After moving to the great city of Butte in the heart of the northern Rocky Mountains in 1990, my hear soon fell for the Big Hole River. But, that very first year, I also discovered a delightful nearby trout fishing, hiking, and mule deer hunting spot. The small stream of German Gulch, a tributary of Silver Bow Creek in the upper Clark Fork River basin, was much like the freestone mountain creeks I had grown up fishing on the Appalachian Plateau of the Allegheny Highlands
Whereas the creeks of my boyhood held native brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), through German Gulch creek I became acquainted with the native fish of the west--the westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi). Here's one, in the sampling tray of fisheries biologist Tim LaMarr:
Wow! Are these a beautiful fish, or what? As part of our natural heritage, a creature that evolved in this harsh post-Pleistocene landscape, they are a treasure. How lucky and bizarre, that the mine-polluted waters of Silver Bow Creek provided a poisonous barrier to prevent exotic, introduced rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) from hybridizing the native fish in German Gulch Creek.In fact, it's amazing that native trout survived at all in German Gulch Creek. More than a century ago, the entire watershed was clearcut and placer mined--the creek's floodplain extensively terraformed by hydraulic and dredge mining for gold. A whole series of French, German, Chinese, and out-of-work Great Depression era miners worked the creek over from the 1870s to the 1930s. To add insult to injury, Montana Fish & Game dumped thousands of stocked trout from hatcheries into the creek before 1980. And yet, physically damaged though the watershed was, "cutties" held on in the headwater tributaries and then recolonized the main creek as the riparian habitat recovered from abuse.
Lying about midway between the towns of Anaconda and Butte, the German Gulch watershed is an important local natural resource. With the ongoing remediation and restoration of Silver Bow Creek, German Gulch Creek would be an important source of native trout and clear, cold water. Local hunters, anglers, hikers, and campers also had a long historical connection to and a deep appreciation for the area. As I visited German Gulch more often and talked about it with other folks, I came to understand how important it was as public land and as relatively pristine habitat:
When I was elected president of the George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited (GGTU) in 2002-2003, I made German Gulch Creek a priority. As good as it was, there were some problems, threats, and opportunities: selenium pollution from a recently abandoned open-pit, cyanide heap-leach gold mine; private in-holdings within Forest Service and state land that were ripe for development; aquatic and riparian habitat that could not recover from the physical damage wrought by placer mining; the threat of rainbow trout entering the creek as Silver Bow Creek is remediated and restored; an irrigation diversion that diverted the lower creek and severed the aquatic habitat connection between Silver Bow and German Gulch Creeks; difficulty with public access to the lower creek... German Gulch Creek was an eye-opening lesson: habitat that -- on the surface -- appears to be good and secure may be a high priority for our attention and protection.GGTU began its German Gulch project with a small "Project Development Grant" of about $25,000 that I submitted in 2002 to Montana's Natural Resource Damage Program (NRDP). The money helped us to search titles, obtain appraisals, develop a conceptual plan for stream restoration, and complete other needed planning tasks. When Josh Vincent, an environmental engineer and Montana Tech alumni, joined the GGTU board, things got a lot easier. He brought needed technical and managerial expertise to the project, as well as a personal passion and appreciation for German Gulch. We submitted a second planning grant for about $25,000 in 2003. This helped fund more needed work, such as a redesign for the irrigator's headgate and a plan to remove a road built with toxic mine waste tailings. These two planning grants laid the foundation for the more than $1 million that Josh and I raised through grants in 2004. Though the bulk of the money came from NRDP, we also succeeded in obtaining matching funds from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) Future Fisheries program for stream restoration work, FWP funds for a fish barrier to halt rainbow trout introgression, US Fish & Wildlife Service Fisheries Restoration and Irrigation Mitigation Program for a fish screen on the irrigator's headgate, and Montana Fish & Wildlife Trust funds for land purchases.
