Scapegoat on a hot, hot, hot day

We were luck to find this oasis of shade and water on this hot hike

We set out to explore an off-trail way into Falls Creek in the Dearborn River country and wound up climbing to the Continental Divide in the Scapegoat Wilderness Area Saturday.
Each way would have involved the Dearborn River on this scorching summer afternoon.

Dearborn River in tight canyon

Because of the heat, we opted for trail all the way and in the process learned about Blacktail Creek and how its trail connects to the Landers Fork country deep within the Scapegoat.
Over about 18 miles of hiking we consumed four quarts of water each and still came out thirsty.
There was an occasional, random cloud that gave us some shelter.

Dave Ashley cools down

Luckily, we had to cross the Dearborn River, which meant getting into thigh-deep water, which provided a small amount of cooling.
While we didn't do the off-trail exploratory into Falls Creek, we could see a very direct route in up Skull Gulch and on to Monitor Mountain.
Had we been sensible we would have stayed on the Dearborn River bottom where it was somewhat cooler.
Several weeks ago I walked into this Dearborn country, but only as far as Devil's Glen, which is a gorgeous area where the river is forced through a tight canyon and rushes in bursts through chutes and over waterfalls.

Steamboat promontory above the Dearborn

Obligatory wilderness sign photo

Another half-mile further up the trail climbs through a rock slide above another narrow canyon and the scenery is breaktaking like the scenery in Yellowstone Park.  The water is an emerald color and winds through tall, colorful canyon walls.
Our goal was the Continental Divide and we figured the Blacktail Creek trail would get us there the quickest.  We crossed the river and proceeded up that trail which climbs about 2,000 feet in less than three miles into an open area above the Landers Fork with Red, Pyramid, Olson, Galusha and Crow peaks within view.  This is Scapegoat interior country, yet the trail sits on ridgeline that connects to the West Fork of Falls Creek trail.
To the north, Steamboat Mountain's long ridgeline dominates the view.

Choteau's a big peak

Jim Heckel on Choteau Mountain ridge line

Choteau Mountain (elevation: 8,398 feet) is a big chunk of real estate that in many other places could qualify as a state or national park all by itself.
There are ridges running into it every which way and its stretches across several miles of the Rocky Mountain Front off the the Teton County Road.  It is one of the most visible mountains on the Front opposite Ear Mountain and it is also known as Sleeping Giant because it looks like a man in repose.
Views in every direction are outstanding, particularly because of the high Teton peaks to the west.
I've climbed it four times, four different ways and I know there are several other ways, including the easiest ascent that I haven't gotten to yet.
I've climbed this peak in every season, including a winter climb in 2006 and skied off its eastern flanks along Clary Coulee and its western side along Jones Creek.
Its eastern face is sheer wall that drops off a couple of thousand feet.

Heckel approaching the top, with Front high peaks as back drop

Its western side is manageable slope that in spots has collapsed, leaving sheer cliffs.
We chose an approach from the west side on Wednesday, looking for a quick way up.  It is about 3,400 feet in elevation gain because we had to descend into a couple of drainages and regain the ground lost.
We picked a ridge closest to Jones Creek just off the Teton road.
The first 2,200 feet of elevation gained was fairly easy, but steep through thin forest.
The last 900 feet of gain is a slog up through open scree that never seems to end.
Along the way there are numerous bighorn sheep beds.

Great show of wildflowers

We were surprised by the fantastic show of wildflowers this late into a really hot summer season.
It took us three hours to get to the top and two hours down.
We spent considerable time on the top enjoying the views all the way into the Bob Marshall Wilderness and as far north as Glacier.
Walking the thin top can be dicey.

Shimmying across the Choteau Mountain razors edge

There is one break on the ridge line that is razor think and drops off in both directions.  Jim Heckel walked directly across it.



