Lincoln County in the far northwest corner of Montana was still a kind of mysterious place to me even though I passed through it back in 2001.  It was high on my list to spend a couple days there, climb a mountain, and see a few natural wonders there on this trip.  I have to admit, though, that the heat cut my plans a little short and I cut out hikes to the Ten Lakes Loop and Nasukoin Mountain I was planning because of the very high temperatures, by which I mean forecast highs around 100*.

Heading northwest from Flathead Valley, I first stopped in Eureka, a small remote town in the Tobacco Flats Valley I passed through on my way back from Canada in March.  I’d have spent a few days in the area for those hikes if the heat hadn’t been so extreme, but did stop at its open air historical museum and went for a stroll around town.  Usually when you see plain people – nut sure if Amish, Mennonite, or Hutterite here – on bicycles, you know you’re in an out of the way place.

Lake Koocanusa, a hundred-mile long reservoir created by the Libby Dam on the Kootenai River that goes all the way into Canada is a short distance west of Eureka, and there’s one bridge across it.   I took it and continued west over the Purcell Mountains into the Yaak, the most remote valley in northwest Montana.  The Purcells are a mountain range mostly in British Columbia that extends south into northwest Montana and is unique in being the only range of Woodland Caribou in the Lower 48.  I would have loved to see some, since I associate them with Arctic Tundra rather than thick forest.  From my Montana Gazetteer road atlas, I was convinced the road over the Purcells to the Yaak was going to be a rough gravel one.  It was in fact paved all the way and quite good.  I must have risen a lot in altitude from the lake without realizing it, because beyond the crest of the range the gradual descent through the forest into the Yaak River Valley seemed almost endless.  The Yaak truly feels like the Pacific Northwest with deep dark forests and numerous waterfalls on the tributary streams.  And it’s supposedly Sasquatch country as well as grizzly country.    

Well, my agenda for the area was to climb Northwest Peak, but it was so hot by the time I got to the village of Yaak, I decided to take the rest of the day off to drink beer and have a burger in the quite famous Dirty Shame Saloon.   The owners there aren’t shy about displaying their political sentiments, flying the Confederate and Trump flags along with U.S., Canada, and Montana flags.  I asked why there was an empty flag pole. They said they had to replace their Gadsden (Don’t Tread on Me) flag because it had gotten too tattered.  Yaak would appear to be one of the Trumpiest spots in the hardcore Trump territory of Northwest Montana, the kind of isolated place favored by survivalists and militia men.  And the conversations in the bar on Friday afternoon did seem particularly political.  I had the $7 cheeseburger special and responded “pepperjack” when asked by the waitress what kind of cheese I’d like on my burger.  Those in the know all seemed to say “White American” with a chuckle. And they even have a beer wagon outside with a wide variety of choices if you’d prefer draft to bottles. They give you a small plastic cup and it’s serve yourself on an honor system, $2 per fill up.  I lost track of how much I drank somewhere through the afternoon and evening.   The only WiFi in the area is by satellite and it was poor, but I did get the weather report for Yaak and it heated up to a scorching 111* by late afternoon in what seems like it would normally be a chilly, wet place.  I recall chatting at a picnic table outside with some dudes from Missoula into the evening but don’t really recall going to sleep.  I woke up in the morning, though, feeling like I slept incredibly well despite all the beer.

Northwest Peak is in the even more extreme northwest corner 15 miles from Yaak on the Pete Creek Road.  Again, this turned out to be significantly better than I was expecting, being paved most of the way and decent gravel the rest to the trailhead.  The paved road is only one lane wide with occasional turnouts for passing most of the way, and the dense forest makes it feel almost like driving through a tunnel. You don’t want to take turns very fast here.  The road climbed steeply in the last few miles to a trailhead at 6,300 feet.  The high start made the heat of the hike less excruciating, because I didn’t get as early a start as I would have liked.   The five-mile round trip hike to the peak at 7,705 feet was actually pretty easy after what I did on Great Northern two days earlier. I have to admit the scenery was a little disappointing most of the way up, largely through an area affected by a forest fire.  The last half mile to the peak was through piles of black rock and the peak completely covered with the rock, of geological interest I don’t understand.  The views of surrounding peaks and ridges into Idaho and British Columbia were good but nothing like those from Great Northern. There’s also a fire lookout hut on the summit which is no longer in use. I had the summit to myself to have lunch, except for the multitude of flies and other insects.

I continued south through the Yaak Valley to its intersection with the Kootenai River a few miles before the Kootenai enters Idaho at the lowest elevation in Montana at 1,800 feet.  It would seem natural that the state’s lowest elevation would be on the plains at the North Dakota border rather than in seemingly mountainous territory in the northwest, but that also explains why it can get so hot in these parts.  Yaak Falls were a quite impressive stop along the way.