Burnt Fork Pinnacle

On a clear, brisk morning in early October there was a light touch of frost at the trail head just off Forest Service Road 5498 in western Montana’s Coeur d’Alene Mountains : it would be an excellent day for a hike up to Burnt Fork Pinnacle, three miles up toward Reservation Divide on USFS trail 418 and inside the Reservation Divide roadless area.

There is nothing extraordinary about the Pinnacle which sits about 2,400 feet above the Ninemile Valley at an altitude of just over 6,600 feet and 1,200 feet below Three lakes Peak, another couple of miles up the trail, but it, like many of the old fire lookout sites, is a part of the history of this region, and it in particular has an interesting old story tied to it.

About 20 miles southeast of the Pinnacle is the Ninemile Remount Depot which, in or around 1932 when the L-4 style cabin used as a lookout on the Pinnacle was built, was home to what was sometimes referred to as “a thousand mule cavalry” of mules. In those days the only means the Forest Service had for transporting heavy loads was on the backs of mules, and at Ninemile the Forest Service raised a Mammoth breed of mules by breeding Morgan horses with Jacks. They became the elite of pack stock, weighing around 1,700 pounds and capable of carrying up to 300 pounds on their pack saddles. The Ranger Station is still there on the grounds of the remount ranch which remains the winter home of the Forest Service mules and horses that are still used in this region in the summers.

(For those who are not familiar with the old L-4 type cabins used as lookouts, here is a photo of one that still remains on top of Big Hole Mountain, fifty miles west of Burnt Fork. The one on Burnt Fork Pinnacle was destroyed in 1950:)

Big Hole Lookout cabin

Trail 418 is a reasonably good hiking trail and still quite suited for horse travel as well, winding through an old burn at the lower elevations

and some beautiful, grassy mountainsides as it ascends to the old lookout site.

From the higher regions of the trail, Squaw Peak, which was recently re-named Ch-paa-qn (pronounced “cha-pock-qwin”), can be seen to the east where it looks down on the Remount Depot from an altitude of 7,996 feet.

After three hours of pleasant hiking and a healthy climb of 2,400 feet, it was a pleasure to enjoy a sunny and leisurely lunch in a green and sheltered little saddle just above where the old cabin once stood,

study the higher country to the west,

Three Lakes Peak to the north,

the Bitterroot Mountains far to the south,

and the Ninemile Valley to the southeast;

and enjoy the recollection of this story about two greenhorn firewatchers who manned the lookout during one summer nearly eighty years ago:

Mike and Ellen were newlyweds who would be spending the summer in the cabin at Burnt Fork Pinnacle. When they left the Ninemile ranch for their 20 mile trip to the lookout with everything they needed tied to the pack saddle on a jenny, the ranch superintendent told them that they could entice the mule with a piece of candy if she balked along the way, and after a pound of candy she was following them just like a pet. He also instructed them that once the jenny was unloaded at the cabin they would simply have to head her back down the trail, give her a slap on the rump, and she would trot back on down to the ranch all by herself.

In these parts, weather conditions can change very quickly, even in early summer, and this time they did. By the time they arrived at the cabin, the weather had deteriorated into a regular old Montana blizzard with a very cold wind and blowing snow. Mike quickly unloaded the jenny, hustled everything inside the tiny glass house and built a cozy fire in the little stove. Stepping back outside, he pointed the jenny back down the trail and gave her a slap on her backside. She just stood there. When he went back inside to stoke up the fire, the snow-covered old mule walked up and just stared into the window with such a pitiful look that the greenhorns soon brought her into their already cramped quarters.

It was a tight fit that night in the 14 X 14 room, with Mike sleeping against one wall and Ellen against the other and a seventeen hundred pound mule curled up between. Next morning with a pat on the rump the mule, without further hesitation, went back home to Ninemile, all alone. (This story along with many other ones and some good locations and descriptions of the old lookouts is contained in the book Fire Lookouts of the Northwest by Ray Kresek).

Fireweed 2

I can’t let summer pass without featuring Fireweed, Chamerion angustifolium. It’s a beautiful and prolific flower and because it is one of the first plants to start the regeneration of the natural surroundings after a forest fire, it always signifies to me the hope for and the expectation of something better and more beautiful to come.

With the exception of the last photo, which was taken along trail 345 to Bighole Peak, these photos were taken near the start of the trail into the Reservation Divide roadless area.