 I got down and shimmied across it on my butt.
Your eyes play tricks on you as you look across 
this razor's edge.  The very top is marked by a USGS brass marker, while there are small climbing cairns along the ridge line that appear to be higher.  When you get to these cairns, the marked site looks higher.
There are massive, sheer cliffs to the north adjacent to the unnamed mountain we call "Guthrie."
We descended down a slightly different and more direct route, taking an adjacent ridge that is steeper and cliffier than the route we went up.
This was a very satisfying climb.

The ridge walk to the top

Our up route.

Mad Wolf to Eagle Plume in Glacier

The view from the top of Eagle Plume Mountain in Glacier

It was about 15 years ago that I last did the Mad Wolf-Eagle Plume-Bad Marriage traverse in the Cut Bank area of Glacier Park.
On Saturday I led a group of eight Glacier Mountaineering Society climbers on this wonderful ridge walk with all eight reaching Mad Wolf (elevation:  8,341 feet), seven of the eight up Eagle Plume (elevation: 8,721 feet), and three hearty souls (not including me) climbing Bad Marriage, (elevation: 8,350 feet).

The Mad Wolf-Eagle Plume ridge walk

There is only one person for whom two Glacier peaks are named and that is Mad Wolf, a Blackfeet chief who lived at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th and assisted ethnographer Walter McClintock in his classic "Old North Trail," book on the Blackfeet culture.  Mad Wolf adopted McClintock into the tribe.  Mad Wolf's Blackfeet name is Siyeh, which is what the other peak near Logan Pass in the center of the park is called.  At 10,004 feet elevation, it is one of the six mighty "10,000-footers," in the park, prized by climbers.
The last time I did this I followed the traverse detailed in Gordon Edwards' "Climbing in Glacier Park," book and explored by Bill Hedglin.
We opted for a much less complicated up and back and I'm glad we did.
The Hedglin traverse includes a descent into a basin beneath Bad Marriage and a wicked bushwhack. I remember getting back to camp around 11 p.m.
As we did it last weekend we still didn't finish the trip until 9:15 p.m., even though we had begun around 8 a.m.

Feral horses at the base of Mad Wolf cliffs

This climb includes a glorious ridge walk from Mad Wolf to Eagle Plume that offers stupendous views in all directions, revealing the trail-less Lake Creek drainage and its Lonely Lakes and Running Crane Lake and views into the heart of Glacier's southern end that is dominated by Mount Stimson.
The last time I did this I recall bushwhacking straight up from the Ranger Station through lots of downed timber and thick vegetation to reach the Cut Bank Ridge and ultimately the northeast flank of Mad Wolf.  It was very direct.
This time we checked out the so-called "Boundary" trail that begins just beyond the first long meadow from the Triple Divide Pass Trailhead.  We reached this fork in the trail about 10 minutes from that trailhead.

The boundary "trail" bushwhack

There is an immediate ford of cold, fast and high Cut Bank Creek where we picked up a trail trace and then an open field marked by intermittent and difficult to follow river rock cairns.  We had difficulty picking up the trail where it re-entered the forest, discovering it near the creek.
This trail is supposedly maintained, but we found heavy vegetation and some deadfall, although there is evidence of that maintenance in the form of cut logs.
We got drenched from early morning dew and the remnants of the previous day's rainfall.
It eventually emerges into glorious grass at the base the Mad Wolf cliffs where there are a number of trails used by feral horses.  We scattered a group of five of these beautiful beasts at the cliff base.
We saw a good break in the cliffs and went up through them.  These have plenty of vegetative hand-holds, but need to be treated with respect, although they are not difficult.
That was followed by a 1,500 feet slog through steep scree and broken rock to the top.
Off in the distance was the sharp-pointed top of Eagle Plume.  When I identified that destination there was surprise that it seemed so far off.  I think it was the scree-slog speaking.

The GMS climbers were sure glad to break out into the open after the heavy vegetation on the trail

The next part of the hike was the most enjoyable part amounting to a gently rolling two-mile walk to the base of the Eagle Plume cliffs where we could see in all directions, looking down into the high mountain Lake Creek lakes, off in the distance to Pitamakin Pass, Stimson, Red Mountain, and the tremendous Bad Marriage Basin to the north fed by a grand stream of water from the cliffs above.
Eagle Plume was another 800 feet up through easy cliffs and ledges.