David Luther Layton and his wife Lois appreciated nature and enjoyed camping with their four children. After buying a parcel of about 80 acres (several former mining claims) in German Gulch, they began a family tradition of camping there. GGTU approached the Layton family in early 2004, with an inquiry about purchasing the family's land and transferring it to public ownership. The Layton property was astride the Forest Service and state lands boundary, and so the upper portion of the property would go to the feds and the lower portion to the state.
The Layton family was gracious and patient in dealing with GGTU. David was deceased, and Lois and her other three children allowed her son Matthew to represent the family. This greatly simplified GGTU dealings with the family, but it also spoke reams about the Layton family's solidarity, trust, and general sense of good will. During this time, I moved on to some other projects and Josh Vincent took on German Gulch project management for the Trout Unlimited Chapter. German Gulch was my baby, but it was raised by Josh. As I told the Layton family at yesterday's ceremony marking the tranfer of the land, it is easy to conceive and even birth a baby. Josh did the hard work of raising the child.
And what a ceremony it was. Held on site, here's Lois Layton (left):
The ceremony also proved to be a family reunion, including mother Lois and other family elders, gathered here around "rally rock" on the Layton property:
Children David, Daniel, Sue, and Michael and their spouses:
And the grandchildren and the whole gang, along with some GGTU folks:
We capped the ceremony with a hike down to the bridge crossing for a public trail constructed as part of the project. Here is Andrew McElroy (Boy Scout Troop 8 of Butte, Montana) with the bridge he helped design and build as his Eagle Scout project:
And here is Josh Vincent (left), the good parent who has brought this project along to date, and who remains committed to the many other tasks yet to be completed:
As Hillary Clinton famously wrote, "It takes a village to raise a child." Similarly, it takes a village to pull off a grass-roots based project of this magnitude. At the risk of offending some persons by forgetting to mention them, it is important to recognize some of the key supporters of and participants in this project.First of all, the whole Layton clan: Lois, son David Michael and his spouse Robin, son Daniel Dana and his spouse Jane, daughter Sue and her spouse Eckelhardt Schulze, and son Matthew Steven and his spouse Christiane.
Next come fisheries biologists Tim LaMarr and Ron Spoon. Tim worked for the Forest Service at the time, and had been working for several years to survey native westslope cutthroat trout in German Gulch and to persuade his agency to invest in restoration. Ron is with FWP, and has worked tirelessly to assess and protect native trout populations throughout southwest Montana.
Kriss Douglass, a local FWP employee (now retired), early on appreciated the promise of GGTU's project, and helped convince her agency that it should be a priority. After Kriss' retirement, Vanna Boccadori supported the project and marshalled important tasks such as the required environmental assessement.
Hugh Zackheim at the FWP land's office worked closely with Josh Vincent on the title documents and other difficult tasks.
There were many others, some whose story is yet to be told. The rancher and irrigator with the water rights to German Gulch Creek has been as patient and generous as the Layton family in his dealings with GGTU. As the reconstruction of his headgate and irrigation diversion takes place, I look forward to continuing this story.
In the late 1990s, when I and a few others first began brainstorming a German Gulch restoration plan, no one could have imagined how much work it would entail nor how long it would take. My hat is off to Josh Vincent and his colleagues at George Grant Trout Unlimited for their dogged persistence in seeing this project through to its completion.
Other sources:
- Montana FWP documents, "Layton Decision Notice," 02.May.2007 at http://fwp.mt.gov/content/getItem.aspx?id=27476 and "German Gulch Trail Environmental Assessment," (01.August.2006) at http://fwp.mt.gov/content/getItem.aspx?id=19265.
- Montana Natural Resource Damage Plan, "2005 Final Upper Clark Fork River Basin Restoration Work Plan," (December 2005) at http://www.doj.mt.gov/lands/naturalresource/resources/projects/2005/finalrestorationworkplan.pdf.
