With abundant snow, this has been an outstanding season for winter recreation around Seeley Lake. We are grateful to all of the people and partner groups who have made this a safe, successful and fun season on The Nature Conservancy’s lands. From skiers to bikers to snowmobilers and more, we are working with many different groups to plan for recreation all across this landscape.
We want to thank the Driftriders Snowmobile Club for a great season of working together. The club groomed hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails, managed closures, cut out blow-down and posted signage to keep riders on track. They routinely contribute to the vital, off-season volunteer effort of helping to maintain the roads they use as snowmobile trails.
This season marked the second for fat tire bike trail use in the Twin Creek area. FatBike Missoula (affiliated with MTB Missoula) groomed approximately ten miles of trail in the area and were riding through much of March. We have been approached by folks interested in grooming more fat tire trails in the Seeley Lake area and we will begin exploring some of those options in the coming year.
To make sure everyone can access this country, we’ll be considering a series of potential summer recreation routes, thanks in large part to the results of the Seeley Lake Trails Project, spearheaded for the past three years by the Clearwater Resource Council. We are exploring seasonally opening existing roads to create a loop for motorized travel from the Vaughn Creek Road to Blanchard Creek Road. We are looking for partners to help with maintenance, weed treatments and other access management needs on this route.
Near Placid Lake, TNC and a local group are in the early planning stages of enhancing the trail system for hiking, biking and horseback riding in the Hill 16 area. Trails would span TNC and Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation land and we expect to explore these options further in the coming season.
Every new trail brings more people out into the landscape and we are excited to share these lands with recreation users. At the same time, we know that trails need upkeep. New trails require management to keep weeds under control and protect the health of the forest—this means a long-term commitment from users to maintain trails and the lands they traverse.
We look forward to continuing work with community groups to find places where recreation and restoration can go hand-in-hand. We will soon see a great example of this partnership on the new mountain bike touring route connecting Seeley Lake and Gold Creek. The route will traverse already existing, gated roads and MTB Missoula has raised funds through an REI foundation grant to treat weeds along the trail. These kinds of partnerships help to make the ride more enjoyable, protect the health of the forests and leave land in better shape than we found it.
Most of the people who venture onto these lands leave a light footprint. Recreationists tend to take good care of the forest, streams and trails. Some areas, however, are seeing impacts of heavier use.
Users have cut down green trees and removed vegetation to create new campsites along Owl, Gold and Blanchard Creeks. Once sites are cut in, others use them and unwittingly contribute to the problem. These dispersed campsites have led to sanitation issues and some careless users have left untended fires and garbage for others to clean up. We are grateful to our Placid Lake neighbors who picked up garbage on occasion last season, yet we hope they won’t have to do that again this year.
We are working with the Montana Conservation Corps and the University of Montana to address some of these issues. A Recreation Management Conservation Intern will spend the summer on the landscape educating users, maintaining recreational use sites, gathering information about recreational use, and report this info back to TNC. These issues are not unique to TNC land; FWP patrols and enforces policies in the area and we know that neighbors are taking an active role in letting us know about problems—particularly untended fires. As more people are attracted to beauty of area, it’s up to all of us to take responsibility.
While this is landscape in transition, it means many different things to many different people. It’s both a great place to play and a working landscape—some areas host grazing leases, while others will see active restoration and forestry work throughout the year. We recognize that sharing the landscape and supporting all of these uses is important for the Seeley community and for developing outcomes beyond TNC ownership.
We welcome everyone to explore and get to know the landscape that TNC is currently stewarding. We hope that getting new feet, hooves and tires on the ground will help everyone in the community see how they can contribute to a long-term vision for this place.
For more information on using Conservancy lands, visit http://www.nature.org/openlands
Questions or comments? Contact Chris Bryant: 406-532-4477, cbryant@nature.org
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