Devils Point is a mostly open snag-covered summit with excellent views of the surrounding Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and the Hell’s Half Acre Lookout. Much of this area has experienced very large wildfires over the last several of decades and abundant snags exist.
Rock Candy Mountain is an old US Forest Service Lookout site. The summit views are great with cliff cirque basins full of chipmunks, golden-mantle squirrels and chirping pikas, and distant high peaks of the Cabinets Mountains to the south, the Selkirk Mountains to the west and into Canada to the North.
Mount Baldy summit has a Forest Service Lookout tower and a multi-agency communication site for the NW corner of Montana. There are good views from the summit including high mountains of the Cabinets Mountains to the south, the Selkirk Mountains to the west and into Canada to the North.
This summit became accessible to the public 2021 thanks to the hard work by a lot of individuals, Private Landowners, The Five Valley Land Trust, Nature Conservancy and the City of Missoula. The summit is private property and contains numerous communications towers. However, the new public access trail provides access to near the Activation Zone.
This summit is the old Horseshoe Lookout Site. It had a primitive platform on a rock pinnacle from 1921-1961. A standard L-4 structure, 1962-1983. Both structures succumbed to wildfires and were not rebuilt. Concrete blocks from the L-4 lookout remain. The access road, USFS #588 is 4 miles off FS #500.
Indian Post Office is an intriguing name given to a rounded high point qualifying as a SOTA summit along the Nee Me Poo, a trail of the Nez Perce and the Lewis and Clark trail. I searched the few vertical rock outcrops looking for what I thought might be pictographs or petroglyphs. I found neither. I did see a large rock cairn linked to folklore.
This summit is just off the Lolo Motorway that roughly follows along the Nee Me Poo Trail of the Nez Perce and the Lewis and Clark Trail. The Lolo Motorway, USFS #500 is a narrow mostly ridgetop road built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. It provides access to over a dozen SOTA summits along its route that are mostly a short hike.
I was tipped-off by K7DJL that Salmo was nearly a drive-up summit not too far from our planned camp on Priest Lake. Turned out that it was a fun scenic drive through cedar and hemlock forest and over a couple of mountain passes. The summit looks into Canada so we decided to spend the night in the saddle between the 1960s era US Forest Service Lookout and the actual summit.
For those speedy hikers Rhodes Peak can be hiked in a day. For those like me, a trail sloth, a backpack camp at Goat Lake half-way there is a fine alternative for a multi-day hike to three nearby summits. The lake is within a scenic alpine basin next to W7I/NI-108 and looks across a valley to Williams Peak W7I/NI-003. Rhodes Peak is Clearwater County’s highpoint and is sought by those summiting every County highpoint in Idaho.
Williams Peak is a good trail hike with a short off-trail hike and a short rock scramble. The summit has good views but little room for operating. A good alternative is to hunker-in just below the summit and tie off to one of the few snags or live trees on the south side.