It's a steady and sometimes steep climb of about 5 miles or so. Once into the trees its shady and cool enough, but RTD (RolyTheDog) & I were thankful for the early start on this near-90 deg F day. Passing by some elderberries, 
I thought of Grandma Beryl (nee Fitzgibbons) Munday, the world's best baker of fruit pies (my wife Jan has the title of world's best living baker of fruit pies). The Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania were a great place for wild berries of all kinds. Elderberry pie was my favorite, and she would bake one or two for my birthday. In Montana, elderberries are seldom sweet and tasty--too short of a growing season, too dry, not enough heat?
Hearst Lake was improved once upon a time with a dam, but the dam might need repairs and the increased height no longer seems to be used:
The saddle between Hearst and Haggin Lakes makes a nice base camp at 8,500 feet. What a place to be as a front moved in, lightning crashed on the peaks, and clouds dropped more than an inch of rain in my cooking pot rain gage. The pleasant meadow, and the old ACM/Anaconda water company (?) cabin (lower left in photo) is on the route to Mt Haggin:
I hope Cindy was (is?) worth it:
I like passing through the feathery alpine larches that invariably mark the Pintler treeline at c. 8500 to 9000 feet. As my now-retired colleagues Jack Goeble and Dennis Haley liked to say, "What are the poor people doing today?":
Above treeline, we join our friends the pika (Ochotona princeps). Here's a "rock rabbit" peeking out directly over RTD's nose:
Global warming has been very tough on them in many areas of Colorado and points south. As the climate warms, they move higher up the mountain side, become "island populations," and are more and more cut off from "marriagable" members of other populations.
The peak is marked by a most impressive cairn, as you would expect, given the peak's ritual importance in the lives of many Anaconda residents. In the peak notes, one can read of marriage proposals, anniversaries, reunions, eulogies, and other touching tributes to local lore (no mention of Cindy, though):
For a time, it looked as if the weather was going to close in as the sun lifted moisture from the night's rain, and dense fog bracketed the ridge. Added to the time of summiting any peak (4:20), the fog created just a bit of "high" anxiety :
But the sun prevailed, revealing a nice panoramic view beginning at the left with the Mill Creek/10 Mile ridge and sweeping west to the heart of the Pintler:
Time to head down. On approaching the meadow, RTD began an intense gaze toward a spot about 300 yards below us. I've learned to trust her sharp eyes. What's this big-assed creature flipping over rocks (lower right in photo)?
Thought it was a big boar of a bear at first, but then saw it watching something, and the cub scrambled into view (sow is on the right, looking back at her cavorting cub on the left):
Big sow black bear--maybe 300 pounds or so, sows usually go half that or less. Glad she left our camp alone, she must have been finding plenty of tasty ants, beetles, and other critters under the rocks she was flipping over:
A quick hike down to Hearst helped supplement our evening supper:
Would have stayed later the 3rd day and fished Haggin Lake before hiking out, but ate like a bear(?) the second day and ran out of food. Oh well, a good 3-day/2-night trip, and a lovely route up Mt Haggin & back.
Along the trail grew this interesting plant, the "sugarstick" (Allotropa virgata):
It's a fascinating plant, and used to be referred to a "parasitic." That's a misnomer and gross over-simplification. Allotropa virgata depends for its nutrients on the web-like threads of an underground fungus, which in turn depends upon the rotted wood and roots of lodgepole pines or Douglass firs. It's thought that, in exchange for essential sugars, that sugarstick somehow facilitates the transfer of other nutrients to the tree. For more on this story of coevolution, see Steve Trudell's MycoWeb site and the BLM.gov website for vascular plants.
