LOLO PASS – The brown valley floor can seem to mock the skis of various types that ride perpetually along in my vehicle.
With a Friday afternoon free, it was time to put them into action, get them a little payback, mockery be damned.
So I turned west at Lolo and drove up U.S. Highway 12 to the top of Lolo Pass, pulled in and parked at the Forest Service visitors center and rest area.
It had been too long since the last storm and too warm besides. Crusty snow was the reward of anyone seeking backcountry turns. So I decided to pull out the cross-country touring skis and see some country slide by.
Most folks who come up here as a destination are here for one of two things, cross-country skiing along the groomed ski trails that loop through woods and meadows south of the visitors center or riding a snowmobile along the groomed forest roads that take off in either direction from their intersection with the highway.
Today, I decided I wanted to gain some elevation, so I chose the side of the pass opposite the ski trails, hopping on a road groomed that starts immediately opposite the pass parking area. The grooming is done periodically by the Bitterroot Ridgerunners Snowmobile Club.
The beauty of a weekday ski up this side of Lolo Pass is that the weekender crowd of snowmobilers is generally nowhere to be seen.
It’s quiet as I start skiing northwest of the pass.
The groomed trail contours up and to the right, meeting with a spur track that comes up from a smaller parking area located just on the east, or Montana, side of the pass.
As the route continues gradually up the hill, keep an eye on the draw below on your right. In among the trees a group of snowboarders have built themselves a nice little terrain park, complete with rails and jumps.
A few hundred yards farther along on this particularly sunny Friday afternoon, I ran into a pair of sledders from Missoula who had hiked up the groomed road and were taking advantage of some jumps that had been built by a previous day’s expedition.
The point, they said, was simple. There has been a shortage of snow this winter and they decided (as I had) to go where there was still some snow to play in. Besides, they said, it was a good day for frolicking on the pass.
Continuing up the swale, less than a mile ahead, the groomed route crosses out onto a big, wide open slope, the remnants of the an apparent clear-cut. The road climbs gently along in a traverse of this section, a favorite play slope of snowmobilers and the occasional skier/snowboarder type adventure seekers. The view to the south reveals the white teeth of Lolo Peak and its brethren in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.
After climbing through the trees for a short stretch, you crest the shoulder of the main ridge you’ve been working for and you are treated to a view of a sweeping bowls topped by bunny slope grades that roll off to steeper terrain below. In the distance, the Clearwater National Forest spreads itself to the west, cut deeply by the Lachsa River. Far below, the highway winds toward Lewiston, Idaho.
There is a feeling of history up here, if you open yourself to it.
Nearly two centuries ago, after struggling to find a way through the mountains and into the Pacific Ocean watershed, the Lewis and Clark expedition had encountered the craggy mass of what are now known as the Bitterroot Mountains.
With help the help of members of the Salish tribe the American travelers learned that a trade route crossed Bitterroots through the pass northwest of what is now known as Lolo Peak.
From the ridgetop northwest of the pass, the trail is out there, dropping away to the west.
That was the way the Corps of Discovery had gone, in the footsteps of many Nez Perce before them.
Miles ahead, this groomed snowmobile track eventually intersects what is now dubbed the Nez Perce Trail National Historic Trail. It commemorates the route taken by Chief Joseph’s band of non-treaty Nez Perce as they attempted to escape U.S. troops.
Nearly 750 Nez Perce men, women and children and twice that many horses traveled over 1,170 miles through the mountains, on a trip that lasted from June to October of 1877.
Nowadays the traffic through this part of the Bitterroots is typically more mundane.
But with a pair of skis on my feet, and the unhurried feeling of a very easy cross-county tour on a Friday afternoon, the pleasure of intersecting with history on a mountain ridge couldn’t be more profound.
The brown of the valley, even the traffic of nearby Highway 12, seem far off indeed.
The Bitterroot Range spreads out to the south of Lolo Pass, as seen from the northwest side of U.S. Highway 12, where the old Nez Perce trail climbs up the ridge and is groomed for snowmobiles. On weekdays there is next to no motorized traffic on the trail, which makes it an easy place for a Friday afternoon cross country skiing or snow shoeing expedition. SEPP JANNOTTA - Ravalli Republic
LOLO PASS – The brown valley floor can seem to mock the skis of various types that ride perpetually along in my vehicle.
With a Friday afternoon free, it was time to put them into action, get them a little payback, mockery be damned.
So I turned west at Lolo and drove up U.S. Highway 12 to the top of Lolo Pass, pulled in and parked at the Forest Service visitors center and rest area.
It had been too long since the last storm and too warm besides. Crusty snow was the reward of anyone seeking backcountry turns. So I decided to pull out the cross-country touring skis and see some country slide by.
Continue reading Lolo Pass a crossroads of recreation, history
