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Hike to Northwest Peak Lookout
by Trail report by Bob Hosea
July 28, 2010
Bob Hosea hiked with friend, Tom Horelick, to Northwest Peak Lookout in the Yaak on Sunday, July 25th. Below is his trail report. He didn't do a video for this hike because last week he dropped his camera in Fish lakes and it isn't working 100% yet. He expects to have it up and running soon. Bob is an avid hiker and welcomes comments and questions from people about area hikes. He can be reached by e-mail at: hiking@thebobfactor.com. Photos by Bob Hosea.
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"The trailhead for the Northwest Peak lookout #169, is approximately twenty miles up the Pete Creek road #338. Pete Creek road starts just a few miles south of Yaak, Montana, on highway #508.
The trail to the top of Northwest Peak is in excellent condition. It is about 2.5 miles to the top with an elevation gain of 1400 feet.
On the way to the lookout you pass through both timbered areas and open rocky areas.In the rocky areas the trail is marked well with many small rock cairns.
There were many wildflowers growing along the trail which included Sticky Aster, Dwarf Bramble, False Solomon's Seal, Davidson's Penstemon, Sego Lily, Davidson's penstemon and many others.
There were many, many biting flies on the trail and both biting flies and yellow jackets at the lookout.
The view from the top of Northwest Peak is spectacular. Northwest Peak is just 2.5 miles south of the Canadian border, so with the right weather conditions you are able to view the Canadian Rocky Mountains to the north. To the south, you can see as far as the Cabinet Mountains, with good weather conditions.
The lookout that sits on top is actually a small building and not a tower at all, and it's in fairly good shape.
Just below the top of Northwest Peak is a small lake named Davis Lake. There isn't any trail that goes down to Davis Lake, so you have to find your own way down. The way that we went to the lake was to backtrack down the trail from the lookout approximately 1/3 mile and then cross over to the ridge that is above the lake. From there, you will drop down 700 feet in elevation to get to the lake. It took us about 25 minutes to go down to the lake from the lookout and one hour to get back up to the trail. The lake has cutthroat trout in it that were around 10 inches long.
During our hike we didn't see any other people."
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