Mocassin Trails Under Hawk Shaddows

Growing up in Montana and living in the northwest, I often find my path crossing with the trails of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In 1805 the expedition traveled up the Missouri River, crossing the Continental divide and wintered on the Pacific Coast of Oregon. In 1806 they left the coast in the spring, working their way up the Columbia River and its drainage's, crossing back over the continental divide, then down the Missouri River and Yellowstone Rivers making their way back to St. Louis, Missouri. Their accomplishments were remarkable and they covered a huge geographical area with the help of their Indian Guides.

This summer we decided to follow a portion of the Lewis and Clark trail over Lemhi Pass, from Idaho into Montana. Leaving the paved road at Tendoy, Idaho, we turned onto a gravel road that follows Agency Creek. The road heads east and crosses the famous Lemhi Pass, about a 24 mile trip from pavement to pavement. The canyon is very narrow, lined with dense brush and cottonwood trees, and the water in the creek was running high, cold and clear. The lower end of the canyon is steep with open prairie.

About half way up the canyon we came to a Forest Service signpost that indicated the location of the first encampment in Idaho, for the expedition. On Monday August 12^th, 1805 Lewis and 3 of his men, in an advance party, traveled west over Lemhi Pass, and camped at that location. The continued their trek the next day, leaving Agency Creek following the Indian trail that climbed to the top of the main ridge to the south.

We continued our trip up the mountain on the narrow winding road. Silver sage dotted the green, grassy slopes and the north facing slopes became heavily forested with Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, spruce, and small stands of aspen. At the top we reached Lemhi Pass, which was fairly open with spectacular vistas in several directions.

At 7,373 feet Lemhi Pass is an ancient gateway, a hole in the mighty Bitterroot Range, the continental divide separating the waters of the Pacific from the waters of the Atlantic. This passage was well known to the Indian tribes and their well worn paths traversed this gap. Lemhi Pass is a convenient passageway through this region, and the boots of mountain man, pioneers and stagecoach wheels soon followed the moccasin traces, in the decades to come.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was overjoyed to reach the headwaters of the Missouri River after toiling for many months, towing, poling and rowing their canoes upstream. They had hoped to find an easy water passage by canoe to the Pacific, but what they saw looking out to the west from the top of Lemhi Pass was one snow capped mountain range after another. An endless archipelago of peaks and ridges. The only water route through this region to the waters of the Pacific was the Salmon River which was impassible by canoe or horse.

I heard the screech of a hawk and spotted two Red-Tailed Hawks flying in tandem directly over the pass, as if they were playing tag, darting back and forth, wingtip to wingtip. Perhaps it was a mother hawk teaching a young bird the finer arts of aerial acrobatics or a mate teasing its partner. The birds lingered over the high ridge, in a timeless ritual of gliding wings, propelled by thermal updrafts, against a hazy blue sky.

The paths of warriors and pioneers has long grown over by bunch grass and trees and only the gravel stage coach road remains, and the remembrance of explorers and hunters. The view from the pass was spectacular, with mountains in all directions, many of them snow capped, and shawled with forest. It was quiet with only the sound of the wind in the tree tops, and the birds at play. We didn't see a single person on our passage over the mountains, which was all the better as far as I was concerned. Lemhi Pass is a place I could linger for several days, in all its natural splendor. But like Lewis and Clark I have places to go, trails to conquer and journals to write.

Buffalo Trace on The Chinook Prairie

I have always enjoyed trekking the prairie of eastern Montana. On on particular trip I drove north of Chinook, Montana, towards the Canadian border. The medicine line. I had a map showing federal lands and I was searching for undisturbed prairie. A chunk of bunch grass wilderness.

The road bed was gravel and my car kicked up a plume of chalky colored dust. I found a wide spot in the road to park and headed out on foot across the flat prairie, on no particular path, intent on exploring and wandering. To the south, about 30 miles away, I could see the high peaks of the Bears Paw Mountains at 5,000 to 6,000 feet. The summits are scarfed with black patches of timber; douglas fir, subalpine fir and ponderosa pine and the creek bottoms are lined with wild rose, chokecherry, service berry and willow.

The prairie I was hiking was about 2,600 feet in elevation, on a level plain, with an occasional shallow drainage, most of them dry, and a few stock ponds and small lakes, that shelter ducks and shorebirds. The prairie looks flat but it's quite deceiving because there are hidden arroyos which you can't see until you get out and start hiking. I continued my trek, wandering towards the east and my truck was soon out of sight. The sky was a dark indigo blue color and cloudless, and it was a fine day to be out.

The prairie seems trackless but there are a many over grown trails of buffalo and elk, Indians, cowboys and whiskery runners. The prairie is dominated by grasses, typically, buffalo grass, grama, wheatgrass, and needlegrass and the home of mule deer, pronghorn, jackrabbit, prairie dogs, coyotes, fox, 13-lined ground squirrel, badgers, sage grouse, sharp-tailed grouse, and greater prairie chickens. Long gone are the buffalo, wolves and grizzlies.

It's so quiet on the high plains you can almost hear yourself think. The limitless horizon is daunting, and it seems to swallows you alive. Some find it lonely on the prairie but I find it exhilarating. Often the only noise is the rustling of wind across the dry stalks of bunch grass, and the occasional screeching of a Red-Tailed Hawk, "keeeeer keeeer". Or the whistling sound made by the wings of a brace of teal, flying low headed for scarce water.

A Horned Lark landed on a nearby perch, and stared at me, as if I am disturbing his peace or invading forbidden territory. The lark, in his bandido like outfit (minus the sombrero) looked directly into my eyes, warning me to flee his prairie empire. The Horned Lark has very unique coloration with black like horns, a dark mask and a conspicuous black breast band under the throat like a bandanna. The Lark lingered for a few minutes, giving me the evil eye, and I decided to move on, and end my intrusion on it's nesting territory.