Clearing the cliff band and getting ready for the slog

It was here we could see across most of the south and central ends of the park and where the cloud ceiling descended on us for the first time, shrouding our views and then lifting.
We were all amazed at how beautiful the views are from that Eagle Plume perch.
Greg and Cecilia Notess and Rod Graham left us to descend to the saddle between Eagle Plume and Bad Marriage and climb their third mountain of the day, along an easy ridge line.
We could no longer see them by the time they reached the top because of the clouds.
Those of us on Eagle Plume decided to wait until we were sure they were safely headed back our way.
It was about a half-hour and we could see them coming and we started down through the Eagle Plume cliffs.

The glorious ridge walk to Eagle Plume from Mad Wolf

We stopped at a saddle about half way between Eagle Plume and Mad Wolf where Pat Blake, who had decided Mad Wolf was enough, was waiting for us.  Another 45 minutes passed and the three others joined us.

The cloud ceiling drops in on us

Now the cloud ceiling was down on us and we could just see ahead of ourselves enough to reclimb Mad Wolf, where we regrouped.
Luckily Greg Notess had recorded our route on a GPS.  Thank goodness, because I didn't know where the heck I was at or which direction to go because the clouds were so disorienting.

Gordon Swenson has an "Kodak" moment

Notess led us down to the cliff area below the clouds, down and out.
The sun was setting, playing on the amazing wildflower show ---- Cecilia Notess counted 62 varieties on this trip --- and the icy cold creek crossing and our day was complete.

The Red Line is "Glacierscrambler" post on Summitpost.com.  The Blue line is where our GMS group climbed Saturday.  The Green, is how my route varied 15 years ago.

A quick trip up to Siyeh Pass

To shake out the kinks on Sunday, Katie and I took a quick trip up to the Siyeh Pass from the bend on the Going to the Sun Highway.

It is a little over 9 miles round trip and one of the park's classic hikes.

We had intended to walk through to the Sunrift Gorge, but changed our minds at the pass when we saw how much snow remained on the upper portions of the south or gorge side of the pass.

On the way down we got hit by a torrential rain that accompanied us most of the way.  It was so intense that it filled my pack with water, and wet me right down to my underwear.

The rain also caused mud and rock slides on the Avalanche Lake to Logan Pass section of the road, slightly injuring two motorists and trapping 11 vehicles. The road remained closed over night.

Fire season begins: Barker, Our Lake

Katie at Our Lake in the Front Friday

The fire season for our area began in earnest on Thursday with the Elbow Pass fire in the Scapegoat Wilderness Area spotted by Samantha Chapman, who we visited on Monday.
Now the trail we walked a few days ago is closed because of the fire danger.
Great Falls has been filled with some, evoking memories of such horrible fire seasons as 1988 and 2007.  This one seems to be starting earlier, though.

Barker is not that impressive this close.  From the highway it is massive.

But, this didn't stop me from getting out a couple more times this week ---- for a climb of Barker Mountain in the Little Belts (elevation: 8,309 feet) and Our Lake in the Rocky Mountain Front --- both which I've done before, but both which were very enjoyable nonetheless.
Barker is one of the biggest mountains on the southeast horizon as one drives into the Little Belts via Belt Creek canyon.  It is reached via Monarch and seven miles up the Dry Fork Road.
There are numerous ways to climb this big guy, all involving more than 3,000 feet in elevation and in some cases large fields of talus plates that wobble and threaten to throw you.

These cairns are not the top.

