Glacier National Park, Day Five: An Autumnal Beauty Display

Day Five: October 30, 2020 (The Seeley Lake and Swan Valley Corridor with “Gus”)

On our last morning in Kalispell, the good Lord provided us with an absolutely stunning sunrise from behind the Swan Range. Although I got some good snapshots with my digital camera, the ones I took with my smartphone were much better. About two miles south, of the Motel 6, I found a nice shoulder of US Highway 93 to pull off for my photo op. Doug said those mountains may be part of, or near to, the Jewel Basin Hiking Area and that my pictures were magnificent.

The first couple of sunrise photographs (above) were taken with my digital camera. As you can tell, though, these others were much better, and I took them with my smartphone.

This morning we got off to an earlier start since we were not going to eat breakfast at the local IHOP. As much as we love this national chain, our plans for breakfast dining was going to be at a small, local place called the Echo Lake Café. Doug found this diner on the internet, and we wanted to give it a try. And I must say, this was one of the best decisions we could have made. It took only twenty minutes before we pulled into the small parking area of this fine eatery, our first waypoint on our journey south.

Doug had the “smoked salmon scramble” which he said was excellent. In his own words, “the texture of scrambled eggs, enhanced by Gouda cheese and salmon, was perfect.” I had “a blueberry pancake, sausage patty and home fried potatoes.” And I was so happy that I did not order two pancakes. When they say their pancakes will fill a plate, that was a little misleading. The pancake did not come on a regular 9-inch plate; it was a platter of much larger size, and the pancake did, indeed, completely fill it. The home fries were great, and the sausage patty was the largest I have ever seen, at least four to five inches in diameter. I would heartily recommend this gem, just 45 minutes south of West Glacier, and needless to say, anytime we are on the west side of Glacier National Park, we will be having breakfast at least once in the Echo Lake Café. Anyone visiting Glacier National Park on the west side must stop here for breakfast at least once. After that first visit, you will want to come back. And if you are planning on driving the Seeley Lake and Swan Valley Scenic Byway, as we did, this makes the perfect start.

Note: The following information provide directions to Echo Lake Café, which is listed at the following address: 1195 Montana Highway 83, Bigfork MT 59911. Telephone number: (406) 837-4252. Hours of operation: 6:30 AM-2:30 PM. Website: www.echolakecafe.com.

Directions from the Kalispell Motel 6 to Echo Lake Café:

• Head south on US Hwy 93 for 7.1 miles.
• Turn left on to MT Hwy 82 east for 6.8 miles.
• Turn right on to MT Hwy 35 east for 0.3 miles.
• Turn left on to MT Hwy 83 south (actually due east) for 2.7 miles. Café will be on the left.

With our stomachs full, we began our homeward journey, this time by traversing the Swan Valley. For topographic orientation, Echo Lake Café’s address is located within Bigfork, MT, which has an elevation of 2,989 feet. From Echo Lake Café, Highway 83 proceeds due east toward the Swan Range for a couple of miles before turning south toward Ferndale, where it eventually is flanked, on the east, by the Swan Range and, on the west, by the Mission Mountains. The café is not, however, actually in the town of Bigfork. We looked for the establishment when we came through on October 27 but could not find it. Bigfork is on Montana State Route 35 on the edge of Flathead Lake. while Echo Lake Café, at 1195 Montana Highway 83, is actually a little over four miles from Bigfork, though it carries a Bigfork address.

After leaving the small, and quaint restaurant, Doug and I continued on MT-83 S, but the road was still heading due east, and would be for about three more miles, before it would take a sharp curve due south. Technically speaking, the Swan Valley Scenic Drive (in S. A. Snyder’s Scenic Driving MONTANA, this is scenic drive #3; Seeley Lake and the Swan Valley: Clearwater Junction To Bigfork), actually began 2.7 miles earlier, at the junction of Montana State Highway 35 E and MT-83 S. It would continue for ninety-one miles to Clearwater Junction at the intersection of MT-83 S and MT-200. Larches sporadically begin to appear in the area traversed by this route. Around mile marker 83-84, there is a cell phone pullout. After a couple of miles, just before mile marker 79, we came to a pullout on the left, with the sign posted “No Shooting,” where a nice stand of larch trees can be photographed at close range. A short distance after the pull out, Swan Lake begins to come into view on the right. A pullout on the right affords views of Swan Lake and the larch-covered mountain slope on the far side of the lake.

