Five Montanans and a Scotsman

Granite Butte Lookout sprouts up atop the Continental Divide at an elevation of 7,587 feet.  The fire lookout tower was first constructed in 1932 and rebuilt in the 1960s.  At one time, people manned the tower all summer long, conducting fire watch for the spectacular radial view of the mountains that surround.  Today, you can rent the tower from the National Forest Service for an overnight stay. The Continental Divide Trail, which runs 3,100 miles along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, from Mexico to Canada, lies within in the shadow of the lookout.

We arrived at Granite Butte Lookout late yesterday afternoon, five Montanans and a Scotsman.  We arrived by means of two hulking trucks and a Rent-A-Wreck Subaru.  The road to the lookout is bad.  Really bad.  You can expect to scrabble through car-eating ruts, navigate over huge humps, side-hill stretches of solid rock, and ascend steep inclines strewn with loose throwing-rocks to reach the lookout.

We—my sister and brother-in-law in their truck, that girl and me in my truck—first met Cindy, from Whitefish, Montana, and Kevin, from Scotland, in their Rent-A-Wreck, at the very bottom of the final access road to the fire lookout.  They had spent part of the day lost in the impossible splay of rugged roads in the mountains all around us.  My brother-in-law volunteered to lead them to Granite Butte Lookout, which they had rented for an overnight stay.

All three vehicles climbed up the steep mountainside in a tight group.  Frankly, I was impressed Cindy was able to make it all the way to the fire lookout in her Rent-A-Wreck.  Once there, all of us climbed up the tower and helped the couple remove storm shutters from the windows of the lookout.

Even given the smoke from our worse-than-ever fire season, the view was spectacular.  Mountains and valleys stacked together in blue layers in every direction.  We could see the plume of smoke from the Alice Creek Fire above the Blackfoot Valley.  That fire recently exploded from a few dozen acres to thousands of acres.

Kevin, we gleaned from conversation, crashed in Montana.  Literally.  He was touring with a group of bicyclists and broke his wrist in a nasty tumble.  That was back in June.  He stayed and made a grand adventure of it.  He was pretty impressed with the lookout.

We visited with the couple for about ten minutes and then crawled back down the mountains into the cooler forests once again.

Posted are a few photographs from the Granite Butte Lookout I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone, including one of that girl removing a storm shutter.

--Mitchell Hegman