www.pawsup.com.
What to do: Warm-weather activities include riding lessons, trail rides, river rafting and tubing, spa treatments, hot-air ballooning, rappelling, fly-fishing, kids' camp, country-clay shooting and backcountry camping. The Encampment at Bull Creek, one of the most popular outings, is $800 per person per night for three days and two nights. It's available May to October.
At the ranch, cost: On-ranch lodging for 170 guests ranges from luxury log homes to meadow homes and in three luxury tent cities. Prices for two-bedroom homes start at $1,176 per night and include three full meals daily, airport pickup, 24-hour bell staff, an on-property electric cart and other amenities. Add $75 for each child 11 and younger.
For most of my life, camping has meant getting down and dirty, usually on a budget. We've pitched tents in Colorado rainstorms, canoed across choppy Minnesota lakes and battled clouds of Canadian mosquitoes. We've subsisted on raisins and freeze-dried dinners and scoured pots by lamplight. But camping at Bull Creek is as organized as a Victorian tea party.
"You're going to love it," said Tira Beary, at Paws Up's main lodge, as she checked our family in to a three-bedroom cabin, our base camp for the duration. "Camping's twice as fun when you don't have to do any of the work," she said.
First Published May 15, 2011 12:00 am