Swan Lake is about ten miles long and one mile at its widest point, and it is on the right, or west side, of MT-83. For southbound travelers, entry to the Flathead National Forest occurs just before mile marker 77. Preliminary evidence suggests that larch in this area are still well short of peak color, primarily around color stage 6: pale green/light yellow. Within three miles, however, density (or concentration) of larch trees, particularly on mountain slopes along the eastern (far) shore of Swan Lake, did increase dramatically.

Only in Montana would you find a cellphone pullout but here we had one. The sign actually said “Cellphone Pullout 1/4 mile Ahead.” Can you believe that. I did get a good view, however, of the Swan River from the pullout.

There was a pullout on the right, near mile marker 73, where Swan Lake and larch forests bordering its opposing shores, can be photographed to good effect. A sign posted at this pullout identifies this body of water as Swan Lake, indicates that its maximum depth is 140 feet, and illustrates, at this point, that you have traversed approximately 75-80% of its length from north to south. The elevation of Swan Lake is 3066 feet.

We had driven almost thirty-four miles when we entered the town of Swan Lake, at mile marker 72. From here, it is approximately fifty-six miles to Seeley Lake, our next waypoint on this journey. The tall, stately larches in this particular area are beginning to exhibit a bit more promise in terms of color, i.e., more distinctly yellow than pale green.

Just four miles down the road we came to a great pullout from which I was able to snap some fine pictures of Montana glory. In this great state, God has really worked overtime and made some of his finest masterpieces. From a pullout on the right located near mile marker 68, there is a spur road to the right which Doug designated  as “Larch Alley,” because of the larch trees that line it on both sides for as far as the eye can see; this snow-covered road leads toward a distant mountain whose timbered slopes are further accentuated by ribbons of larch. This road leads to Mission Lookout and Yew Creek Road. According to Googlemaps, I believe this is Porcupine Creek Road.

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A few miles later, near mile marker 65 (with the trip meter reading 40.8 miles), we entered the Swan River State Forest. For the last several miles, we slowly gained altitude, although I have no idea how much. By the time we had driven forty-five miles, from north to south, the larch was progressively displaying a shade of yellow that Doug described as approaching or at peak color. This had been visible for the last six to eight miles. These next photographs were taken somewhere between the mile markers 61-62 on Montana 83.

As we traveled further south along Montana 83, the views began to get much better. I’ll let Doug cover this next stretch:

“As we continued south, the views became more impressive. The “Swan Peak Scenic Viewpoint” pullout is near this point and, for southbound travelers, on the right. (Note: At this point and time, it was literally snowing larch needles). The clearing to the east provides a panoramic view, where larch-laden forest serves as a superb foreground to the snow-capped peaks of the Swan Range. Note: Swan Peak rises to 9289 feet and still holds several glaciers. This view is across Simmons Meadow.”

Beyond the Swan Mountains lies an area perhaps as alluring to serious Rocky Mountain hikers as it is beautiful. The Bob Marshall Wilderness, or as locals affectionately call it, “The Bob” is one area that neither Doug nor I have visited. But we will, someday. Formally designated in 1964, this back country frontier was named for Bob Marshall, a co-founder of the Wilderness Society, an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States.

This wilderness complex, so named because it consists of three areas, composing the Great Bear and Scapegoat Wildernesses as well as the Bob Marshall, extends for 60 miles along the Continental Divide. The Great Bear is to the northwest, and stretches all the way to the southern border of Glacier National Park, while the Scapegoat Wilderness Area is southeast of “the Bob.”

US Highway 2 is to the north and separates the Bob Marshall wilderness complex from Glacier National Park. Augusta, Choteau and Dupuyer are popular entry points from US highways 89 and 287 to the east, while Swan Lake and Seeley Lake, as well as, Hungry Horse, are points of departure for determined backpackers coming from the west. Montana State Route 83, following the Swan River corridor, is the main route to “the Bob” from that area. Montana Highway 200 is the southern border.

“The Bob” with over one million acres (1,009,356) is the fifth-largest wilderness in the lower 48 states, behind only the Death Valley Wilderness, in California and the Frank Church-River of No Return, in Idaho, with the Selway-Bitterroot and Marjory Stoneman Douglas (Everglades) Wildernesses making up the other two areas. It ranges in altitudes of 4,000 to 9,000 or more feet. A long escarpment called the Chines Wall averages 1,000 feet high from its base and extends 22 miles.

