Kootenai National Forest

Kootenai National Forest

The Kootenai, located in the mountainous terrain of extreme northwestern Montana, holds a variety of landscapes for explorers. The pathways that skirt the magnificent 8,000-foot peaks of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, as well as the striking collage of cliffs, spires, and canyons at Bull Lake and Marten Creek, provide impressive views. But first-time visitors to the Kootenai would be remiss if they didn’t devote at least some of their time to unhurried ambles through its exquisite forests.

For a sampling of stately ponderosa - the pine that John Muir said gives forth the finest music to the winds-drive the Tony Peak Road southeast of Libby or along Lower Bristow Creek on the western edge of Lake Koocanusa. Hikers will find stands of alpine larch on Northwest Peak in the 19,000-acre Northwest Peaks Scenic Area, while grand old firs line the Fisher Mountain-Tepee Lake Trail.

The gnarled whitebark pine greets walkers in the beautiful 15,700-acre Ten Lakes Scenic Area. And finally, for a taste of one of the grandest trees anywhere on the continent, head for the Ross Creek Cedar Grove. The Kootenai has been, and will continue to be, Montana’s premier timber-producing forest.

Yet scattered among the logging areas are a hundred wild nooks and crannies that beckon the angler, hunter, hiker, canoeist, berry picker, skier, and snowmobiler. It’s in these lush protected areas that visitors can gain a real sense of what Longfellow meant when he wrote of the forest primeval-that kind of secret, hushed place, where the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, stand like Druids of old.