Ghost Cabins on LoLo Creek, Lewis and Clark Trail, Part 2

Gold Miners Cabin

Musselshell Meadows

Daylight.   Day 2 on the historic Lolo trail.  Sept. of 2010.  The smell of aromatic cedar filled my nostrils as I emerged from the camper.  I stretched and yawned and was greeted by whispering water, coursing over cold granite cobble and river rock.  The Lewis and Clark expedition trekked through this region in 1805 and covered the same territory in 1806 on their return back east to St. Louis.   

The morning sun rays arrowed through the surrounding fir trees, and grudgingly surrendered a feeble warmness.   Filtered by 150 feet or more of tree branch.  Old growth forest. If your socks were wet you could hang them on a branch and they might dry by late afternoon.  Maybe.  I found some newspaper and wadded them up and placed them in the fire pit.  A layer of white ash was all that remained of last nights blaze.    


I took my axe and split some kindling off a piece of cedar.  Easy, effortless and uncomplicated.  Like chopsticks 18 inches long and painfully dry.    I laid the pieces on top of the dry newspaper and struck a match and ignited the newspaper.  The flames nibbled at the news and chomped at the wood, like wolf teeth on elk bones.  A bonfire emerged to give real warmth to the cold.           


After breakfast we headed towards Musselshell camp, where I had worked my first summer with the Forest Service back in 1975. The road followed Lolo Creek, in a north westerly direction, coiling and curling in the confines of the narrow canyon.
 
We noticed couple of old buildings near the creek about 3 miles into our trip.  There were two old log cabins in a small clearing surrounded by tall fir and pine trees.  Logs harvested from the nearby forest then neatly notched to fit together then neatly stacked to form walls.

Probably erected by gold miners a few decades back, to give them shelter while the working the placer gold in the creek.  Little bitty pieces of gold dust and larger nuggets sifted from the gravels. Claims then abandoned after their diggings ran out of pay dirt.  The placer gold was all panned out and and riches hauled off.  The cabin roofs were sheathed in tired tin, stained with streaks of brown rust.   

Small fir trees had started to move in and grow tight up against the cabins, hugging the timbers.  The tin roof on one cabin was partially ripped away, by the gales of winter, tearing away at history .  The forest will fully reclaim this meadow in the next 20 years and the cabins will slowly rot into the ground.  Slow oxidation.  

Mounds of gravel poked out here along the sides of the stream, and they were being slowly devoured by brush and small trees.  The damaging detritus of placer gold mining.  The historic marks of sourdoughs at work with pick axe, shovel and gold pan sluicing the sands and gravels.  Turned the creek upside down.  I am glad the gold miners had gone bust and moved on, letting nature slowly shake off the damage to this beautiful valley.


Within an hour we spotted Musselshell Meadows, a lush prairie surrounded by tall trees.  We drove by the Forest Service work station, a small cluster of buildings with several vehicles parked on the gravel.   It looked completely unfamiliar to me, after a 36 year absence.    There used to be a cluster of old bunk houses with a nearby cook shack but they were gone or unrecognizable and had probably been torn down to provide better lodgings.

Musselshell Meadows brought back a flash fire of memories, like brilliant gold nuggets emerging from the sand.

Lava Mountain Traverse

Fields of Indian Paintbrush

Granite fin

Mountain Wildflowers

Lewis Woodpecker

Late summer.  The arrowleaf balsamroot's were finished blooming and the leaves dried out.  I brushed my boot against an arrowleaf it made a sound like a diamond back. Rattlesnake that is.  The chokecherry and service berry shrubs were covered with berries but they are still bright green.  A few sun weeks away from being ripe. A coming delight to the birds and bears. 

It was a good day to be out in the Rocky Mountains, on the Lava Mountain Trail in the Boise Mountains.  The temperature was perfect at about 80 degrees with cerulean blue skies, dappled with smokey quartz haze.  I spotted a couple of thunderstorms to the south probably over northern Nevada, framed by the Jarbidge Mountains.  

The Lava Mountain trail follows a clear mountain stream that carves the bottom of Russell Gulch, then switchbacks up a south facing slope to a low ridge.   Past some whale fins.   Wedges of sheer granite thrusting up from inner earth.  For some unknown reason.

The dust clung to my boots as I traversed higher, and I soon crossed a lofty ridge where the prairie dwindled, replaced by forest.  One of the main spurs of Lava Mountain.    The canyon to the north  burned over a decade ago, killing many of the trees. A hawk joined me, cruising on the thermals above the ridge. 

I found a suitable log to park on and have lunch.  No reservation required.   A free view with an unobstructed panorama.  I heard a woodpecker and finally located him in a snag patch.   A Lewis woodpecker. 

The Lewis woodpecker has a dark red face with a black hood and a black back, whitish breast and a light red belly,and a white ring around its neck, with a characteristic dark colored pointy bill, perfectly adapted to drilling trees. And snatching secretive bugs from under thick tree bark.   The Lewis Woodpecker was named after the explorer Meriwether Lewis, who first spotted this previously  unknown species on July 20th, 1805 in the Big Belt Mountains of Montana near the Missouri River.

I enjoyed the company of the shy woodpecker, hearing his calls and watching the winged forays through the trees. The woodpecker seemed to linger in the same area and would fly off, only to come back a few minutes later.  A bit later I heard the calls of several nestlings, which had to be baby woodpeckers that the Lewis was feeding.  

The young birds were hidden away in a snag, in a hallowed out cavity in the wood, that had an round entrance about 3 inches across, some 20 feet off the ground.  I walked slowly over towards that dead tree but once I got close the youngsters fell silent. The birds knew a predator was about.  The adult Lewis woodpecker became very agitated, and repeatedly emitted a loud shrill chirping sound, and stayed fairly close to me.  No more than 100 feet at any time.  

I continued my hike hike and was soon at at the top of Lava Peak at 7,800 feet.  Lava peak is surrounded by meadows and the glades, and it was ablaze with wildflowers.  Reds, yellows, oranges, amber.  The view was incredible in all directions.   The wide prairies of the Great Basin dominated the scene to the south with the Danskin Mountains marking the edge of the flats.  Trinity Mountain loomed over the eastern horizon, some 6 miles away at 9,451 feet.  A spectacular pyramid shaped mountain. Trinity Peak is capped with a lookout tower, and a road was visible that gave access to the tower.  The bulldozed road made an ugly scar on the mountain.  It would seem to me that it would have been easier to hike that last mile to the tower and instead of building a road across such a narrow precipice.          

I lingered for an hour and strolled along the rolling ridge.   On the north side near Lava Peak there was a drainage that formed a small bowl, like a miniature glacial cirque.  The bowl was festooned with Indian Paintbrush in a blush of red and purple fields of larkspur.  Blood red and purples.  It was so bright it appeared like the woods were a fire with delicate flames.  

 

Lava Peak used to have its own lookout tower but the actual building is long gone.  There were a few artifacts left over.  Rusty nails and broken glass.   A metal pipe driven into the rocks.  A short ways off the peak there was a sandy area that was all churned up by the elk.  Perhaps a wallow.  There were elk tracks everywhere.  

In the waning light with long shadows I headed back down the trail.  The mountains changed shape and form as the sun drooped towards the west, mending sharp ridges.  Peaks and forests adjusting to finicky light.  It was a great day on the mountain.