I was looking for a route that would avoid these and found one on the east flank of Finn Creek where it starts at a campsite at a small waterfall.
I was lucky enough to find a pretty straight shot to the top, although I had to weave my way through lots of tall juniper bushes that scratched my legs, downed timber, and doghair lodgepole that threatened to stop me.  Route finding is difficult because, unlike the Front, the Little Belts are so tree covered that route-finding vistas are in short supply.  Generally, when you could look to the south, if Servoss Mountain was right behind you, you were on the ridge.  I also made sure that I was on a ridge by not going too far down in a sidehill fashion in either lateral direction.
At one point the ridge was only about 10 feet across.

Talus slopes every where on Barker.

At the open top I was able to shoot a compass baring on Servoss and used it to find the narrow, tree covered ridge.
The views from the top were pretty good considering the fire-smoke.  Of course, Old Baldy, at over 9,000 feet, was the most dominant.  Smoke kept me from seeing the Snowies or Bear Paws, but Square and Round buttes were in view as was the Highwoods mountain range.
Below me I could see reclamation trucks feverishly working near the old mining towns of Hughesville and Barker doing cleanup for the messes left almost 100 years ago by mining boomers.
This turned out to be superior route to the one I took in 2005, when I got hung up in the talus.
Temperatures in town were near 100 and as high as 91 in the Little Belts, a very hot day.

This route avoided the large talus slopes until I hit the top

Our Lake

The falls off Our Lake

On Friday I was looking for something a little more tame and Katie and I went to Our Lake in the Rocky Mountain Front.

If the Heritage Bill passes Congress this area will be added to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area.

It is probably the most popular hike in the Front because it is only 7 miles long, although the 2,000 feet in elevation gained can seem arduous.  We were at the lake in an hour and 20 minutes.

The lovely Lady Slipper was everywhere

A waterfall bonus near the lake and in sight of snow fields

By comparison with the dry Little Belts, this part of the Front was lush, green and full of wildflowers --- from the beargrass to lady slippers and all kinds of vetch.  What makes this hike so special are the old growth spruce trees that offers spectacular shade.

Then the forest opens to an alpine zone and then two great waterfalls, the final one spilling off the lake.

Although this was a work day for most people there were four other hikers on the trail with us, although the area was far from crowded and pristine.

Normally I use this hike as a part of a traverse to Headquarters Pass.  Instead, I decided to go up and back and investigated an alternative route to the pass, which I determined could be reached from the trail at a gully just before the lake.

The regular route is the south, usually snow-covered gully from the lake itself.

The weather was quite changeable, sprinkling on us and then clearing.

It was much cooler than the weather down below in town.

We counted 13 mountain goats in the cliffs, high above the lake and three big horn rams at the Our Lake/HQ Pass divide.

Patrol Mountain --- yet again

Forest Service packer returns with mule team that supplies Patrol Mountain Lookout

We got off the plane about 11:20 p.m., Sunday from five days in Florida where we went to my niece's wedding.
In just over seven hours I was headed out for a Montana Wilderness Association hike up Patrol Mountain (elevation 8,015 feet) in the Front.

At the summit ridge to Patrol Mountain fire lookout cabin

While I would normally be tired with so little sleep after so much travel, I was energized just being back.
Florida is not my thing, although I do appreciate the beauty of its beaches.  I just don't much care for the heat and the humidity.
While it hit the 90s in Great Falls on Monday it was a bit cooler and much less humid in the mountains.
It's great to be back.
I was looking simply to stretch my legs and Patrol Mountain offers that with a 2,800 feet elevation gain over a 10 mile hike.

Patrol Mountain lookout Samantha Chapman in her element

The trail starts at the end of the Benchmark wilderness runway, follows Straight Creek some 2 miles with little elevation gain.  Then there's an ice-cold crossing of the creek and straight up on a switch-backing trail that threads a breach in the limestone cliffs to a lovely meadow called Honeymoon Basin.  Then there's another headwall with an impressive trail across it to a saddle beneath the mountain.  Atop the mountain is perched a fire patrol cabin with its lookout --- Samantha Chapman, who's been doing this job for 15 years.
I've visited her several times during those years; once to do a story on her and her sister, who was the lookout at Prairie Reef in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area at the time, and last year when she showed me the way along the ridge line she patrols.

