The Cabinet Mountains

  Sandpoint, Idaho, United States
Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The town of Libby (pop. 2,626), Montana, nestles in a wooded fold of the Kootenay valley as it sweeps northwest beneath an elegant line of conical peaks. It's a patriotic God-fearing community where an array of churches minister to the faithful and the Stars And Stripes flutter from the wooden porch of many a well kept home.

I rolled, mid-Sabbath, along the sleepy main street of 'historic downtown' to find scarcely a sinner in sight. From ornamented flagstaff fluttered the bright pennants of Denmark, Norway and Sweden - allusions to the town's Scandinavian heritage - while, above the Town Commissioner's Office, the shadowy figure adorning an MIA/POW flag pleaded for release from his communist dungeon, thirty years after the fall of Saigon.

As I wandered around town after dining at a fast food joint I couldn't help but notice that it was election time. A profusion of placards - placed on the verge at strategic junctions or staked into the lawns of local partisans - promoted the claims of rival candidates for a bewildering array of positions at county, state and federal levels. It seemed that everything - apart from the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency - was up for grabs: State Governors, US Senators, US Congressmen, State Senators, State Congressmen, Sheriffs, Judges, Commissioners, Assessors, Treasurers, Secretaries and more besides. A Democratic candidate for the Montana House of Representatives made a blatant play for the local (third or fourth generation) 'Irish' vote using a green shamrock as her logo. But my favourite was the guy called Stormy who was standing for Justice of the Peace.

Outside the motels lining Interstate 2 billboards competed to offer the best deal on hunting expeditions. I stopped into one that advertised Internet services. The clerk told me that Libby is one of the remotest towns in the United States and produced a map to support his assertion. A swathe of green covered western Montana and neighbouring north-central Idaho - 'The greatest area of contiguous wilderness in the lower forty-eight' he boasted proudly. The mountains and forests therein were teeming with armed 'sportsmen', it seemed. No doubt, there were still some animals out there too.

Kootenai Falls MT

Next morning I set forth along the Interstate. Ten miles to the northwest of town the valley narrows to a crag-enclosed gorge through which rail, road and river squeeze. I locked my bike and followed a winding track down through the forest towards the rumble of Kootenay Falls, where the eponymous river plunges over a modest step, then gushes frothily along a narrow chasm spanned by a swinging footbridge. Swaying gently in the breeze atop the rickety wooden structure, I was afforded a view of towering, tree-topped bluffs and blue-hazed mountains beyond.

Five miles beyond the falls, a bullet-riddled road-sign directed me away from the Kootenay Valley and onto sparsely-trafficked Montana 56. Deer skipped into the woods and pheasant pecked at the verge as I pedalled south into the heart of the Cabinet Mountains. Steep-sided green slopes rise on either side of a gently undulating valley. Now and then a sign appeared to announce the existence of a lake where fish could be had and a track disappeared into the woods. Then, just as my hunger was making itself felt, a roadhouse came into view as I'd known it would, having done my homework properly on this occasion. The weekend crowd had been and gone and I found the sprawling wooden place deserted save for an old lady who eyed me suspiciously before fetching me a towering cheeseburger and a cold glass of milk.

Lakeside Community, Cabinet Mountains MT

Newly buoyant, I pushed on, a great grey buttress of rock rising sheer from the woods ahead and to the west. Somewhere atop the ridge burned a forest fire, billowing smoke into the air. Suddenly the trees parted and, across a fiery-red bed of reeds, Bull Lake came into view, a thin band of silver shimmering in the sunlight beneath the aforementioned Bull Rock. Around the water's edge spacious wooden homes - each with its own little jetty - nestled in the woods. 'Private Property' signs, augmented occasionally by the logo of the National Rifle Association, dissuaded intruders of the non-furry variety.

Snowshoe Peak MT

Beyond Bull Lake an opening in the hills to the east afforded a glimpse of the High Cabinets, a rock-walled wilderness of lofty peaks connected by jagged ridges. A track disappeared invitingly into the woods beneath the bulbous domes of three-headed Snowshoe Peak and I wondered, briefly, what fate might hold in store were I to follow it. Good sense prevailed and I continued south across gold-hued water meadows with my old friend, Highway 56. Together we followed the course of the nascent Bull River as it wound its way around a series of evergreen ridges, accompanied by the chirp of birdsong from and a flood of luxuriant late-afternoon sunlight that mirrored the mountains onto the surface of the river's muddy waters. Once in a while a car would pass by, as if to remind me that, somewhere out there, the rest of the world was still in train. As the highway fell away I rolled down through a succession of hairpin bends and into a deep ravine from which I emerged into a broad valley just as the sun dipped behind a distant ridge.

