In the Hood of EM
As we’ve been taking frequent vehicular excursions to get to know the area around our new home base, this post is dedicated to our favorite spots we’ve found thus far, in the hood of Empty Mountain.
Cedar Grove Trail
This is what we call it, anyway. In about a 5-minute drive north of us on our gravel road is a gated road on NFS (national forest service) land. It appears to be one of those NFS gates that stays locked on a permanent basis (vs the ones that get opened seasonally). The gated road now serves as a lovely hiking trail alongside Keystone Creek, where it’s still actively running. The road/trail goes back for a little ways and the stretch we’ve walked on has been just awesome the whole way. There are cedar trees and ferns and the largest Indian paintbrush flowers we’ve ever seen. While the small creek is cloaked in dense brush much of the way, there are a few places along the trail where one can access the water and put their feet in or sit beside it. The area there is wonderfully quiet and amazingly lush and green.
Swimming hole under the I-90 bridge
Swimming Hole
The Clark Fork River is situated just 2.5 miles south of EM. There’s a fishing access spot on the river about a 5-minute drive from us (in the other direction from the Cedar Grove Trail). If one doesn’t know any better, that’s where one might go to get into the river for a swim. BUT if you DO know any better, you drive on past the fishing access spot - and the road closed signs - to the I-90 bridge, in what seems like a mildly dodgy/sketchy place to park your car. Then you take a steep rocky path down under the bridge to a large sandy beached area perfect for accessing the river. There’s even a rope swing which somehow someone hung from the rafters of the bridge, which is a big hit there for people of all ages. The place is amazing and we super love it and we feel super lucky that we discovered it by accident and live so close by to it.
Huckleberry Mountain
Again, this is what we call it. In actuality, it’s the area right around the trailhead to Keystone Peak. Interested in finding a local huckleberry picking spot, I summoned up the courage to ask this guy Mike was talking to one day at the swimming hole about where we might find some hucks. He was a younger guy in his 20’s and I’d overheard him tell Mike he was a local, having lived his whole life, he said, in Superior. I say “summoned up the courage” because I am aware that not everyone is happy to devulge their huck picking spot. Huck season is short and they only grown in certain places. They’re not rare but they also aren’t overly abundant either. But he was happy to fill us in about where to go. With his guidance, we found our way to what we now call Huckleberry Mountain, where they grow like the dickens. The spot is only about 8-miles up the road from EM but since it’s a forest service road, it takes us about 30-minutes to get there. The dirt road is pretty decent, it’s just slow going. Also, funnily enough, even though Huckleberry Mountain is deep in the woods, it’s at the top of the mountain, so while we don’t get cell service or 4G at EM, we get both when we go pick hucks. Also: we make sure to bring our bear spray along when we go to Huckleberry Mountain. We’ve seen fresh bear scat up there. Bears dig hucks too!
Diamond Lake
We learned about there being a place called Diamond Lake from a sticker in our local grocery store in Superior, called Darlows. Amid a variety of stickers for sale near the register, one touted the name of both Superior and Diamond Lake. Being new to the area, we weren’t familiar with any of the lakes nearby. So we did what most of us would do: we Googled it. Both Mike and I tried looking it up on our respective phones and neither of us got any info to come up. Google was stumped. But a few days later I tried again and Google decided it would help a gal out. We found directions and made our way there one evening after dinner. Like most/all of the lakes here in Mineral County (of which there are 57 in total, according to what I read in our local newspaper), Diamond Lake requires a dirt road drive. 13-miles of dirt, to be exact, which starts in less than a 10-min drive from EM. Most of the way was easy driving, but the last 4-miles get a little bumpy. Side note: We’ve been on a lot of dirt roads in Montana and Mineral County has the best dirt roads we’ve ever seen. Our gravel/dirt roads around here are better than some of the asphalt roads in Missoula!
From my understanding, of the 57 alpine lakes we have in Mineral County, only 2 of them are drive up-able, meaning you can drive right to them and not have to hike in to see them. Diamond Lake is one of the 2 drive up-able ones. However, to access the lake for swimming or fishing, one does need to take a short hike on the trail around it to get to the shoreline. While we never saw it, we could hear a waterfall emptying into the lake at the far end. Where the parking is is where the lake empties out and forms a creek that keeps on going. If you follow the trail that leads away from the lake down the creek, there is a spectacular waterfall cascading down the mountainside. Diamond Lake was nice enough but it was the creek’s waterfall that I loved most about that spot. It was one of those movie-esque waterfalls that prompts one to think: Ooooo! Is that place real?! I want to go to there! The lake itself was full of log jams and debris and the trail was chock full of bugs when we were there, so not the greatest. But I could’ve hung out by that waterfall all day.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more fave places we find in the EM hood!