Bob's Rocky Mountain Blog

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Glacier National Park, Day Six: An Autumnal Beauty Display

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Day Six: October 31, 2020 The Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Highway and Home!

The last day of Our 2020 Glacier National Park (west side) Trip began with a beautiful sunny morning. Once again, we started the day with an IHOP breakfast. Then after refueling our vehicle, Doug and I hit the highway at 10:28 AM, heading east and homeward bound.

Note: For future reference, those of you who love oldies i.e., 50s and 60s music, the BOOMER 104.1 FM is the Missoula “oldies” station.

We left Missoula from exit 101 of I-90 E heading eastward to the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Byway and then back home to Billings. By mile marker 119, larch accentuate the slopes of hills on the south side of I-90 although certainly not with the density or color saturation seen in the Seeley-Swan Valley. There was a parking area (with pit toilet) on the eastbound side of I-90 at mile marker 127. Sixteen miles further down the highway, at exit 143, we found a full-service rest area (that was still open) but accessible only to eastbound traffic on I-90.

After exiting the rest area, Doug and I traveled ten miles to the small town of Drummond, Montana. With a population of 331 living souls, longtime mayor Gail Leeper (first elected in 1993) keeps control of this tiny waypoint, barely half a square mile of land, along the longest interstate highway in the United States. I-90, at 3,020 miles, crosses the country from Boston, Massachusetts in the east to Seattle Washington on the Pacific coast. Only three roads, or routes, US (United States) Highway 20 at 3,365 miles, US-6 at 3,227 miles, and US-30 at 3,227 miles are longer.

We exited I-90, at mile marker 153 and turned south to begin the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Highway (Montana Highway 1) shortly before noon. In S. A. Snyder’s Scenic Driving MONTANA this is Scenic Drive #5 Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Route: Anaconda to Drummond. The trip meter was reading 52.6 miles at the time.

Since we had started on the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Highway, and these mountains were to the right, or west, of the highway, they must be the John Long Mountains.

Along the way, we viewed the John Long Mountains to the west, of US-1. Depending on who you believe, the highest point in this range is either 7,923 feet or 8,468 feet. If Butte Cabin Ridge, at 8,468 feet is part of the John Longs, that would be the tallest peak. If not, then 7,923 would be the highest, but I could not find a listing for the name of that mountain.

The first 14 miles (or so) of this route traverse the Flint Creek Valley, which is not particularly interesting, certainly is not heavily timbered, and no larch are present. The archaeological record/evidence indicates that the Flint Creek Valley has been inhabited by humans for 10,000 years. This valley is characterized by grassland pasture for cattle, flanked by gently rolling hills that, sometimes, are lightly timbered and, with slowly increasing elevation, become fully forested.

It only took half an hour or so to cover the twenty-six and a half miles from Drummond to Phillipsburg, the county seat of Granite County, Montana. Though tiny in size, Philipsburg, with a population of 929 as of this year, still has almost three times as many people as Drummond.

Doug and I were somewhere between 15-20 miles from Drummond when we came upon this area. That body of water was frozen. I’m not sure what those reddish bushes were unless they were the same type, the Red Osier Dogwood, we saw along the North Fork Road in Glacier National Park.
There was nothing really spectacular to see in the first third of this drive. It was a peaceful ride, just nothing out of the ordinary.

As we approached Philipsburg from the north, the Flint Creek Range became visible to the left, or east, side of the road. While driving down the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Highway, these snow-capped mountains finally became visible on the horizon somewhere between mile markers 41 and 42.

We were not sure what these mountains were. Doug said they could not have been the Anaconda-Pinter range. After looking it up, I believe they are the Flint Creek Range, some of which do top out over 10,000 feet.
That mountain to the right may have been Mount Powell, of the Flint Creek Mountains, which at a height of 10,148 feet was the tallest in this range.
A good view of the Flint Creek Mountains. I have found a listing of five peaks over, 8,000 feet in this range to the east of Montana Highway 1. Mt. Powell tops them at 10,148 feet, while Deer Lodge Mountain comes in second at 9,765 feet and no-name, or just, Peak 9484, which is the height of the mountain, was third. I guess nobody ever bothered to name it. Rumsey and Cable Mountains, at 8,156 and 8,146 feet, respectively, round out the list.
Another view of the Flint Creek Mountains.

We arrived at Philipsburg about five minutes later, around mile marker 39. We finally began to truly ascend into the mountains somewhere between mile markers 29 and 30. This corresponds roughly with a trip meter reading of 88, which would put us around 35 miles from Drummond and the western terminus of the Anaconda-Pintler Highway.

