Selkirk Solitude Dancing On Crest A Matter Of Timing

The term “Selkirk crest” is a misnomer that confounds a backcountry traveler’s notion of waltzing a ridgeline to Canada.

No single spine runs the length of the Selkirk Mountains. The range technically begins in the Spokane Valley at Minnehaha Park before reaching its first notable prominence at Mount Spokane.

The Selkirks pick up girth, elevation and character as they sprout through North Idaho before sprawling into a mind-boggling wilderness of grizzlies, glaciers and devil’s club nearly to Revelstoke, British Columbia.

The relatively short segment known as the Selkirk crest between Sandpoint and the Canada border includes enough real estate to capture a trekker’s dreams. A one-way expedition to navigate the crest would take one or two weeks of sweat and sore muscles.

Logging roads and maintained trails that head up nearly every major drainage from the east and west offer shamelessly easy access to this jumble of crags and sapphire-blue lakes.

The “crest,” however, is not always obvious as it runs northerly through the Panhandle. There’s no footpath or route blazed in trees.

From the top of Schweitzer Ski area, one can look cleanly west to the Priest River drainage and east to Lake Pend Oreille. But the Selkirks become spineless and unpredictable as they advance northward. Bushwhackers can take tangents toward Roman Nose or Parker Peak, or venture west into the sheer-rock jaws of The Lions Head.

Any lengthy option requires occasional plunges into tangled dungeons of dense timber and sphincter-clenching climbs up knifeedge ridges.

Occasionally, however, you do get to waltz. Sometime between midApril and mid-June, depending on the snowpack, a skier can dance along the top of the Selkirks on a hard-pack of corn snow. No trail to break. No avalanches to fret. No brush to bust. No mosquitoes to swat.

Jim Pace, Dan Krmpotich and I had a taste of those dream conditions before the Selkirks spit us out earlier this month.

First, we had to deal with damaged roads, a problem that will confound anglers, hikers, hunters, campers and other backcountry travelers all summer long.

Saturated slopes throughout the region are causing landslides and road washouts. Calls to the Forest Service dismissed numerous access possibilities.

Impassable conditions on the Pack River Road forced a change the morning of our departure. We finally handled the unsettled question of getting in and out from the Selkirk crest with a wad of topo maps and a cellular phone.

“We’ll just call my dad to shuttle a car up one of the drainages when we figure out where we’ll come out,” Pace said.

We began on Myrtle Creek, with a long hike from where snow blocked further progress by vehicle. We clamped on skis when the snow became consistent on the road. We crossed two road washouts, including one at Jim Creek.

A full day of traveling left us just short of Two Mouth Lakes. We made camp late in the afternoon, ascended on a quick tour to the ridge overlooking Kent Lake and returned to the tent in the waning light after sunset. In that time, the snow had changed from velvety corn to breakable crust.

Our descent was not pretty.

“I’m sure looking forward to traveling through this stuff with a pack on tomorrow,” Pace said.

One never knows what the conditions will be on the Selkirk crest in May. Not day to day, or even hour to hour.

A clearing in the clouds would reveal sun with enough summer-like intensity to turn the slopes to mush in minutes. A black cloud would brew up from nowhere and smother us with wind and snow. Minutes later: an eery calm, followed by a smattering of freezing rain, followed by a blast of sun.

“This is pretty weird,” Krmpotich said. “Pretty normal for this time of year.”

Pace is a reference specialist at the Spokane Public Library. Krmpotich is a jack of all trades who’s led special groups of teenagers on summer and winter trips along the Selkirk crest.

Teenagers have the surplus of hormones and adrenaline to overcome the harsh effects of weather and gravity. We are older men, who survived this trip on Ibuprofen and fear.

We have a perspective kids don’t have. Said Pace, “I tucked me son into bed and he said, “Dad, you’d better be careful and come home safe or I’ll kill ya.”

Experience, however, is an asset that needs constant scrutiny. It’s the edge that keeps you out of trouble. But it’s the temptation to be complacent.

Years ago, Jim probably would have made a second check to avoid leaving his wind-pants in the car. Dan probably would have made sure his stove worked before leaving on the trip. I probably would have glanced at a checklist to remember my gaiters.

We were pretty good about making camp where we’d get any gasps of evening and early morning sun.

But, let’s say we could stand a little bit of upgrading.

Virtually nothing in our packs was new. Every day we spent time applying duct tape to something, whether it was climbing skins or mitts.

The Selkirks in early May were smothered in snow deeper than it was in January. A lucky campsite enabled us to kick steps deep down where the wind had scoured a funnel-like depression in the snow piled in an 8-foot layer over a small creek. A pot strapped onto a ski pole could be lowered into a small opening to fetch water.

But most days on the crest require melting snow for water. You fire up the stove and let it roar for hours. Cold and thirsty, you watch the pot slowing devour large pure-looking blocks of snow that melt into disproportionately tiny puddles of fluid laced with fir needles and lichen.

“Looks like we’re satisfying all daily requirements for fiber,” Jim said, swilling from a water bottle filled with enough organic matter to pass as pond scum.

Navigating the crest is fairly easy in clear weather and foolhardy in a whiteout, a range of conditions that can be spanned numerous times in a few hours.

So you just keep marching on, when you can, taking breaks in the intermittent sun to dry clothes. Also, you must occasionally dry climbing skins that can become so saturated that they’d clump up with several pounds of snow. You know you’ve got trouble when you’re teetering 10 feet tall.

Progress can be slow one day and blinding the next. You accept this on the crest. Even communication is intermittent. A cellular phone works only from the highest ridges.

But it was helpful when deteriorating weather prompted us to abort plans to head out Lion Head Ridge to Smith Creek. We also learned in advance that our exit out of Trout Creek would not be the normal piece of cake. A landslide that occurred while we were on the crest prevented vehicle access.

We slogged out nearly eight miles by ski and foot. We were greeted at snowline by the whistling of varied thrushes, one of the sure things I’ve found in the Selkirks during spring.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color photos

MEMO: See related story under the headline: Selkirk Crest Ski Trek