Many confuse it with the town of the same name 60 miles to the east. That’s fine. This off-the-track entryway to Glacier’s backcountry should be earned with a little homework.
And in Glacier, homework is more than the safety video hikers must watch before receiving their camping permits. Every vista has a story attached, either by history or location or appearance. And the Cut Bank Valley is like one of those shelves deep in the back of the library where you find all the stuff you didn’t know you were looking for.
Now a permanent ranger station and a car campground guard the entrance to the valley. Most motorists miss the dirt road that peels off Looking Glass Hill Road from East Glacier. But then, most don’t know that “Looking Glass” refers to a Blackfeet Indian claim that nearby Rising Wolf Mountain shines like a mirror from that vantage in certain weather conditions.
That’s how George Ruhle described it in “Roads and Trails of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park,” also known to Glacier tour guides as “The Ruhle Handbook.” Jack Holterman’s “Place Names of Glacier National Park” has three other options, including “the road is so crooked that when you travel it, you see yourself coming and going.”
It makes you pity the storytellers of Yellowstone National Park, who have to weave skeins from the cheap twine of “National Park Mountain,” “Lake Junction” and “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.” The landmarks are historic, but no history lives in those names.
Walking into the Cut Bank Valley, one of the first sights is the ridge arc of Bad Marriage, Eagle Plume and Mad Wolf mountains. All three have stories, and none are what you might expect.
Take Eagle Plume. It’s not descriptive, although the peak is nicely plume-shaped. Holterman ties it to the story of a childless Kaina chief of that name.
Eagle Plume pursued a wolf through a winter blizzard, uncertain if he was hunting it or it was leading him on some quest. He took a shot, but his gun misfired.
That night, he built a shelter, and heard a strange cry in the wind. Eagle Plume investigated, and found the body of a woman frozen in the snow. Above her, hanging in a tree on a cradle-board, was a baby boy. Eagle Plume warmed him with his own body and rejoiced at finally having a child, who he named Mahkuyi-uskin (Wolf’s Little Brother). And he and his wife vowed to never again shoot at a wolf.
“This little gem is Native American short story at its best,” Holterman wrote of the Eagle Plume tale. He credits it to Buffalo Child Long Lance, also known as Hollywood actor Sylvester Long.
Glacier mountaineers know the Mad Wolf-Bad Marriage arc for another reason: It hides one of the park’s rare bridged waterfalls.
The trail heads toward Medicine Grizzly Lake. While distributing backcountry camping permits earlier this month, a ranger mentioned that biologists were trying to recapture an “Old Man Grizzly” bear that had been radio-collared there years ago. Its battery (the radio collar, not the grizzly!) was due to expire.
But big old grizzlies apparently never expire from the Cut Bank Valley. This name also links to several variations. They range from a historic reference to a cattle-killing bear that was shot after a scary hunt in the 1920s to more folkloric versions of bears that either healed or harassed Blackfeet in the area.
Whichever version you choose to spin, bring a spinning rod along. The lake is larded with rainbow, cutthroat and bull trout for those willing to make the six-mile hike in. Glacier visitors don’t need a state fishing license to ply the waters, but they should release any bull trout they catch. The rainbows and cuts we caught were all pan-sized or bigger, but al fresco diners had better be prepared to share their meal with the medicine grizzlies.
About 2,300 feet above Medicine Grizzly Lake lies Triple Divide Pass. This name is purely descriptive. Stand on top of nearby Triple Divide Peak and empty your canteen; the water will flow into three continental drainages. Some will wind up in the Pacific Ocean via the Flathead River. Some will make its way to Hudson Bay. And some will hitch the Mississippi River out into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Four miles into the valley, the trail splits between lake and pass options. It’s about two easy miles to the lake, or three hard miles to the pass. Split the difference and camp at Atlantic Creek Campground near this intersection, so you can take the time to do both.
A turn to the south from that intersection leads to Cut Bank Pass. This route was a well-worn connection for the mountain tribes in the west to reach the buffalo-hunting plains in the east without alerting Blackfeet or Gros Ventre sentinels.
Professor Raphael Pumpelly was one of the earliest white explorers attempting to cross Cut Bank Pass, according to Ralph Beals, a Department of Interior researcher who compiled a park history in 1935. Pumpelly failed in 1882, but succeeded the following year. His efforts were memorialized by a sizable glacier on the southern side of Blackfoot Mountain and the easier-located Pumpelly Pillar formation above Two Medicine Lake.
Pumpelly’s name hides in out-of-the-way spots. But his trip triggered a bigger association. The Harvard professor’s visit was part of the Northern Transcontinental Survey for the Northern Pacific Railway, cataloging the land’s farming and mining potential. His packer and guide was William Logan, who would later become Glacier’s first park superintendent. He’s the Logan celebrated at Logan Pass, the high point on Going-to-the-Sun Road.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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