Crossing a cold, fast Straight Creek

The views from her perch are impressive ---- Sugar Loaf and Hoadley dominate to the west, Scapegoat and Flint to the south, the Rocky Mountain Front and Bob Marshall to the east and north.  In front of us just to the east of Straight Creek below we could assess the Wood Creek Hogback that we climbed and walked three weeks ago.
Although I've climbed this mountain at least 10 times I don't tire of these views.
If the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act is approved by Congress this Patrol Mountain trail becomes part of the Scapegoat Wilderness, joining the area to the west and south.
There's really no reason why it shouldn't .

MWA hikers approach the fire patrol cabin after negotiating the headwall trail

Steamboat traverse: how times change

Yeah, Wayne, it's a long way down

The recovery from the 1988 Canyon Creek fire continues apace as I learned painfully on Monday.
My goal was to climb to the top of Steamboat Lookout (elevation: 8,569 feet), walk the ridgeline to a spot above Cataract and Bailey basins and walk down the ridge between the two drainages back to the car.

The ridgeline we walked

I had done this a number of years ago without much incidence, although I recall fighting some tightly spaced timber on the Cataract/Bailey ridgeline.
I didn't recall having any major difficulties, although I had upclimbed that ridge rather than downclimbed it.
Our hike Monday had lots of major difficulties approaching it the opposite way.
This ridge walk along the spine of the Steamboat massif  is one of the grand ridge walks on the Front.
The trail is excellent from the Elk Creek Trailhead, covering about 6 miles and 3,200 feet in elevation gain when you leave the trail and walk toward the lower Steamboat Mountain (elevation: 8,287 feet) several miles away on the ridge.

The ridgeline we would walk

The views are of the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat wilderness areas all the way to the Swans on the west and to the high Teton peaks to the north and across to the Great Plains.  Haystack peak is a constant companion.
The cliffs to the north below you on the walk are jaw-dropping ---- more than 1,000 feet high and then some.
The sky was clear and it was about 70 degrees on top and things were quite perfect.
Where we got into trouble was trying to find a goat trail on that Cataract/Bailey divide.  We walked right by it and had to return to it, locating it with some difficulty.
That took us into some cliffs where we promptly got trapped.
Climbing partner Wayne Phillips took us back to the west side of the cliffs and noticed a break in the cliffs filled with about 300 feet of really steep, small talus.

Route through the cliffs

It was either try descending this chute or possibly reclimbing to the Steamboat ridge and retracing our steps to the trail, a prospect that could not be completed until after dark and be extremely long.
Phillips, staying close to the side of the cliff walls, did a masterful job leading down through this talus.
Any false step could have sent us down to the bottom or set off a gigantic avalanche of rock.
Then we side-hilled to the top of the Cataract/Bailey divide where I had recalled following a fire line trail.
The trees there had grown so much and there was so much blow down that this was out of the question.
As an aside, Douglas Fir is coming in over much of this area rather than just lodgepole.

Steamboat Lookout Mountain, ridge high point

So we headed down the more grassy slopes toward Bailey Basin, climbing over more deadfall, but less than we would have on top.
We plunged into the basin and finally found the steep Forest Service trail out to the road,  two exhausted mountaineers who had been on our feet nearly 12 hours.
We didn't leave much daylight on the table.
I had several takeaways from this climb:  downclimbing routes look different than upclimbing routes;  fast-growing trees after a fire can obscure and make impossible an earlier, easy route; we should have brought a rope (20 feet would have made the downclimb in the cliffs a snap).
These were the same cliffs that nearly 20 years ago I got trapped in and spent the night after I had lost daylight wandering around in them.

A botanist at work

A much more sensible route is to continue on the ridgeline beyond Cataract/Bailey, climb lower Steamboat and descend to a waiting car on the Dearborn River side, as we have done several times before.
The hopes that there could be an easy and sensible out and back loop from the Steamboat Lookout trail and through the cliffs down Cataract/Bailey were dashed.

