Lookout!
Dogzilla heading to the Montana border via the NorPac Trail - Near Mullan, Idaho
With the incredible Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes behind us, Dogzilla and I were closing in on the Idaho/Montana border at Lookout Pass. This would be longest and most sustained climb in a few hundred miles so we were looking forward to the challenge! First things first though, we still had to find our way through the town of Mullan and then ultimately make our way to the Northern Pacific Trail, more commonly referred to as “The NorPac”. Mullan is a very sleepy little town, the kind of place where you find people just sitting in their front yard, hanging out and watching the world go by. We exchanged hellos with a few strangers this way as we headed east towards our climb up to Lookout.
As we ventured through town, we were treated to something I’d only ever seen once before, a Pileated Woodpecker. At roughly a foot and a half tall, the Pileated Woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in the US! To my delight, this one was busily working on a telephone pole that we were riding by and he didn’t seem to care about Zilla or I. I got to watch him pecking away at the pole for several minutes as he searched for his breakfast and was able to get just a few feet away from him without bothering him. It was a real treat to watch! I would have loved to stay and watch the woodpecker longer, but I knew that Zilla and I had a long, difficult climb ahead of us and that we needed to get to it, so we bid the woodpecker farewell and carried on.
Traffic out of town was pretty non-existent and unfortunately, so was the signage for our route. It wasn’t particularly difficult or confusing, but for about 20 minutes at one point, I wasn’t sure if we had taken the right road or not so I was getting a bit anxious. I decided to push on a bit further to try and confirm and a short while later, we found a sign that confirmed that we had in fact taken the right road and were about to get onto The NorPac and start our climb.
One of the more interesting things about The NorPac is that it contains a railroad switchback! This is a feature that is not often used but is a way to help a train climb mountains without the expense of building a tunnel. Basically think of the letter “Y”. The train would be travelling down one of the top prongs of the “Y” and then come to a stop at the bottom of the “Y”. Then, it would reverse directions and continue travelling back up the “Y” and along the other prong.
Historically, there had also been an “S” shaped train trestle that had been used to help bridge a gap over a ravine which was too steep for a straight bridge, so by turning it into a winding “S”, it created the extra distance necessary for the train to safely navigate between the two unequal mountainsides. Sadly, that trestle was no longer in existence.
Zilla and I continued our climb in the wilderness and as per the usual, we were completely alone. We were able to hear the cars from the nearby interstate but were seldom close enough to see the road, which was nice. We also stopped to take a few breaks along the way as the climb up to Lookout Pass was roughly 1,600 ft. That might not sound like much, because it really isn’t, but with the added weight and drag from the dog trailer, it definitely becomes more of a challenge.
Climbing on, the trees began to thin a little and I started to see equipment for Lookout Pass Ski Area, we were getting close! The trail started to widen from a narrow forest road to a much wider gravel road that eventually got maybe 75ft wide or more and then off in the distance, I saw a small sign for the trailhead. We stopped for a quick photo but still had a little bit more climbing to do before we had officially crossed the pass into Montana. The actual border isn’t marked and I stopped to talk to one of the ski area’s maintenance workers and he told me that the actual border was “roughly a straight line down from this tree and over to that one”. So there really wasn’t much fanfare for reaching the pass, but I was still really excited that Zilla and I had now officially ridden all the way across two states and were about to start into our third!
Zilla, Captain, and Sean pose near the top of Lookout Pass - border between Idaho and Montana
