left with the most unused lookout towers in the Northern Rockies. Towers they promptly started restoring for a different kind of use. In 1984, four towers in Kootenai National Forest became the first public lookout rentals in the country. A wave of outdoor recreation had been sweeping the US since the mid1970s, and Kootenai used this momentum to preserve their historic structures while at the same time providing unique overnight accommodations for the adventurous public. Today, there are over 30 lookout rentals in the Northern Rockies, with a few more slated to join them in the coming years. Of these towers, I’ve been to a fair share. They are all different. So are the experiences: 50 mph winds blasting McGuire on a cool summer night, or lightning hammering so close to McCart that my hairs tingle. July snow on the ride up to Wam, and the majestic view of Glacier National Park from Hornet. Once, while heading to West Fork Butte, I became truly disoriented for the first time in my life. And once, I read my daughter to sleep at Boulder Point to the words of Norman Maclean’s USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky. It is these experiences that keep driving me back up. To take in the climb. To reach the summit. A summit I will not have to flee from immediately, where I can observe the sun’s fall and rise in the backcountry of Northern Idaho and Western Montana. The same backcountry that was here before the great fires of 1910, and the same that will hopefully be here for a long time to come. BV
Bunyan Velo 26