Lolo Pass Winter Outing - December 1, 2024

Participants: David and Julie Kahl

It was Thanksgiving weekend, there were folks who wanted to go but had other obligations, so it was just David and I. We had been up to Lolo Pass on Fri, and found nice skiing that was deteriorating with the warm sunny days. Anticipating that after yet another day of warm sunny conditions that the skiing would be more iffy, we chose to snowshoe. It was yet another warm sunny day, and we snowshoed on the snowshoe trail, up Pack Ridge, the ridge between Pack Cr. Rd. and Hwy 12. It’s exactly 1 mile/1.61k to the Pack Ridge summit, about 400 ft/121.92m (5200 to 5600ft/1584.96m - 1706.88m) up. Most of the 400 ft/121.92 is gained in about 2/3 of a mile/1.06k on the east/north side of the ridge, above the Lolo Pass Visitor’s center. At the bottom are two trails, one that stays low and goes 1/2 mile/0.80k to the Pack Cr. Rd., and the one that goes up. It’s one of those trails that is steepest at the bottom and gets less steep as you go up. We were following a well defined track and trail markers. I have bails on the back of my snowshoes that can be put up as a heel support and makes climbing steep terrain more like plain walking. Used them, but a little tricky in the few “down hill” sections of the trail. Just below the summit ridge there is a road to cross, then follow the ridge top undulations to the summit. Great views down the Hwy 12 corridor in Idaho, across to Wendover Ridge, and the hills that make the part of the ski area across Hwy 12. To the south we could see down the back of the Bitterroots, St. Joseph, Heavenly Twins, St. Marys and Ranger Peak. Directly across Pack Cr. was Mt. Fuji, with the stair step roads down its northeast flank that are a 1970’s clear cut that failed to recover, even 50 years later. We had some lunch and started down.We came off the west side of the summit mound and were trying to figure out the best way down, without going down what we had come up. We faced a dilemma that we’ve had everything we’ve come off of Pack Ridge, not being sure exactly where the snowshoe trail goes. There is a trail marker at the summit, and I’s swear in the past we had seen trail markers down where we were, but not the last few times we had come off this way. Wondered if the “official trail” went back down to the road we had crossed and continued down from there. In the saddle just below the summit mound was an old road that we knew would lead us down into some terrain we really didn’t want to be in, though some snowshoe tracks went down that way. And, every time we went that way we did eventually end up on the return trail, way down. Today we followed snowshoe tracks around a knob just to the west of the summit, as I knew that the terrain below that next saddle was more gentle than below the first. The snow was weird, at the heat of the day we could see the sun turning it to corn snow, but the very top layer remained dry and loose and slid when we went down even short slopes, sometimes I just dropped down and slid down on a thigh for a few feet. In the shade it was light and powdery. We followed the snowshoe tracks down like the first 100 ft/30.48m and they lead into a small clearing, in big trees, on the edge of a drop off. There they stopped, they must have turned around and went back up. All over the ridge we had been seeing old -blown over, filled in- moose tracks. Some lead out of this clearing down through the trees and we followed them until they went into some dense trees where we didn’t want to go. Instead we strung together some “snow ramps” through the trees, in places following big cat tracks. Eventually we came to another drop off, down through alder brush. David went down first and ended up in a hole.There were two small trees placed so it seemed like he should be able to pull himself up on them, but they just bent. Eventually, he got maneuvered around so he could get his snowshoes off and cradled out. I dropped down, careful to keep my snowshoes on the alder branches, and out of the hole, but he still, had to help pull me back up on my feet. From there I crossed over a small open bowl, tracking above some alder brush, across to the other side of the bowl where I though I could see snowshoe tracks. David avoided that and went lower and rejoined me by the tracks which proved to be more moose tracks. They provided us with enough break in the snow surface to make going down easier. Then we encountered a snowboard track, followed it down a bit more until it went over an edge. We crossed another gully and working down it negotiated another drop and found ourselves in not much snow, beneath large trees, and picked our way down to a last drop before coming out on Pack Cr. Rd. We were about 1/4 mile/0.40k from where the lower snowshoe trail crosses Pack Cr. Rd. and we followed it back to the Visitors’ Center. Where the trail crosses Pack Cr. Rd. we saw some people, but other than that, we encountered no other people on our journey. We went only a bit over 2 1/2 miles/4.02k but got in all the good stuff: stiff climb, summit views, off trail wandering, snow wallowing and challenging route finding. It was a nice, beautiful day.