With numerous waterfalls, lakes, and dense forests, the wilderness is prime Grizzly bear country, as well as, black bear, moose, elk, cougar, and mountain goats and big horn sheep. Bald eagles, trumpeter swans and osprey are just some of the birds that stretch their wings over “the Bob.”

I got some good shots of the high, snowcapped Swan Range, with bare-branched aspens as foreground at around mile marker 50. Within the next couple of miles, the Mission Mountains were becoming more prominently into view to the west. I’ll let Doug cover it from here:

“At mile marker 44, there was a nice pullout on the right, as described for southbound travelers, to photograph the high peaks of the Swan Range; no larch trees are visible here in the conifer forest foreground. This is an area in which views of the Swan Range to the east and Mission Mountains to the west compete alternately and with good effect for your attention.”

Just prior to mile marker 41, mountain vistas become much more prominent and impressive, but larch trees briefly recede from areas immediately adjacent to the Seeley-Swan Highway.

We passed through the tiny wide spot in the road known as Condon and about seven miles later we reached the Holland Lake Road at mile marker 35. The gravel road led us back to the Holland Lake Lodge on the north shore of Holland Lake.

I took several photos from Holland Lake Lodge of both Holland Lake (elevation 4,031 feet) and the Swan Range. Unfortunately, larch in the immediate vicinity of Holland Lake were currently in the least appetizing of all color phases: that nondescript, transitional, muddy combination of the palest hues of light green and light yellow. At 2 PM, cloud cover began to envelop the high country and a light drizzle began to fall. The Lodge, itself, was closed, presumably for the season, and since there wasn’t anything else to keep us, Doug and I continued south with our rendezvous with the Jim Girard Memorial Grove of old-growth larch trees just to the west of Seeley Lake.

A few miles later, with the trip meter reading 69, things started to pick up. At mile marker 31 we entered an area in which, to quote my brother, “the concentration (or density) of larch trees was extremely high, one that is reminiscent of the Hungry Horse Reservoir area in that respect.”

There were a string of lakes, on the right side of MT-83, all within a few miles of each other, starting with Rainy Lake. Then Summit Lake, followed by Lake Alva and Lake Inez came next. And a few miles past Inez, we came to Seeley Lake. There was a pullout, at mile marker 30 for Summit Lake (elevation 4,176 feet) on the right side of MT-83. I’ll let Doug’s description tell the tale:

“The far side of that lake’s shoreline and adjoining hillside is virtually carpeted with larch trees. By no means does it qualify as “rugged or majestic alpine terrain,” but, for fall-foliage photography, it certainly falls under the category of a high-priority target.”

As we approached Lake Alva (elevation 4,084 feet), about five miles south of Summit Lake, we could see “larches above the far shore which can be seen to the west of this point, form a virtual carpet, many of which appear to be at or near peak color.“

We started seeing Lake Inez (elevation 4,058 feet) at mile marker 22, a short three miles from Lake Alva, The trip meter was reading 78, and the same observation is true of larch in its immediate vicinity. I snapped a few pictures from Tamarack Resort, a place on the windy northeastern shore of Seeley Lake. This was about five miles south of Lake Inez.

At mile marker 14, with the trip meter reading 86.5) we came to the junction of MT-83 and Boy Scout Road, 1.1 miles past the town of Seeley Lake, MT (elevation 4,028 feet). Here are Doug’s directions to reach the James Girard Memorial Tamarack Grove:

“For southbound travelers, turn right (on Boy Scout Road). After 2.4 miles, Boy Scout Road passes Camp Paxon and crosses a bridge where Clearwater River empties into Seeley Lake. Shortly thereafter, one will find room for one or two cars to park (on the left) next to a couple of interpretive signs, which identify the Jim Girard Memorial Grove of old-growth larch trees.”

It wasn’t easy to find “Gus” and the Jim Girard Grove of larch trees. In fact, we had to return to Seeley Lake and get directions, and still, it was difficult to find the right spot. At last, we figured it out. Boy Scout Road took us west and after crossing a bridge where the Clearwater River empties into the Seeley Lake we passed Camp Paxon. Shortly thereafter, Doug and I finally found room to park (actually the area could barely handle two full-sized automobiles) on the left side of the road. There were a couple of interpretive signs, which identified the Jim Girard Memorial Grove of old-growth larch trees.