After a pot of tea and a short nap, it was time to hit the trail. As we crossed the Divide and entered the shadeless land of the 2000 burn, it was very hot. I was wishing I had rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. and not slept in that extra hour. Despite the heat, the lush beargrass in full flower was a pretty sight:
From there, it was map & compass time for some cross country hiking into Park Lake: 
Seldom visited, it's one of the most untouched ("by the hand of man") spots in the Pintler Wilderness. It was a hell hole to get in and out of, though on the way out I found a good packer's trail that runs from an overview at the head of the lake to the FS trail. The lake itself is misnamed. It is not in a Park, but a swamp. Because of this environment and because the lake has never been stocked with fish, it is SWARMING with amphibians--boreal toads and what might have been northern leopard frogs. I should have caught one and took a photo, but it was tough navigating the boggy ground, the air was thick with mosquitoes and biting flies, and even a quick trip to the lake for water was sheer torture. On the way up & out, we flushed a trophy-class bull elk, but if you shot one in that hole you'd have to airlift it out! There's a reason the packer's trail ends above the lake.
As you can see from the beat up, old sign, this trail -- full of deadfall and unmarked -- does not get much attention. The trail to the lake has not been cut out and remarked since the big 2000 burn. Because Hope Lake is closed to the horse packers, they evidently do not maintain the trail either. Can't blame 'em. But should the Forest depend on the horse packers for 90% of its trail maintenance in the Pintler? Well, maybe if they weren't building all them NEW trails.
I had planned to stay two nights at Hope Lake, but it's been a few years since I visited Lion Lake, and this stop also helped split up the long hike back to the trail head. With a little cross-country navigation, it's only a few miles from Hope to Lion, and you drop into the lake right at the inlet:
Once again, time for the late-morning pot of tea. In hot weather hiking, RTD gives "dog tired" a whole new meaning. She is also smart enough (a dog learns something after 11 years or so) to get downwind of the fire where the skeeters and biting flies aren't quite so bad:
Glad we made the stop at Lion. It's not especially scenic (I'm comparing it with the high alpine cirque lakes of the Pintler such as Oreamnos, Edith, and Warren), but the lush, boggy surround and relatively low elevation makes it very fertile:
Trout fishing for chunky, acrobatic 12 to 16 inch cutt-bows was some of the best I've had in years. The fish were hammering blue damselfly imititations until I lost my only two to heavy fish that burrowed into the lillypads and grass. A big stimulator was a close-enough imitation (the fish would hardly look at a caddis or royal Wulff), as "RTD, Trout Inspector" will attest:
Ahh... pretty fish, even though they are not native and do not, in some sense, "belong" here. But hell, neither do I, except for a visit:
On the drive home, I found myself planning the next trip. Maybe head up to the high peaks area, maybe the lakes around Mt Haggin above Anaconda? Why not.
The campground sits along the shore of the upper lake, with good views to the ridges of the Tobacco Root mountains:
The exquisite alpine meadows above the lake are lush with wildflowers:
The tiny forget-me-nots are not to be missed:
On an early morning hike up to the peak east of camp, RTD and I flushed several golden eagles out of the krumholz forest of alpine fir. It's a dense little forets of 3 to 4 foot high trees. This seemed an odd place for eagles to be roosting.
RTD's superior nose led us to the reason the eagles were there--not to roost, but to feed on what might have been their kill. Or, scavengers that they are, the goldens might have found this mule deer fawn dead of "natural" causes:
It was the first time that I have seen a mule deer fawn (live or dead) up in the "goat rocks." The mulie does usually hang out and fawn at lower elevations. It is common, however, to see big mulie bucks above treeline, like this guy bedded down at the edge of a snow field (silhouetted at lower right):
Great views from the peak to the lakes. The lakes are full of trout, but this year I did not even bring a rod. Some friends (and family) think that EcoRover is compulsive about fishing, but I hardly even thought about it, even as hundreds of trout were rising on the still evening water, many within range of a good roll cast, and they would have taken eagerly a small ant or Goddard caddis fly on an 11-foot leader with a 6X tippet...
While some of us like an early morning hike, others go for the early morning swim in an icy mountain lake. Even Emily needs a few moments to summon courage (or perhaps for ritual prayer) for the plunge:
Once in, the water's fine (for a few minutes!):
And there's nothing like a good round of shivering to warm up after the swim:
Bugs, bad road, icy lake, steep ridges... Will we go back to Branham Lakes in future years? You bet!
