OUTDOORS

Ascending Neat Coulee

Sarah Dettmer
sdettmer@greatfallstribune.com

Hidden just north of the Eagle Creek campgrounds at mile 56 of the Wild and Scenic stretch of the Missouri River is a drainage nicknamed Neat Coulee — though the name understates its grandeur.

Bill Cunningham, retired conservationist, has been down this section of the river an estimated 40 times, but he still makes an effort to stop at the coulee each trip.

Neat Coulee is a slot canyon, meaning it is a narrow canyon that was formed by water rushing through and eroding the rock.

As fall cast its yellow hues over the landscape, Cunningham led a guided tour of part of the 149-mile Wild and Scenic segment. The group approached the muddy banks of Eagle Creek and Cunningham motioned them to stop.

Neat Coulee is a short walk northwest of the campground, past a few grumpy cows and across the golden prairie grasses of the Upper Missouri Breaks.

The entrance to the canyon has a curtain of tall juniper trees flanking the opening. A narrow trail leads visitors to the canyon through a winding tour of low trees red and yellow for the season, deep burrows into the ground where owls and rabbits nest and the etchings of a dried up creek flow back down to the Missouri.

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Neat Coulee is a classic slot canyon with walls tight enough that visitors can reach out and touch both sides of the canyon at the same time. The canyon has steep sandstone walls with formations carved out by rushing water many years ago.

“These types of canyons aren’t common anywhere,” Cunningham said. “Southern Utah is especially famous for them, but in Montana it just blows you away. It’s a huge, pleasant surprise in northcentral Montana.”

The dimples in the sandstone where left by igneous rock deposits from the Yellowstone volcano. As the sandstone erodes, the igneous rocks fall out of their pockets and leave smooth craters in the canyon walls.

The group followed the trail with their scanning up and down the pristine sandstone. Cunningham pointed to a tall spire on the edge of one ridge. He nicknamed it the “Aku-Aku Man” after the mysterious statues of Easter Island.

The white walls are speckled with smoothed out pits. Cunningham attributed the dimpled surface to volcanic bombs, or igneous rock nodules, left in the sandstone by the volcanic activity in Yellowstone hundreds of thousands of years ago. As the sandstone eroded, the igneous rocks fell out of their pockets.

“It looks like the surface of the moon,” Scott Bosse, Northern Rockies Director of American Rivers, said.

Mushroom rocks grow in clusters all along the top of the ridges. The group often stops to marvel at the top-heavy structures.

Bill Cunningham stands on the top of Neat Coulee and looks out over the canyon and the Missouri River. Cunningham has traveled down the Wild and Scenic Missouri more than 40 times and said the coulee is always a must-see stop.

“This would easily compare favorably to any slot canyon anywhere,” Cunningham said.

According to the Bureau of Land Management, American Indians used the coulee as a campsite for several centuries.

In 1906, the drainage hosted the historical Conley Post Office of Chouteau County.

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In more recent history, Neat Coulee was home to a band of wild horses. However, the herd was rounded up and used as rodeo stock during the 1960s.

The sandstone walls jutting up on either side of the trail began to slowly narrow as the visitors made it deeper into the canyon and as the trial continued west, the group deviated south and followed 73-year-old Cunningham up the steep slopes of the canyon.

Cunningham rested his hiking cane against a formation and casually scrambled up a nearly 20-foot boulder.

Scott Bosse edges his way back down the sandstone slopes of Neat Coulee. Rob Chaney watches on from the trail across the canyon, guiding Bosse and the group back down the formations safely.

The eroded sandstone of the canyon doesn’t make for sturdy footing. As the group followed Cunningham to the top rim of Neat Coulee, they struggled to find secure footholds in the sandstone as it sloughed off its gritty top layer.

The shortest members of the group depended on others to hoist them up ledges.

On the southwest ridge of the canyon, the group gathered around a natural window carved into one of the sandstone formations. The window looks out over the whole of the coulee and the rolling hills that stretch away from the Missouri River towards Big Sandy and Box Elder.

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Across the canyon, hikers can follow cattle trails up the russet slopes that stretch out towards shadowy mountains and buttes in the distance.

As the group followed the trail back out of Neat Coulee to the campsite, Cunningham pointed to formations directly across the river. Though the formation is no longer there, the adjacent ridge was once home to the Eye of the Needle. The formation was a natural arch peering out over the river.

“It was like a shrine on the breaks,” Cunningham said. “People used to get married there.”

Neat Coulee is located just north of the Eagle Creek campsite at mile 56 of the Wild and Scenic stretch of the Missouri River.

Cunningham remembered being the best man in one such wedding. The bride and groom floated down the river in canoes to hold their ceremony underneath the Eye of the Needle. Cunningham swears an eagle flew over the ceremony and a pack of coyotes started yipping as the couple finished their vows.

Less than a year later, heavy rains doused the landscape. By the next morning, the Eye of the Needle was no more.

Neat Coulee is a slot canyon. The walls are sometimes so tight that hikers have to turn to their sides or crawl up over wedges to continue through the canyon.

“We had heavy rain and the roads were pure gumbo,” Cunningham said. “I didn’t suspect vandals, but the BLM put together a ‘respect public lands’ video and offered a huge reward for an arrest that led to a conviction.”

After a few years, Cunningham said the prevailing theory is that the rains destroyed Montana’s most famous natural arch.

Both Neat Coulee and the remnants of the Eye of the Needle are located just north of mile 56 of the Wild and Scenic Portion of the Missouri River. The coulee is assessable thanks to the land easement associated with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Follow Sarah Dettmer on Twitter @GFTrib_SDettmer