I’ll let Doug fill us in:

“We finally found “Gus,” the 153-foot-tall, snaggle-toothed patriarch of the Jim Girard Memorial Grove. Gus is believed to be the largest Western larch in the world and is estimated to be 1000 years old and survived approximately 40 wildfires. Gus is clearly the circumference champion among giants in this grove but, if he is also the tallest tree therein, clearly has several rivals for that honor.”

“Note:     The undersides of larch branches are heavily draped with a brownish-black substance of some kind, perhaps moss, that resembles coarse hair or animal fur. Clumps of this stuff can easily be a foot or more in length and 2-3 inches across. One landscape photographer, as well as this source (https://islandnature.ca/2011/01/looking-at-lichens/), identified this material as “old man’s beard” or “witches hair,” with darker forms specifically known as “horsehair” or “bear’s hair” lichens.”

To be considered a champion tree, the tree must be nominated, measured and confirmed. Gus, in the James Girard Memorial Tamarack Grove, in the Swan Valley of western Montana is the largest tamarack (Larix occidentalis, or Western Larch) in the world. The tree stands 153 feet tall and 34 feet wide at its crown.

And yet, this great tree is tiny when you compare it to the great Sequoias in California.

Hyperion, a coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in northern California, stands just over 380 feet, which makes it the tallest living tree in the world. This tree is in the Redwood National and State Parks near the Pacific Ocean, and is estimated to be 600 years old.

Yet, even Hyperion, despite its great size, pales in comparison to General Sherman, a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) which lives in Sequoia National Park on the eastern border of California. By volume, it is the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth with an estimated 52,508 cubic feet of wood. And it is estimated to be 2,300-2,700 year old. To put that in perspective, this tree was anywhere from 300-700 years old when Jesus Christ was born. Only the Great Basin bristlecone pine is older.

The General Sherman, although only 275 feet tall, over 100 feet shorter than the Hyperion, had an estimated mass weight (wet) in 1938 of 2,104 short tons, or 1,910 tons. In comparison, the Fletcher-class destroyer that became the main, or best, United States Navy escort ship, during World War II, only weighed 2,050 tons. While the Hyperion is estimated to contain 18,600 cubic feet of wood, the General Sherman is believed to have 52,508 cubic feet of wood.

There is not a lot in California that I want to see. But someday I hope to visit Yosemite National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Redwood National and State Parks. Until then, I will have my memories of Gus and his companions in the James Girard Memorial Tamarack Grove.

When we returned, from Boy Scout Road, to MT-83 southbound, the junction with Montana-200 was just 14 miles away.

Between mile markers 9-12, the forests to the west of MT-83 were absolutely carpeted with larch in their autumnal finery. And at mile marker 8 there was a pullout on the right, located near this point, which provided opportunities for shoreline photographs of Salmon Lake and an interpretive sign that identifies various rare species of birds, including loons, that utilize its resources at various times of the year. Forests adjacent to the far shoreline of Salmon Lake are, once again, virtually carpeted with larch.

Note: A rest area is located at the junction of MT-83 and MT-200. From this intersection, Missoula was 39 miles away. The first few miles of MT-200 westbound were still characterized by impressive stands of larch, at least to mile marker 20. The onset of darkness made it difficult to determine definitively but, at mile marker 8, swaths of larch still appear to adorn portions of forest on either side of MT-200.

From Doug’s notes: *** In general, the southernmost third of the Seeley-Swan Highway, including the Girard Memorial Grove, was unquestionably the most impressive area we have seen thus far, at least in terms of larch density and proximity to peak color, averaging approximately 7-8 on my imperfect barometer of fall-foliage color. ***

Incidentally, larch do lose those yellow needles, but we don’t know how completely that process occurs, on an annual basis. We drove through a brief “blizzard” of larch needles and encountered many ground surfaces that were carpeted with a thin layer of larch needles.

We finished our fifth day with dinner at the Cracker Barrel in Missoula and spent the night where we first started our trip, in the Expo Parkway Motel-6 just north of Missoula. Day six, Halloween Day, would see us sleeping in our own beds, back in Billings.