At night the vast prairie of eastern Montana is wall to wall stars, planets and meteors. The Milky Way dominates the sky from horizon to horizon and northern lights often dance the sky shimmering, shaking, waning and waxing. The Indians have a belief that the northern lights are our ancestors, coming back to visit.

I walked slowly through the short grass and kept one eye to the ground, looking for interesting rocks or other objects. Much of northern Montana was glaciated by continental glaciers, leaving a wide diversity of rocks and minerals, in its wake.

I spotted something on the ground, out of the corner of my eye that looked odd. The object had a curved shape and it was a horn. I thought perhaps it was from a domestic cow but it was a horn from a buffalo. A trace of the ancient herds. The outside surface of the horn was badly eroded and flaked but it retained its shape and heft. I decided to keep the buffalo horn put it in my pack.

13 million buffalo, once roamed Montana. By 1883 buffalo had been exterminated by hide hunters with one of the last massacres occurring in northern Montana in the Sweetgrass Hills. A few remnant herds were protected in Yellowstone Park and on the Flathead Reservation and exist to this day.

I crossed a shallow ravine, crawling through thick brush, and a few hours later turned and headed back to the west, towards my truck. I hesitated because the terrain looked very unfamiliar with no distinguishing landmarks, except for the Bears Paw Mountains, way off to the south. I knew I had to hike in a westerly direction but I wasn't sure where my vehicle was. It was a warm summer day and I had plenty of time to find my way, and to scout new territory. Ahhh, the life of the high plains drifter.

Playing at the Bottom of Glacial Lake Missoula

I grew up in the small town of Pablo, Montana and as kids we played at the bottom of a lake, that was at one time, 2,000 feet deep. Covered by waters and glaciers. This huge inter mountain lake was an ice age relic, that disappeared about 13,000 years ago. Glacial Lake Missoula. Pablo is a small town in the Flathead Valley and is located directly adjacent to the Mission Range, a magnificent archipelago of alpine peaks and forests. Geologic research has shown that the massive Cordilleran ice sheet or glacier, covered even the highest peaks of the Mission Mountains, some 4,000 feet deep, as far south as the Pablo area.

The glaciers are mostly gone now except on some of the highest peaks of the Missions.

Glacial Lake Missoula was formed when the Cordilleran ice sheet moved south and blocked the Clarks Fork River near the Idaho border. A huge lake was formed behind the immense ice dam and its waters spread 200 miles to the east, with major lobes to the north and south. Lake Missoula at its peak covered 17,000 square miles, and inundated parts of several major river valleys including the Clearwater, Blackfoot, Clarks Fork, Bitterroot and the Flathead. Research has shown that this ice dam was breached by waters of Glacial Lake Missoula at least 40 times, creating huge floods the inundated eastern Washington and Oregon, following the Columbia River to the sea. This ancient lake and the ice sheets are long gone but a great deal of evidence was left in its wake, including Flathead Lake.

As kids we knew little about geography, but the traces of momentous geologic events was everywhere. Not that we cared as we were just interested in playing and exploring. There was a sandy area in our back yard and we dug pits, trenches, tunnels, piled up mounds and scraped shallow canyons. It was easy digging with nary a rock to be found. I remember many times digging furiously down through those soft layers, to see how deep I could go. The bottomless abyss. In reality my excavations probably never reached a depth of more than 4 or 5 feet, before supper interrupted mining operations. We were like a bunch of badgers rooting around and digging in the sand.

We constructed highways, bridges, tunnels, towns, forts, mountain ranges and canyons in the sand and raced our toy trucks and cars through a make believe world. These fine feats of engineering usually disappeared a few hours later, covered up by newer endeavours or simply stomped on or blown away by spurious winds.

This ocean of sand in the area around Pablo, was lain down by streams, rivers and floods from melting glacial ice or silt deposited at the bottom of lakes, which then drained away leaving a flat sandy plain.

Then there were the tunnels the older kids had dug, that were so narrow you had to belly crawl through them. These adits were dug horizontally in the soft sand and were about 8 feet below the surface, and 10-15 feet long. I was very fearful of venturing into those shafts and never lingered long in those dang, dark tombs. The soft walls and ceilings could have easily collapsed, snaring us permanently in glacial debris.

There were scattered ponds in the valley, that were formed during ancient glaciation, from huge chunks of ice left behind by retreating glaciers that melted, leaving permanent lakes. Sometimes called pot holes. The lakes and creeks abounded with fish, ducks, geese and shore birds and were a delight to explore and investigate. We plied these waters with our home made fishing poles, pursing devious cutthroat trout and in the winter dusted off our ice skates and spent many hours gliding and sliding on the thick ice.

In the winter we would snow sled at a place we called Big Mountain, after the ski hill up north at Whitefish. Our sledding hill was a series of small mounds which were probably glacial moraines; areas of rock and sand literally bulldozed up by ancient glaciers. The hills were heavily forested with dark green Ponderosa pine, and a couple of miles to the west, rose the foothills of the Mission Range.

The Mission Mountains shadowed over us with its towering peaks, ridges, glacial horns, cirque valleys and rushing clear water streams that roared down white water rapids. Glorious stands of pine and fir covered the mountains and parts of the valley floor and many a youthful expedition traversed the hidden glades and towering stands of yellow pine.

Cataclysmic geologic events sculpted the Flathead Valley and surrounding mountains and created a wondrous landscape and it was an incredible place to come of age. I probably still have glacial silt embedded in some of my toys that have survived my childhood and many fond memories of romping at the bottom of ancient lakes.