Opinion: 16 miles in search of a trail that no longer exists

So I got out of the office on Friday and decided to hike the Starvation Ridge Trail. It’s one of the few trails in Glacier that I haven’t hiked. I mapped it out with some mapping software. The loop, if you park at the Kishenehn trailhead just before Kintla Lake and then do the loop from Kintla back to the trailhead, mapped out at 16.5 miles, with about 1.5 miles of that hiking the road to the lake.

Like I said, I mapped it out, but had might doubts if the trail was still there. Glacier Park’s website still shows the trail, but showed no maintenance updates and my old 1998 USGS map also shows the trail, but my newer Cairn Cartographics map (they make great maps, by the way) didn’t show the trail at all, which I should have taken as an ominous sign, particularly since I didn’t bother to map out any GPS coordinates for the trail.

The Starvation Ridge Trail shoots off the Boulder Pass (Kintla Lake Trail) and ties back into the Kishenehn Ranger Station along the North Fork of the Flathead. 

We didn’t have a North Fork reservation, so we were out of bed at 5 a.m. and on the road by 5:30 a.m. in order to get into the North Fork before the 7 a.m. reservation cut off.

It started to rain just as we entered the park. Just a light shower, I figured.

Well once at the trailhead the light shower got a little heavier and we hiked up to the Boulder Pass Trailhead and cut across to Kintla Lake. It was raining just hard enough to get my pants soaked and my shoes full of water. I had rain pants, but quite honestly, it wasn’t cold enough to put them on and I figured the sun would be out shortly anyway.

The sun never did come out as we hiked down the length of Kintla Lake all the way to the campground. We saw one cool bird (a Western Tanager) and that was about it.

No Starvation Ridge Trail, which we should have come up on about a mile or so ago.

I thought maybe the sign blew over or I just missed it, so I kept my eyes very much peeled on the way back, but still no dice. The trail has been abandoned. I have hiked the Kintla Lake trail plenty of times over the years, but admittedly, it’s been awhile, probably 8-10 years and the trail sign to Starvation Ridge I remember is now long gone.

We ended up putting in about a 16 mile day for a trail that didn’t exist.

To add insult to injury, the mosquitoes weren’t bad in the woods along the lake, but they were heinous hiking the last 1.5 miles of road on the way out.

One kind fella offered us a ride.

“Nah,” I said. “The truck is right up the hill. But thanks.”

And sure enough, it was.

When we got home I checked Google Earth to see if the old trail showed up. It did, faintly near Starvation Creek, but there wasn’t a trace along Kintla Lake or the ridge itself.

Too bad, it looked like a fun adventure, with some creek crossings and a couple of swamps.

Now I’m down to two trails left to hike. The Porcupine Lookout Trail and the North Boundary trail near Waterton.

Maybe next year I’ll wrap those two up, provided they’re still there, of course.