Finding Old Montana in the Tobacco Roots: Climbing Hollowtop and Mount Jefferson
The little village of Pony feels like the threshold to an earlier age. Populations fade as you head west from Bozeman and approach the Tobacco Root Mountains: Three Forks, a town of 1,600 off I-90, is the largest town in the vicinity of the Tobacco Roots. Pony was once a gold mining town. Legend has it that the town got its name when gold prospector Smith McCumpsey, “Pony,” threw his prospector’s pick into a thicket and found gold right where it landed. A gold rush followed. By 1900 Pony had 5,000 residents.
These days it’s a ghost town whose remnants sit at the end of the road nestled in the eastern foothills of the Tobacco Roots. Beyond the village there are some ranch gates and a trailhead. When Dave, Forest and I arrived at the trailhead parking lot. It was empty. It felt like we had entered Old Montana: like in the days before Bozeman was booming, when trailheads there were quiet.
The goal for the morning was 10,604-foot Hollowtop, the Tobacco Roots highest peak. This would be my third attempt, and Forest’s second attempt with me. Dave had been up there twice before. A trail of varying quality—like most Montana trails—took us to Hollowtop Lake. Dave took over at this point working from his memory and his GPS to direct us up past Deep and Sky Top Lakes as we climbed through forest into the cirque between Mounts Jefferson and Hollowtop. Steep granite walls frame both mountains and the cirque is tight; I expected the headwall to be dangerously steep; it wasn’t. Nothing but a steady class 2 grunt to reach the ridge. From there it was a tilted plateau to the peak. It took three tries over 42 years but I had finally made it (A link to the story of my earlier attempts is below).
We took in the view. Mountains everywhere. The day was still young. “You want to climb Jefferson?”
View south and west from Hollowtop
Dave was all for it. This was our first trek together and I was learning that he was all about big days spent climbing multiple peaks. He knew these mountains well. He pointed out all the 10,000-foot peaks in view and shared the routes he used to enchain sets of them. He pointed to the 4WD road below us in the South Boulder River Valley. We could see impressions of an old mining road on the north side of Granite Peak, the Tobacco Roots second tallest peak. There are areas in these mountains for a variety of activities. We both agreed that you need to allow enough access to maintain a constituency for protected places.
Middle Mountain stood across the South Boulder from us. I did some research when I got home and learned that the Middle Mountain Roadless Area encompasses 96,487 acres; the heart of the Tobacco Roots is included, with lines drawn around areas with roads already in place. This land is protected for conservation reasons, and for hiking, horseback riding, hunting, fishing and birding. The Roadless Rule is at risk of being rescinded by the USDA under the Trump Administration even though 99 percent of public comments are against rescission.
We saw a dug-out area in the plateau while hiking toward Jefferson. “It’s a mining claim,” Dave said, “We’ll see a few of those along here.”
He was right, we saw about a half dozen claims, all just a stick poking out of a cairn as we worked our way up and down Jefferson. It seemed like a harsh, unlikely pace to be able to scratch out a living. That may be why the ground around all but one of the claims lay undisturbed.
Dave had worked his way north to south climbing Hollowtop, Jefferson, Horse and Potosi in one day some years previously. We continued south from Jefferson to the ridge linking Jefferson with Horse. A stretch of sharp aretes stopped me. “Forest won’t be able to get through there.” Dave said he had worked around the base of the rocky spires. I wasn’t comfortable with it, so we started down the south face of Jefferson. It did not go well.
It started off as loose scree mixed with chunks of Granite. A few slips, a few rocks in our shoes, but we were making progress. As we descended the ground ahead seemed to fall away. Could be cliffs, could be just a degree or two steeper, something we could manage.
It was cliffs. Not vertical, 50 degrees or so. Solid granite. Good holds. Dave dropped down the first step. Forest started whimpering. “Dave, I can’t get Forest down that.” Forest and I started working our way left at our elevation; Dave did the same at his. There were small pines mixed with the rocks complicating this and other traverses. We’d make a few feet of downhill progress and reach another section that made Forest whimper. After an hour-long process of climbing up and down through sections of these cliffs to find a route, we were at the last small cliff. An 18-inch drop then just tilted granite flat enough for Forest’s pads to grip. We just had to get Forest down this drop. He wouldn’t go. We cleared out loose rocks, we petted, I tried giving him an encouraging yank. Nothing worked. He was done with this cliff. Dave searched while I petted Forest. There wasn’t a better way down. I dreaded the alternative solution: climb back up the south face, over the shoulder of Jefferson and go down the way we had come up. I kept trying to comfort and encourage him.
I finally ran out of ideas to coax Forest forward and resigned myself to climbing back up. I started going up. In that moment, Forest must have realized his fate. He ran past me jumped off the drop and ran to the bottom of the face without stopping. I think I heard him howl “terra firma.”
After this it was just relatively level boulder fields, forest and finally water. Forest was thirsty. The stress of the descent down the face peaked his thirst as it did ours. I’d given him a drink on top of Hollowtop, but that was a while back. A spring poured out of a steep meadow. He drank his fill, then he drank more and more as we continued to descend. He didn’t trust that the water wasn’t going to disappear again.
We jogged back to the car. The parking lot was still empty; we hadn’t seen another soul all day.
South face of Mount Jefferson; the not so straight route to get Forest through the cliff bands
To link to the story of my prior attempts to summit Hollowtop, click the link below:
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