Rugged Paths Mark The Way To Hidden Gem

Nestled between forests and the sheer rocky cliffs of Antelope Mountain, behind the small town of Clark Fork, lies a hidden gem.

Antelope Lake is a 60-acre lake that can be reached on foot from a trail leading from the Lawrence Mine, near the University of Idaho Clark Fork field campus, or by a rugged unmarked road leading up from state Highway 200. Signs to the lake have been torn down so often that no one bothers to replace them.

The road is not maintained. There are a couple of steep drop-offs, and places to pass an oncoming vehicle are few. Nevertheless, avid fishermen like Jeff and Pam Hewett often take their children to the lake.

While the rest of the family spin fish from an electric boat, eighth-grader Jesse Hewett uses a float tube and a fly rod baited with a black wooly bugger.

“They’re very good trout but not as good as creek fish,” said Jesse, referring to Lightning Creek, where he also fishes.

The Clark Fork Fish Hatchery regularly stocks the lake with kamloops trout. Kamloops are like rainbow trout but grow faster and larger. The hatchery has stocked the lake twice this spring and will put another 1,000 fish in before July 4. Trout put in last October still are being caught.

No one seems to brave the mountain water anymore, but when Phyllis Brashear was young, in the late 1920s, the kids used to take out an old raft and swim all the time, she said.

“The lake was pretty cold,” she said.

“A little old gentleman squatted by the lake for years and years,” Phyllis recalled. “He was upset with the world in general.” Known as Charles Wolf, the squatter built a small cabin and lived by himself. Apparently he had been a lawyer, but nobody knew where. People called him “the mystery man.” Finally Wolf left the lake and settled in a tent in Clark Fork.

Cars also were cantankerous in those days, and most people hiked up from the highway on a forested trail. Phyllis first traveled the trail with her father, Anton Carl “Tony” Hazelroth. As a kid at the turn of the century, Tony had carved his intials into a “big old tree,” said Phyllis. Tony’s children watched their father’s initials grow bigger and bigger with the tree until one day they went to the lake and the huge red fir had been chopped down.

The trail that Phyllis hiked with her father is gone as well. “Somebody bought that property and tore it up pretty bad,” said Kenny Schenck. “They wrecked the beauty of the mountainside.”

Twenty-five years ago Kenny hung out at the lake with his brother Russ. In those days, “you could almost drive around the lake,” Russ said. Now the path circling the lake is overgrown, but Kenny maintains the trail from the Lawrence Mine.

“Nature goes through its course,” Kenny said. “I move whatever I can move, or strap the dog to it, and that way the natural trail is still there.”

Phyllis’ husband, Joe, used to do the job before Kenny was a twinkle in his father’s eye. Joe hoofed up and down the mountains, cut away falldowns and blazed the trails. Neither of them has expected any recognition or financial reward. “I just do it because I like to,” Kenny said. Joe agreed.

The lake always seemed the private province of Clark Fork, but one day “For Sale” signs appeared. While the Bureau of Land Management owned one-third of the lake and some of the adjacent property, three sisters in California inherited the rest of the lake and approximately 120 acres of land after their father died in 1962.

“The sisters had no interest in doing anything with this area,” said Dave Reynolds, a retired local real estate agent. In 1993, Reynolds completed a deal that had been years in the making and virtually guaranteed locals unlimited access to a retreat they had cherished from the turn of the century.

Thanks to Washington Water Power’s dam mitigation policy that provided funds to buy property to compensate for land lost in flooding, the sisters sold and WWP - now Avista - bought.

It is a solution that pleases all, except perhaps the outsider who unwittingly ends up driving on a rough and rugged road, staring down the side of a cliff with no way to turn around, knowing the trout are biting, but wondering if maybe Jesse Hewett was right. Perhaps the fish in Lightning Creek do taste better after all.