missoulajournal

Hiking Lolo and Cha-paa-qn Peaks

There are literally dozens of hikes to be taken that are very close to homes of the citizens of our valley... many with access within walking distance of our front doors. Two of the most exhilirating are longer hikes (comprising of most of a full day hiking) to the highest peaks at the edges of our valley: Lolo Peak, anchoring the northern extension of the Bitterroot Range at Lolo (10 miles south of Missoula), and Cha-paa-qn Peak  at the northwesterly boundary north of the Clark’s Fork River near Alberton (25 miles west of Missoula).

PHOTO ABOVE: Note the nob of Lolo's lower northernmost summit to the left in the photo. Beyond the summit lies Missoula 6000 feet lower on the valley floor.

As a lifelong citizen of this area I have come to view the peaks as both figurative and literal guardians of our compact valley system. Missoula is the center-most bowl of five valleys that stretch every direction from our city center (there are actually six valleys if the Lolo Creek valley is counted).

No special significance is attached to Lolo or its name (I’ve heard it was named after a trapper who was killed by a Grizzly bear in a ravine off the mountain’s northernmost ridge), but a deep spiritual significance is attached to Cha-paa-qn by the members of the Salish Kootenai tribe, whose reservation, the Flathead Reservation, stretches north from the peak.

PHOTO ABOVE-RIGHT: The peak in the background is Lolo Peak's higest summit (9096 ft.). The ridge in the foreground leads to the 300-ft. lower northern summit.

The never-logged shoulders of Lolo are habitat to several sizeable herds of elk, and road access is limited for several miles to the north and west. The jagged ridge of the Bitterroot Mountain Range zig-zags to the south and presents a stunning view from the southernmost nob of the peak’s two tips. But when you're at the Lolo Peak summit, the views are breath-taking no matter what direction you face. Looking north you can see the profile of the Mission Range 60 miles to the north. And to the northwest you can see the silhouette of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

That Lolo has two nobs is one of it’s most elusive (and surprising) features. Depending upon your vantage (either from the valley floor or an adjacent ridge top) Lolo most often appears to have only one peak. But if you drive west on Highway 12 from Lolo, the mountain will gradually reveal the pronounced outline of its two peaks. The northernmost peak is mistakenly considered the “official” summit, but at 8634 ft. it’s almost exactly 300 feet lower in elevation than the southern peak (which actually seems to be much more than 300 feet higher).

The best vantage point of the two peaks is from the higher southernmost peak, of course. There, climbers can look down on the northern peak and then farther at the bowl that houses Missoula.

The view upward to Lolo Peak is a privilege offered almost daily to Missoula citizens. The view is particularly inspiring when you traverse south-westerly via bike or auto on any Missoula street of the Stephens Avenue district. On those streets. particularly Stephens Avenue (the view from the photo above) and Brooks Street, you’ll see Lolo Peak perfectly framed, because those streets were platted precisely with Lolo summit as vertex anchor.

Hikes to both Cha-paa-qn and Lolo are great fun. A round-trip to Lolo will take a full day. The hike to Cha-paa-qn can be done in half a day, but the final several hundred yards to the summit require scrambling over huge chiseled boulders (I’ll post more info about this hike later).

For me it was an experience of a lifetime to ascend Lolo and be able to look down upon Missoula. Of course any hike I can take as I get older is a priviledged experience of my lifetime.

Lolo, that southern guardian, has held even more significance for me: a graphic image of Lolo which I sketched became the backdrop for the logo of the Lolo business we owned for 17 years. It's been quite directly the core focus of my personal and professional daily life for most of my life.

Answer to first comment below: Within the past 10 years Cha-paa-qn Peak became officially known by the name the Salish-Kootenai Tribe have historically used for the peak. I have added descriptive links for hikes to both peaks (see highlighted text in first paragraph).

Western Tananger

We've spotted numerous Western Tanangers in the Montana back country over the years. But the shy, and very active, bird doesn't stay in one place long. This one gave me barely outside of 5 seconds to zoom in, frame and shoot. My first-ever Western Tananger photo!

Lift Me Up!

The first verified proclamation of spring in our Western Montana valley is the colorful emergence of the Sagebrush Buttercup (fianunculus glabemmus), often seen as a bright carpet-like spray of lemon-yellow brilliance covering the greenest patches of the low-lying valley meadows in mid to late March.

Barely 2 inches in height, blossoms are centered by a profuse burst of stamens, surrounded by five bright, waxy, shiny petals. Blossoms will sway in a unified dance buffeted by gusty spring breezes atop thin, reedy stems which are anchored to three-lobed, fleshy leaves. Buttercups are rarely solitary and most often appear as thick carpet-like patches of brilliant yellow in greening meadows.

I remember, as a schoolboy, becoming emotionally infected by this flashy harbinger of seasonal renewal and often picked a handful, cradled them in my hands and dashed home, where I gently placed them in a shallow bowl with water, and then presented them to my mother, who loved them as much as I. They would wilt within hours so she would often reserve the most perfect and press them in a dictionary to use later in homemade greeting cards.

Buttercups are a living dichotomy... simultaneously hardy and fragile. They push up amid the driest tinder of autumn from thick roots and then quickly develop button bulbs before receding into dormancy under winter snows until spring’s earliest greening. As such, they are the first bursts of March color, blossoming brilliantly but briefly before submerging under later-arriving, more vigorous spring growth.

But these true wildflowers are fragile and cannot tolerate population or development. They disappear under any foot traffic, tilling or development and are slowly vanishing from our increasingly crowded valley.

Spring's Rite @ Missoula Skatepark

Balmy copper-orange spring skies, a wet & westerly chinook and sudden sprouts of green along the edges of the city’s sidewalks signaled the first fertile teaser of balmy weather over the weekend.

And while Missoulians seemed eager, in general, to get out and take it all in, no locale was more populated with the celebration of spring’s first rites than the new Missoula Skatepark, located downslope of the western berm of the Orange Street Bridge.

At any given time on Saturday, at least a hundred young boarders, mostly adolescent males, took turns traversing the swails, dips, ramps, bowls and fences of the newest Missoula City park.

Constructed over the summer of 2006 through the support of numerous local groups and Missoula Parks & Recreation Dept., the facility was christened last Sept. 24 by several hundred spectators, who watched famed professional skateboarder, Tony Hawk, give the facility a thorough test ride.

On this spring weekend though, it was the site for regular joes... boarders as young as 4-5 and perhaps as old as 35 or so, out in force to work out the kinks of a winter-full of sclerotic inactivity.

I was taken by the scenic “backdrop” of the view behind the park to the north. Framed by the spire of the St. Francis Xavier Church to the west and the sturdy dome of the City-County Courthouse to the east, with the still-snowbound Rattlesnake Wilderness in the distance, the park presents a striking view of the city’s scenic northern rim.

Most important though is that this is a new park for a distinct (sometimes outcast) minority, formerly outsiders whose sport has now been dubbed legit with the establishment of a beautiful and functional facility.