I had first learned of this lookout from a story in the Hungry Horse newspaper about a recent restoration project.
http://www.flatheadnewsgroup.com/hungryhorsenews/fire-lookout-gets-a-new-lease-on-life/article_617000ca-497f-11e4-aa5b-c32ea6ab4c38.html
Here is a link to the group that did the restoration. Look for the Moran Patrol Cabin section.
http://www.nwmt-ffla.org/#!2014-projects/c1nlq
Coal Ridge actually consists of three lookout points along the ridge-top. The first was a cabin at the west point (7285') in 1928. A 24' pole platform tower was added in the 1930's 1.5 miles southeast of the cabin at the 7100' level. Then in 1935 a 20' pole L-4 tower was constructed 1 mile southeast of the original cabin at the 7105' level. Used for emergencies in the 1960's, it has obviously not been maintained for a number of years.
Here are a couple of historic photos of the platform and tower lookouts.
There are several ways to reach the lookout and cabin, but the easiest way is to use the Moran Creek Trail, trail number 2. From the North Fork Road go on Forest Service Road 376 (Hay Creek). Then go on the Moran Creek Basin road: Forest Service Road 5241 until it ends at a berm in the road.
The trail head is six to seven miles from the North Fork Road which was over 30 miles from Columbia Falls.
Trail 239 is a shorter trail at 1.9 miles long, but a much steeper trail with about 3100 ft of elevation gain.
The trail head is only marked with a small rock cairn on the side of the road a short distance from the road's end. The trail is not the closed road beyond the berm. There is no trail head sign or post.
Moran Creek Trail number 2 is 3.04 miles to the junction with trail 14. The junction is between the cabin and the lookout tower. The cabin is a little farther away and higher than the lookout tower. The cabin might be a half mile or more from the trail junction.
I don't know the elevation gain on trail 2. The trail starts out with a quick elevation gain from the road to get the heart racing, but then settles into a steady but not steep climb. The trail goes along the mountain side until it gets closer to the head of the valley. It passes by a few small streams that were easy to cross at this time of year. We also crossed a few muddy seeps that had us go off trail around them. There was only one recent downed tree across the trail. From signs of other downed trees the trail appears to be maintained.
Trail 2 ends at trail 14 which runs along the top of Coal Ridge. The trail junction is at a saddle on the ridge, the lowest part of the ridge. The steepest part of the hike is on the ridge to the cabin and to the lookout tower. Kendra ran out of gas on the hike along the ridge to the cabin and did not make it there. Joyce joined me at the cabin. Joyce and Kendra then started to hike back to my pickup while I hiked up to the lookout tower.
The lookout tower is not as it appears in the historic photo. The roof had blown off and landed upside down against a grove of trees. The roof was mostly intact. The tower's floor walls were gone into a pile of wood at the base of the tower's legs. The tower's legs were still standing but who knows for how long. One of the legs no longer was on its concrete pad and several cross trunks were gone or broken.
The tower's structure is different from most lookout towers in that the legs (support structure) were made of tall thick tree trunks bolted together.
When we had gotten to the junction of trails 2 and 14 we could not see the tower or cabin and had to trust which way to go.
The cabin can be seen from the road's end and from a point close to the trail's beginning (as shown in the photo below). Otherwise you do not see the cabin again until either when you begin the hike to the lookout tower and look back, or at the end when you approach the cabin.
As we got closer to the ridge we could smell smoke. On the ridge we could see smoke from beyond the next ridge from what appeared to be a controlled burn. Without the smokey skies we would have had awesome views of the Glacier Park mountains. This day they were partially obscured.
At the trail junction you can finally see over the ridge down into the Coal Creek valley. It is a long way down and I don't doubt it would be a 3100 ft climb from the floor to the cabin.
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| Coal Creek Valley with smoke from the fire. |
From the cabin I had great views of the Whitefish Range Mountains and could pick out the ones (Tuchuck, Thoma, etc.) I had hiked on. The skies were not as smokey in that direction as the breeze had not blown the smoke that way.
The cabin was not locked. It was clean and stocked.
From the ridge there were lots of views of the Moran Creek Basin. I could easily see where the forest had been logged some years ago. Above that line the trees were all green with a troubling amount of old dead trees. Below the line the forest was a healthy green with lots of yellow from Western Larch. The trails were above the logged line so one did pass by a number of snags standing over the trail.
There is no trail to Moran Peak but it doesn't look like it would be difficult to hike to the top of that peak for more views. I also did not have time to hike east past the tower lookout to search for the platform lookout. I imagine that would be ruins also. I also didn't see an obvious trail (trail 14) east of the tower lookout though it also did not appear to be difficult to walk east along the ridge.
If you are interested in what happened after the hike was over, follow this link.
http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2014/10/pickup-breakdown.html
For more photos, follow this link:
https://plus.google.com/photos/109566462412251958234/albums/6069156543016988481?authkey=CL649cXz1Y_n3AE
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