Turner Mountain in northwest Montana is approximately 22 miles north of Libby on Pipe Creek Road #567. Turner ski area opened in 1961. It is currently active with a mile long double chairlift with 2100’ of vertical rise. The 1.8-mile vehicle access road is closed in the summer but open to mountain bikes and foot travel. I borrowed an ebike and rode to the summit via the reasonable grade ‘jeep road’.
The Roundtop name matches well this broad round summit. It was intensely burned, twice with very few snags and live trees remaining now. Even though the hike is short, considerable downfall impedes travel over many routes.
Summit 7112 is at the head of Ninemile Creek and overlooks the Clark Fork valley to the north. It is a pleasant hike on cooler summer days. The on-trail and off-trail are currently exposed with very little tree cover.
This was my 6th time activating this summit! 3 of those activations involved using a snowmobile to get close, and then using snowshoes to get on to the summit. One of those trips involved us towing K7JRO on a dog sled behind one of the snowmobiles.
In the summer this summit is easily accessible with a high clearence vehicle (and a short hike). See K7MAS trip report for summer details. Winter access to this area is via Blewett Pass sno park, located off US 97 at Blewett Pass. A Sno Park pass is required.
This un-named summit is near US Forest Service trail #313 south from Skalkaho Pass. The trail begins in a regenerated timber harvest unit and quickly transitions to old-lodgepole pine/Rocky Mountain subalpine fir forest partly burned by a wildfire in the early 2000’s. Most of the trail is within this wildfire and is dominated by snags and windfall trees. Use caution traveling this area especially on windy days.
Skalkaho gets its name from the area in Salish meaning ‘many trails’. Unrelated to the name, the summit does have several trails converging near its summit. I chose the trail coming from the west off FS road #364. This trail has many views of other SOTA summits and to the west the much higher elevation Bitterroot Range.
Palisade Mountain is a popular hike east of Corvallis, MT. The trail system is well maintained to within 500’ of the summit. The summit is a large talus rock pile with a several oddly-located whitebark pine trees. Evidence of the 1930s lookout still exist as some rock work and old trails in the talus. The main trail does not go to the summit though a semi-improved travel way in the talus on the west side does.
Dome Shaped Mountain is a scenic and lightly traveled trail near Hamilton Montana. Much of the hike overlooks a large portion of the Stony Mountain Roadless Area. Alpine larch dominate the summit with brilliant yellow fall color in early October contrasting with green whitebark pine.
SOTA Summit 7560 could easily be termed “Magruder Ridge High Point”. It is located on Magruder Ridge approximately 1.0 mile south of Magruder Mountain that it dominates by a mere 138’. Magruder Mountain and Ridge are named for the massacre of Lloyd Magruder and his party of four others in 1863 near this area. See sign photo.
There is an activation report link from Doug (N7NGO) on the SotaMaps Summit summary that is basically the information for driving access and the summit hike. Since there is not a PNWSota report, I thought I'd add a few notes.
The access road(s) are very well graded and certainly Prius friendly, whether coming to the City of Rocks National Reserve from the east (Almo, Idaho) or from the north (Oakley, Idaho).