Canget - Red Lodge, Montana

TRAILS | DESTINATION RED LODGE© Creative Design WorksCome Out ‘n Play!When your backyard consists of over a million acres of high countrywilderness, being told to “Go outside and play” is literally the Best. Thing. Ever.Whether they were looking for gold, minerals, or adventure, the area’s earliestexplorers always knew our backcountry was part of our wealth. As early as1897, trails began snaking their way up the West Fork canyon, cleared by handwith hacksaws and pickaxes. Today those same trails can take you to countrythat has changed very little over the past century.First things first: There is absolutely no shame in a stream-side saunter. Some ofour best-loved terrain is a quiet path through the woods with plenty of boldersto perch upon and watch the creek burble past. Don’t let the big packs andheavy boots fool you: we love Silver Run, too.Cutting Ties in the West ForkIf you’ve ever walked the Basin Lakestrail south of Red Lodge in the WestFork canyon, you know that not onlyis there a beautiful waterfall-cascadewithin 100 yards of the trailhead, butit’s one of the more interesting, denselyforested short hikes in the area. And forcurious types, one of its mysteries is thatabout halfway up the trail, at over 8,000’elevation on a mountainside less than 10miles from town, it suddenly feels likeyou’re walking through an abandonedvillage. Who would have built permanentcabins in such a remote spot? you askyourself. (You know you do.)In 1887, the town of Red Lodge wasbrand-spankin-new. Census-takersrecorded no more than “nineteen tenthouses and five saloons” (also tents,naturally) that year. But the coal wasplentiful and high quality, and withintwo years, the railroad had come totown, the East Side mine was up andrunning, and the boom was on.That boom created a massive need forready-to-use timber. Conveniently, in thelate 1800s, a series of wildfires had sweptacross the Beartooth Front, burningpractically everything you can see fromtown, and turning that vast expanse offorest into a goldmine of standing, kilndriedlumber. The only problem wasgetting it to town.Try to imagine this valley back then. Afew tents and some wooden structuresin the valley. Frenetic construction onthe east side. Glacier Lake dam, whichcontrols Rock Creek’s flows, won’t bebuilt until 1937, so in high water thecreek becomes a serious force of nature.And beyond a 3-mile radius of today’sSnow Creek Saloon is wilderness.Getting to the Basin Lakes trail now isan easy 12-minutedrive. But as late as1917, the only roadup that canyon wentabout half that far.Beyond that, youwere getting nothingthrough but a string ofpackhorses.The men seeking tocut enough trees forboth the mines and agrowing communityweren’t going to wastehalf their day justgetting to work. So,doing what loggersdo, they built camps near their jobsites.One of those camps is what you’rewalking through on your way to BasinLakes. One Forest Service inventoryin the late 1960s showed 13 cabins,some watering troughs, a dump andrandom pieces of equipment up there,all left quietly decaying for most of acentury now. Other tie-hacker camps(so-named because of a similarity to theway railroad ties were cut) were in theWillow Creek valley, high up NicholsCreek, and on the Silver Run system.According to Mayor Brian Roat, whosegrandfather was on one of those tiehackercrews, “all those Finnlanders were© Kari Claytonwoodsmen, and they’dwork up there summerand winter, cutting trees.Where they were able toget horses in, they’d loadthe logs onto a bolsterwagon and haul them totown.” But where theycouldn’t—the reallysteep terrain—they hadto improvise. (Haveyou noticed how steepthat West Fork canyonis?) Several places, youcan see the “skid trails,”vertical gouges in themountainside wherethey would slide the logsdown to lower elevation. Once they gotthe logs to the valley floor, they wouldstack them all up creekside, waiting forspring.2 FACEBOOK.COM/REDLODGE TWITTER.COM/REDLODGEMONTANA