Coal Ridge lookout

On Friday October 10, after Kendra completed another radiation treatment,  Joyce, Kendra and I hiked to the cabin and lookout tower on Coal Ridge in the North Fork near Polebridge, Montana.  With the around eight miles that I did on this hike, I have now hiked over 100 miles for the year so far.

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.

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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Krag Peak

Going through old photos and I put together another hiking post...

Sunday August 4, 2013 Patti, Gene and I hiked to the top of Krag Peak.  Tammy was in Minnesota attending a Tastefully Simple business convention.

Krag Peak 7510', is the highest of a trio of peaks that sit relatively close to one another in the northern Whitefish Range of NW Montana. Next to, and just to the south of Krag, lies Krinklehorn Peak 7411', next to and to the SW of Krinklehorn lies Deep Mountain 7406'.

Krag Peak is located up near Fortine and Eureka, Montana.

This is the route we followed:

From downtown Whitefish drive 43 miles north on Hwy 93. 
Turn right onto Grave Creek Road and drive 3 miles until reaching Stoken Road and turn right again. 
Proceed on Stoken Road for 1.47 miles until reaching Forest Service Road #7019 (Williams Creek Road) as it angles in from the right. 
Proceed on FS Road #7019 for 3.86 miles until reaching the parking area at the trailhead.

It was a beautiful day: not too cold, not too hot.  Mostly sunny with a few clouds, more clouds as the afternoon went on.  I would have lingered longer on top of the mountain but Gene and Patti were concerned about the clouds and whether we would be rained on as we had over 5 miles of hiking to get back to Patti's car.  We stayed dry.

To get to Krag Peak we hiked on Krinklehorn Trail.

Krinklehorn Peak

At the saddle north of Krinklehorn Peak, the Krinklehorn Trail continues down the other side.  To get to Krag Peak one must leave the trail at the saddle and bushwhack over a half mile up to Krag Peak.

The bushwhack doesn't look too bad, does it?

Yes, the bushwhack is steeper than it looks in the previous photo.

Krinklehorn Peak, from almost half way on the bushwhack to Krag Peak.

Krag Peak is in the distance.  Note the lower open area below the top of Krag Peak.  A later photo looking back to this spot was taken there.

Bushwhacking up Krag Peak.

Looking back to the open area at the top of that peak where I took the earlier photo.  Also, to the right of this small mountain is the saddle (behind the dead triple trunk tree) where we started our bushwhack.

From the top of Krag Peak.   Eureka Montana, and beyond Eureka is Lake Koocanusa (the small sliver of water just above the mountain ridge top right of center).

The next two photos are an area shown via Google Earth in the third image. 

Here are more photos from my hike:

https://plus.google.com/photos/109566462412251958234/albums/6082913728233310929?authkey=COOtx9CfvZ-FtAE


More info on hiking to Krag Peak: http://www.summitpost.org/krag-peak/747508

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Tuchuck Mountain

Saturday, October 1, Patti and I hiked up to the top of Tuchuck Mountain (elevation 7751 ft).  Last year, when hiking various mountains (Mount Wam, Stahl Peak, Lake, Nasukoin) in the Whitefish Range we always saw Tuchuck in the distance.  If we got the right mountain... it looked like a whale breaching and fascinated us.  Finally this year we had the opportunity to climb to the top of Tuchuck, and even if the weather was iffy, we took that opportunity.

There appears to be four trails to reach Tuchuck Mountain. All the trails come together by the time they reach Tuchuck Pass, which lies below Tuchuck Mountain.  Three trails of varying length leave from the Tuchuck campground along Forest Service Road 114 (Trail Creek Road).  The fourth trail (#19) left from Forest Service Road 114A and this route appeared to be a little shorter (I'm guessing 4.5 to 5 miles one way).  I had been on road 114A when I hiked up to the Mt Thoma lookout and knew this road was much higher in elevation than road 114 so I expected we would have less of an elevation gain than if we took a trail from the campground.  I have a feeling that it didn't work out this way.

We decided to take trail 19 from road 114A.

Here is our route shown on a 1971 Forest Service Map. (I can't find my current map of this area).  FYI - since this map was created road 114A has now been closed after where I marked "Start" on the map.  Trees are now growing in the road.

From Google Maps, here is what I believe our route was.

Looking at the Google maps view of Tuchuck Mountain I found the U.S. Canadian border interesting.  It appears to dip across Frozen Lake.  I wonder if the border really does dip?

The Western Larch trees (Tamaracks) were turning yellow and were quite pretty.