7395 August 2008 Fireweed closeup

Reservation Divide 2

The sights and tastes of the wild country. (One often hears the phrase “the sights and sounds“, but as autumn approaches, emphasis can shift.)

For several hundred years this old tree has looked out over the Nine Mile valley from Reservation Divide. I wonder about all of the sights it has seen; and also wonder if it would consider all that has changed to be progress.

As it passes through some of the more open areas along the ridge, trail 98 is nearly covered by huckleberry bushes, one reason why this area is a favorite of the bears. In places, the bushes are waist high allowing the berries to be picked without even bending over. (The bears aren’t the only ones gaining weight from eating huckleberries this summer.)

This year’s huckleberry crop is one of the very best. They are very large and numerous: many are 3/8 inch across. These berries are perhaps the most popular fruit that grows in Montana: currently they sell for $40 a gallon. Here are a few on the bush

and here are some I brought home in a container I always have in my pack. This is just over a pound. There are several varieties of berries. One is dark purple when ripe and red when not quite ripe yet. The red ones in my container are ripe, but just belong to another variety which is red when ripe.

Back in May and June, Oregon grapes were in bloom, providing bright yellow blossoms to brighten up the landscape.

Now that they are ripe, the tiny berries are blue and certainly one of the most sour tastes in all of nature.

In the spring along streams springs or small seeps of water in the narrow canyons of the high country, the Thimbleberry blossoms, because of their size as well as the size and shape of the leaves, could be seen at long distances.

Now they are ripening and provide a real taste treat for the traveler.

Reservation Divide 1

U.S. Forest Service trail 98 follows the crest of the high ridge of the Reservation Divide roadless area. To the northeast of the divide is the Flathead Indian Reservation, and the terrain in that direction drops rapidly for 4,000 feet to the Flathead River a hundred miles down river from Glacier Park. To the southwest, the Nine Mile Valley through the Lolo National Forest lies below. It’s a wild place… and maybe a new favorite trail.

Today was a wonderful day spent in country like this

with company like this.

(Along USFS trail 98 in the Reservation Divide roadless area.)

Burgess Lake

Several hundred times I have driven past the small trail that leads from the side of Montana Highway 200 up to Burgess Lake, and on almost every one of those times I told myself that I should take a little time and make the short hike up to it. Well, Thursday I finally got around to doing just that.

There’s even a fairly convenient place to park along the highway about six miles from the mouth of the Flathead River and two miles inside the western boundary of the Flathead Indian Reservation, and although there is no sign there to mark it and the trail itself is very small and unmarked, it isn’t really all that difficult to locate after looking at a map.

I’ve been told that the lake is only a quarter of a mile from the highway, and maybe that’s true, but the steep little trail is about twice that long, winding nearly a half mile up through a rocky ravine to reach the lake, about four hundred feet above the river at an altitude of about 2,900 feet, laying in a sort of a shelf on the mountainside with the Flathead river valley below and the high country of the Reservation Divide roadless area four miles and four thousand feet above. Winter is not the best time to negotiate that trail on the snow and ice covered rocks, but I made it with a little care, a great pair of hiking boots and a hiking staff I made last summer from a sturdy shaft from a hawthorn tree.

This photo was taken from about half way up the trail, facing toward the east.

The next three photos show about all there is to see of the little lake itself. It is around a quarter of a mile long and a hundred yards wide at its widest point, but is reputedly loaded with west slope cutthroat trout after Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in a joint effort with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe stocked it with 2,600 4″ fingerlings in 2002. It also has the reputation of being the rattlesnake capitol of western Montana, and after getting a really close look at the rocky terrain surrounding the lake, I think that could well be true. I plan to find out once the ice that now covers the lake melts.

Directly to the west about fifteen miles, across the North Siegel roadless area, and across the north end of the Patrick’s Knob roadless area is the peak of Patrick’s Knob itself, heavily snow covered this time of year. This entire area contains an abundance of elk, black bear and mountain lion.

Cutthroats or no cutthroats, snakes or no snakes, there are some beautiful views to be seen here for a fairly modest effort. These last two photos were taken from a little ridge above the lake. The first is looking due east, and the second, due west. They were taken one minute apart. There are few places that I know of that have that kind of diversity of landscape. Not a bad place to sit for a spell and enjoy a leisurely lunch!