Among best dam trips out there
When my husband John suggested a side-trip up Montana’s Hungry Horse Reservoir, I wasn’t all that interested.
The highlight of the drive would be Hungry Horse Dam. I’ve seen plenty of dams, I thought. John has even drawn diagrams of hydro projects for me using the erasable white board from our refrigerator door as a visual aid.
But a dam was only the beginning of our tour, which yielded big views of the Rockies, wildflower-lined roads and a bear sighting.
Rain cooled the morning as we started our day in Hungry Horse, Mont. The night before, we had driven in and out of storms, crossing the Inland Northwest from northern Oregon.
Our normal routine in Hungry Horse involves John servicing a water probe in the South Fork of the Flathead River while I look for berries and wildflowers. Our dog Kah-less bides his time searching out wild animal droppings to sniff and/or dine on. On this day, he remembered some dried deer bones from our last visit and had ideas of returning to them for a good roll on the ground. I nixed that plan with my loud bark: “No!”
After John finished work, we continued to follow Forest Service Road 895, which crosses the river via Hungry Horse Dam. This was the first time we had ventured past the dam in the two years John had worked in the area. Tourists stood on top of the cement giant, which blocks a narrow canyon at the head of the river’s South Fork. The dam was completed in the early ‘50s and is reported to be one of the tallest in the United States at 564 feet.
Behind the dam lies the 34-mile-long Hungry Horse Reservoir. The area is often overlooked by travelers who pass nearby to enter the more popular Glacier National Park. But the reservoir is known to people of the region as a good place to catch trout and hunt game.
During most of the morning, clouds rested in the high peaks of the Flathead and Swan Mountain ranges which border either side of the reservoir. The clouds lifted some in the afternoon, but kept the sun from heating things too much.
A few islands dot the water. Quiet bays lie in the reservoir’s curves. Giant red paintbrush and common monkeyflower lined long sections of the paved road, which converted to gravel halfway through our drive.
“I saw a bear,” I gasped. John stopped the car, but didn’t believe me at first since we frequently play a cruel joke on each other of pretending to see something extraordinary when we really don’t.
But indeed, a young black bear stretched to reach berries from a tree. In my excitement and panic, I got a very nice photo of the foliage the bear was eating before it ran off into the woods.
Pink fireweed bobbed under tall dark spires of burned trees. A half-dozen fires swept through 30,000 acres around the reservoir last year. Those same wildland fires kept John from accessing the water monitor site.
The reservoir is currently involved in a controversial fire cleanup proposal. The Forest Service’s plan to harvest timber has stirred environmentalists’ concerns for grizzly bear habitat.
The Forest Service says bending some road density rules is necessary to salvage blackened trees and eventually create more bear habitat by decommissioning up to 69 miles of road. Environmentalists don’t trust them to follow through. A nice judge will probably help them sort it out.
We were disappointed in our quest for the famed Montana huckleberry. Sparse bushes with dark little beads were all we found in our short excursion down a side road.
The next morning while waiting in a Libby, Mont., hotel restaurant for my free bran muffin, I spotted a newspaper article that reported huckleberries would be hard to find this year. Pickers familiar with the Flathead Valley know where to hike to them. Those of us who don’t can buy fresh ones, or some huckleberry-based product, from a roadside stand in the town of Hungry Horse.
The town’s name comes from a story about two draft horses, Tex and Jerry, who wandered away from the sleigh during a terrible snow storm in the winter of 1900-01. After a month of struggling in belly-deep snow, the horses were found scraggly and hungry. The name stuck.
Hungry Horse is also a good place to find local antiques and one of those wooden bears carved with a chainsaw. Cabins and other lodging are available. Campsites and fire lookouts are available for overnight stays in the Flathead National Forest.
Our tour of Hungry Horse Reservoir ended with a walk along the water’s edge before getting back to our regular work route. Kah-Less had to run out some energy if anyone in our hotel was going to sleep that night. I wish we would have had time to explore one of the hiking trails to look for mushrooms. Fungus is my new thing.
The reservoir’s wildflowers will finish their show by the end of September. Weather determines the end of fishing season, which usually lasts through November. Then winter snows will cover the mountains and the bears will sleep.