The following photo was taken from near the middle X on the above map. Looking south you can see the three lakes.

We had been walking three to four miles by now and hadn't seen Tuchuck Mountain yet.  The trail kept mainly to the south of the ridge blocking for the most part the view of Tuchuck Mountain.  On the return to the car, at one very brief point, I was able to see part of Tuchuck Mountain when hiking along the ridge.


The following photo was taken near the fourth X on the map.  This is where trail 18 (one of the trails from Tuchuck campground) meets with trail 19.  The two wooden signs in the middle of the photo were laying on the ground when we came and we didn't see them.  Not knowing where to go we went to the left and after climbing a third of a mile began to suspect something was wrong.  We got out Patti's map and figured out we were on trail 18.  I hiked to the top of the ridge and found Tuchuck Mountain.  We definitely were on the wrong trail.

We backtracked to where I took the following photo and then found the signs listing the trails.  We propped the signs up the best we could then headed to the right, where Patti is standing.

Tuchuck Mountain as seen from the "wrong" trail.

Tuchuck Mountain was seen from the "right" trail, trail number 19.

The photos with clouds were taken after it had just rained. We had a wet day.  It had rained before we started our hike.  Therefore once the trail got brushy after a mile or so of hiking, our clothes and shoes got wet.  Then as we neared the top of the ridge, and the first trail junction, we hiked in a light rain.  Fortunately once we got back onto the right trail the rain quit for the day and we even saw the sun briefly when we were on Tuchuck Mountain.

The preceding photos somewhat capture the steepness of the mountain.  At Tuchuck Pass, where trails 19 and 23 join, the trail then went down.  We followed it a short way then quit and returned back up to the trail junction.  Going down felt wrong when we could see how the ridge went up to the mountain.

We saw a cairn of rocks and began to bushwhack up the ridge.  After a bit we could see a few signs of a switchback trail further up the mountain side and continued up the ridge to reach the trail.  We didn't use the switchback trail.  The trail was old and narrow and we could only see some sections of it.  The trail would go into the trees on the other side and we couldn't make out where it came back from the trees.  On the way back down from the mountain top we tried to use the trail but found the trail kept curving around the mountain's east side well into the trees with no sign of the next switchback. We lost sight of Tuchuck Pass.  We felt more comfortable going straight down the mountain side as it was shorter and we could see our destination at all times: Tuchuck Pass.

The downside of not taking the trail up the mountainside was that it was very steep going up and slow going.  We slowly climbed up the ridge the best we could until we got to the top of the mountain.  Time was passing and we started to get concerned about getting back to the car before dark.  We had started hiking at 10 am and we didn't reach the top of the mountain until 2:13 pm.  We left the mountain top at 2:45 pm and got back to the car at almost 6 pm.  4 1/4 hours vs 3 1/4 hours.  That indicates the climbing we did during the hike.

When we started up Tuchuck Mountain, here is the view back the way we came.  We had started the hike at the middle of the left edge of the photo.  We hiked up just on the other side of the mountain ridge that goes from left to right.  At the right side of the clouds on the right side of that mountain, we descended to Tuchuck Pass.  Yes, I said "descended".  Quite a distance down multiple switchbacks.  Now I am not so sure we saved any elevation gain by starting at road 114A.  I suspect if we took trail 23 from the Tuchuck campground we may have had a similar amount of elevation gain as that trail joined our trail (#19) at Tuchuck Pass.

Tuchuck Pass is just right of center.

At the top of Tuchuck Mountain we found this marker.  We also found some broken glass and cable from where the old lookout once stood. Apparently the lookout existed from 1931 to 1957.

I've been to the top of a few other peaks in NW Montana and I think many of the other markers also were from the year of 1924.

The three following photos put together a 360 view from the top of Tuchuck Mountain.

View SE to almost West

View almost West to NE

View NE to SE

A short video made by another hiker from the top of Tuchuck Mountain:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE0GRl9rndM


Several other things of interest...

I'm not sure what caused this, but a number of small trees near Tuchuck Pass has this brown stuff on them.  I wonder if it was because of a late season snow melt?

And we found a quite number of huckleberries on the bushes.  Some still tasted good, others had no flavor due to how late in the season it is.  Here is a sign the bears were eating plenty of huckleberries.   We saw plenty of bear scat and also wolf scat on the trail.  So we often made noise to warn the bears we were coming and saw no bears.

These photos are just 1/3 of the photos I took. For more photos (67 photos, including the ones you seen above), go to my Picasa photo site: https://picasaweb.google.com/109566462412251958234/Tuchuck