Cabin Lake

Yesterday a friend and I hiked to Cabin Lake, one of the many cirque lakes in the Cube Iron/Silcox roadless area in the Plains/Thompson Falls District of the Lolo National Forest here in western Montana. Following are photos of the trail and, of course, the lake itself which sits at about 6,000 feet.

The destination, Cabin Lake

In several places along the road to the trail head, which follows the west fork of Thompson River, it was necessary to build retaining walls to keep the rock slides from covering the road.

At the trail head, this bridge for foot and horse traffic spans the stream that issues from the lake. It is very welcome because the stream would be very difficult to ford.

Along the bottom part of the trail it is covered by the golden leaves of Black cottonwoods; the “Yellow brick road”.

A smaller stream which is fortunately fordable without going over the top of hiking boots crosses the trail.

The lake sits in a glacier-formed recession just above and to the right of the cliffs in the background.

From the middle part of the trail you can see the mountainside that slopes down to the trail head.

The trail tops out in a saddle, then descends down to the lake which sits just below the peak in the distance.

This and the remaining photos are of the lake itself.

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As we descended the trail toward the trail head, on some cliffs off the trail we were treated to a view of one of the icons of the Rocky Mountains, somewhat rare now outside of Glacier Park; a Rocky Mountain Goat, (Oreamnos americanus). For obvious reasons, I couldn’t get any close-ups. When I was a child we saw them fairly often, but it has been years since I encountered one outside of the park. It was a very rare treat!

As if to make a closing statement at the very end of our Cabin Lake trip, along the Forest Service access road, these were in bloom, another wildflower that I had not encountered before.

Mountain Hollyhocks, lliamna rivularis

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The last of the trail scenes.

It’s hard to leave a place when it looks this inviting.

A flat area above the switchbacks.

There are always the small things too.

Western Meadowrue, Thalictrum occidentale

Away from the roads, the old Forest Service signage is still in excellent condition.

I’m not sure what this plant is, but the leaves are large and well defined, and it is plentiful in some areas.

The mountainsides just celebrate summer!

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On the odd chance that you ever wondered what the exact bottom of an 80 foot tall fir looked like, well, here is how it looks. Must have been quite a storm to leave this 10 foot diameter root ball in a vertical position and the tree in a horizontal one!

I felt sorry to leave the lake, but the trail back down was inviting too. And there was a nice surprise near the end. Photos of that to come later.

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Cabin Lake hike, third set of photos. It was a great day for clouds!

The old signs that are far away from the roads are still in excellent shape although some of them are nearly eighty years old.

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This is the second set of photos of the Cabin Lake trail as we continued upwards.

Shrubby penstemon, Penstemon fruticosus

Trail 450 to Mt Headley starts here and is hidden by the ground cover.