The route

Lots of hiking in Glacier, the Front

Mike McCartney hiking on Iceberg Lake trail in Glacier

In the past week I've had three great hikes in Glacier National Park and two in the Front.

My cousin Mike had never crossed snowfields before.

In Glacier we did a tour of waterfalls (Bering, St. Mary, Virginia Falls) near St. Mary in the rain, and a hike to Iceberg Lake in Many Glacier and a climb up Scenic Point in Two Med.
In the Front there were short trips to Devil's Glen on the Dearborn River and the Ear Mountain Outstanding Natural Area Trail on the Teton River.
We ran into all kinds of weather, ranging from snow at Logan Pass that closed the Going to the Sun Highway last Wednesday to extremely hot and bright on the Iceberg Trail.
There still is significant snow in the high country here, but it is going fast.
We saw nothing on the northeast face of Ear Mountain, which often holds snowfields into mid-summer, but Iceberg Lake was frozen over.
The occasion for our Glacier trip was a visit from my cousin Michael McCartney and his wife, Joie, from the Chicago area, who are on a multi-month "retirement" tour.  They have never done this level of hiking.

Cuter than cute bighorn lambs we encountered on the way up Scenic Point in Glacier's Two Med area.

We stayed at cabins at St. Mary's Rising Sun area and Many Glacier's Swiftcurrent area and Terry Sherburne's Mountain Pine in East Glacier Park.

Enjoying Devil's Glen in proposed Scapegoat addition.

The Devil's Glen trip, last Tuesday, was part of a media tour by EchoFlight, an environmental air transport company, arranged by The Wilderness Society and Montana Wilderness Association, to showcase the Scapegoat Wilderness Area on its 40th anniversary and its similarities to the current Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act pending in Congress.  The Scapegoat was the first "citizen's" wilderness passed by Congress.  Some of the land in the Heritage Act borders the Scapegoat.
The planned flight for the media was marred by low clouds that blocked views.
But, the skies cleared for the 7-mile round trip walk into Devil's Glen where EchoFlight pilot Bruce Gordon accompanied us.
The Devil's Glen is where the Dearborn is squeezed into narrow cascades that roar down a beautiful limestone canyon just below Steamboat Mountain.
The Great Falls Tribune reporter Erin Madison and photographer Rion Sanders went with us on the trip that I led.

Me, my wife, Joie McCartney and cousin Mike from Chicago at  Iceberg Lake.

The crowds were sparse in Glacier because of the variable weather, although there was a steady stream of people trying Iceberg, where they had to cross several large snow chutes to reach the ice-covered lake.  It will be at least a couple of weeks before the snow and ice recede enough to reveal "icebergs" in other-worldly blue water.
I was particularly pleased that flat-landers Mike and Joie did so well on the hikes.

Nancy Clark of Great Falls approachingScenic Point above Two Medicine  Lake

On the Scenic Point climb we bumped into two other parties from Great Falls.
After a day of collecting ourselves Sunday we went to the Ear Mountain Outstanding Area below that Rocky Mountain Front landmark and walked the trail that covers 4.2 miles roundtrip and rises 1,010 feet.
The area was redolent with wildflowers, both of the prairie and mountain varieties.
It takes the hiker from a trailhead on the South Fork of the Teton River to Yeager Flat through foothills, around a large, colorful cliff band, forest, a burn, a swamp.  Ear Mountain is in the near distance where the trail ends.
This is where a traditional climb of the mountain begins, but all but the south side route are visible from here.
Hikers are treated to gorgeous views of the Rocky Mountain Front's Choteau, Wind and Cave mountains.

Ear Mountain from the trail ending Yeager Flats.

This BLM trail is a must-do for Great Falls residents interested in the Front because it reveals so much.  It is 74 miles from Great Falls and only 2.2 miles are off pavement.  In addition, the newly paved Teton County Road makes the drive even more pleasurable.

A view of Wind and Cave mountains from Ear Mountain Outstanding Area Trail