At Porters Corner, which was about six miles from Philipsburg, MT-1 came to a junction with Montana State Highway 38. While MT-1 curved to the left, or to the southeast, MT-38 went westward to the town of Grantsdale, on the major north-south artery, US Highway 93, which takes a traveler all the way from Wickenburg, Arizona to the Canadian border, a distance of 1,359 miles.

Around five miles later, we arrived at Georgetown Lake, a large man-made lake (elevation 6337 feet), which first became visible on the right. As we headed south along the eastern shore of Georgetown Lake, the Anaconda Range loomed in front of us. There was plenty of fresh snow on the high peaks. This range, informally known as the “Pintlers”, is a group of southwest to northeast running mountains that travels roughly fifty miles from Lost Trail Pass to Anaconda, Montana. There are at least five peaks that top 10,000 feet in the Anaconda range, with West Goat Peak leading at 10,793. West Pintler Peak falls just short of the magic mark, at 9,894 feet.

Looking across Georgetown Lake, those are the Anaconda mountains, locally known as “the Pintlers.” West Goat Peak, at 10,793 feet was the tallest peak in this range, followed by Mt. Evans (not to be confused with the 14,265-foot mountain that towers over Denver, Colorado), which stands at 10,641 feet. Mt. Haggin, 10,607, Warren Peak, 10,463 and East Goat Peak, 10, 399 finish out the 10,000-footers. West Pintler Peak fell just shy, at 9,894 feet.
That’s my kind of view: snow-covered mountains in the background, with a beautiful lake in the foreground and in between what looks like some high-priced homes on a pine-covered hill.
Yep. Those homes definitely cost some serious money. I used the zoom function on my camera to catch this shot.
One more picture looking across Georgetown Lake along the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Byway.

We entered Anaconda. a reasonably-sized city of over 9,000 citizens with the trip meter reading 106.6. We arrived at the eastern terminus of the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Byway a little less than ten miles later, which, incidentally, is formally designated as the Pintler Veterans Memorial Scenic Highway. There was a very nice rest area at this point. We rejoined I-90 at exit 208, about one mile from the MDT Highway-1 Rest Area. From there, we were exactly 240 miles from our home in Billings.

Technically we started this drive, in Drummond, Montana, at the end of the highway. We found this sign at the end of the road, just as we came to the MDT Highway-1 Rest Area.
The MDT Highway-1 Rest Area. This was a very nice, modern rest area. Actually, it was a visitor center, if memory serves me correctly.
One last look back. Those are the Anaconda Mountains.

From Doug’s notes:

General impressions of the Anaconda-Pintler Scenic Highway: Nice drive but nothing remotely spectacular. For the most part, it does not warrant any consideration whatsoever as a fall-foliage destination. It should be noted, however, that stands of Alpine larch do exist high in the Pintler Mountains, so it would be worthwhile to conduct additional research on their whereabouts and roads that would provide access thereof. The high praise that I have seen previously regarding this area may pertain to alpine backcountry wilderness destinations as opposed to terrain directly visible from the highway itself.

Some mountains from the interstate (I-90). I don’t remember which ones they were, although they might have been the Bridger Mountains.
At mile marker 281, we were approaching Bozeman, so my guess would be those are the Bridger Mountains, named for famed mountain man Jim Bridger.
Homeward-bound!

We refueled in Butte, which was 224 miles from home. There were parking areas available, at mile marker 235 on I-90, on both sides of the interstate, which are primarily for trucks, with small bathroom facilities, which presumably contain pit toilets. We didn’t stop; just wanted to make a note of it. Bozeman was about eighty miles further down the highway and the Bozeman rest area is about half a mile from exit 305. I previously mentioned the difficulties of reaching these facilities on our first day of this trip.

The Absaroka Mountains in the Paradise Valley. We drove down US-89 for a few miles just to get a glimpse of these majestic mountains. If you have watched the Kevin Costner television series, Yellowstone, the Paradise Valley is the setting.
The final shot of our 2020 Glacier National Park (west) trip. It is about two hours from Livingston (north end of the Paradise Valley) to Billings.

We stopped at Livingston, the I-90 entrance to Paradise Valley, the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park, for dinner. After a quick stop at the Taco Bell, we drove down US-89 for a few miles to see what kind of photo ops I might find of the Absaroka Mountains. I took a few shots but it was a little too late in the day for anything good. From here we drove to Big Timber, on our way home, to visit some friends. We still made it back to home before midnight.

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