Bull River, Cabinet Mountains MT

In the woods above Cabinet Gorge Reservoir, half a mile from the junction of Highway 56 and Interstate 200, sits a campground. The warden, a friendly lady whose car bumper stickers indicated staunch support for the activities of the U.S. Army, spoke cheerfully of nocturnal bear visits and disappearing cats. When I noted that everybody else in the campground had a trailer she said it was fine by her if I slept in the laundry.

With twilight dropping I wandered down through the trees, arriving on the tranquil lakeshore just as a pale half-moon ascended and the last vestiges of pink drained from the sky. Across the still blue waters to the south rose a dark wooded bluff - part of the Coeur d'Alene Mountains - while to the north and east, a rolling ridge stretched up the valley beyond a low band of pine.

On my return to camp I got chatting to Pat, a hunter from Ohio, and accepted his offer of a ride to the nearest bar. He'd just got back from five days in the hills where he'd been stalking black bear. He'd seen nine bears altogether but hadn't managed a kill, adding, by way of explanation, that it was considered bad form to shoot bear-cubs or their mothers. After dropping me off, Pat returned to the campground, intent on being back on the mountain at dawn to satiate his bloodlust.

Cabinet Gorge MT At Twilight

The walls of the bar were festooned with elk antlers and photographs of smiling sportsmen posing over dead animals. Four guys in camouflage played the slots while a grumpy bartender fetched me a beer along with a tender cut of steak.

The highway was eerily deserted as I set out to walk the two miles back to camp, the smooth silver waters of the lake sparkling in the moonlight to my left. Chanting like an overly self-conscious lunatic to warn wildlife of my presence I began climbing through the forest. The calm of the valley, silent aside from my half-hearted raving, was pierced by the shrill sound of a speeding vehicle. The whine of the engine rose in crescendo until a slowly swivelling beam of light lit up the curtain of trees before me and, at last, a pick-up truck appeared, hurtling around the bend and then up onto the shoulder until it was almost on top of me. I forgot about my furry friends and leapt into the ditch.

The pick-up raced on, finally lurching to a halt with a screech of the brakes a couple of hundred yards down the hill. Then, wheels spinning, it executed a hasty U-turn and sped back up the road towards me. It occurred to me that I was about to die, gunned down by rednecks on a dark lonely road, far from home. The brakes screeched again and I found myself trapped like a frightened rabbit in a blinding glare of headlights - with nowhere to run. A door creaked open and a female voice called out angrily, accusingly: 'What in hell do you think you're doing?' 'Uh... going to the campground' I blurted out. The voice mellowed: 'Do you need a ride?' it asked, the slurred words those of an older woman, perhaps one of voracious felines that I'd been warned about by my friends in Calgary. 'Not that badly' I reflected later as I lay down to sleep amid washing machines and the scent of soap.

Cabinet Gorge Reservoir MT

Next morning I set out to the northwest - as dictated by the lie of the land - on Interstate 200: to my left lay the sparkling-blue waters of Cabinet Gorge Reservoir and beyond, the Coeur d'Alene Mountains; to my right, the Cabinet Mountains; and overhead, a bright blue sky. Before long I'd left the reservoir behind and crossed the state line into Idaho, whereupon the surface of the highway degenerated abruptly and heavy trucks began emerging from roadside quarries. With the new state came a new time zone and suddenly it was time for lunch. The town of Clark Fork (pop. 530) proved as good a place as any to stop.

Refuelled, I pushed on once more, the sky now covered by a thin veil of cloud. A change of scenery ensued as the waters of the Clark Fork River spread out among a marshy island-studded delta before merging with a broad grey expanse of water beyond. Hemmed in by steep-sided mountains on all sides, Lake Pend Oreille curved away to both the south and northwest. At the point where the highway met the lakeshore I paused to examine a stone marker indicating the site of long-since-disappeared Kalispell House, one of the earliest trading posts in the region.

Lake Pend d'Oreille ID

The Canadian explorer David Thompson established Kalispell House in 1809 on behalf of his employers, the British North-West Company. Thompson spent most of his life charting rivers, developing trade with the Indians and searching for the fabled North-West Passage, before dying in poverty-stricken obscurity. The short-lived trading post that he established on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille was manned by French speaking fur-traders known as voyageurs. They named the lake after the local Indian tribe, who they called pend d'oreille on account of the ear-pendants they wore.

Under a darkening sky I pressed on along the lake's northern shore. Flotillas of ducks mustered, ready for action, in the shallows nearby. Across the neck of a wooded peninsula lay the resort town of Hope (pop. 79), its marina filled with yachts. Tree-clump islets stood sentinel at the mouth of a bay as the mists closed in and the swell rose. For some time, the road's rutted surface had been punishing my derrière. Now, with Hope fading behind me, the skies opened and the rain began to pour.

ENDS