Garnet Mountain Fire Lookout

The Garnet Mountain lookout is a flat-roofed cab on a 10-foot concrete base at the top of the mountain, with windows on all four walls and a deck around it. Inside are bunk beds with mattresses for four, a wood stove for heat and cooking, a table and chairs, and basic cookware, dishes, and utensils. It has no water and no electricity. The door stays locked, and the combination comes with the reservation. Outside is a fire ring, the only place a campfire is allowed. Recreation.gov lists a vault toilet beside the cabin, but the Forest Service’s own page says the site has no restrooms. Candles are not permitted indoors.

The Forest Service and Recreation.gov give the summit as 8,245 feet. A Bozeman Daily Chronicle piece put it at 8,400 feet and called the mountain Garnet Peak. According to Recreation.gov, the windows look west to the Spanish Peaks, south along the Gallatin Range, east to Hyalite Ridge, and north down the Gallatin River Valley. Phil Knight, writing in Outside Bozeman in the winter of 2015–16, added the northern Gallatin high country and Gallatin Canyon far below. He judged the views the finest of any cabin in the Gallatin Range. In the Chronicle’s account, the glass on every side means the sunrise wakes whoever is in the bunks. On a clear night the Milky Way stands over the summit, and the only sounds are the wind in the pines and the campfire.

Grizzly bears are, in Recreation.gov’s words, “extremely common” here. Gray wolves, mountain lions, deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and Canada lynx share the mountain, along with many kinds of birds. In autumn, hunters work the slopes around Garnet for bear, elk, and moose.

Trail 85 and the Rat Lake road

The approach leaves US Highway 191 about 21 miles south of Four Corners. Storm Castle Road, FS 132, turns east there and crosses the Gallatin River on a single-span concrete bridge. Two miles in is the Storm Castle Trailhead. On the south side of the road, Trail 85 crosses a footbridge and climbs to the lookout. Hikers, horseback riders, and mountain bikers use it, and motors are not allowed. The sources disagree on its length. Recreation.gov’s route directions give 4 miles and 2,500 vertical feet. The same page’s overview says 4.5 miles and 2,800 feet. The Forest Service lists 3.5 miles from the trailhead. The Chronicle warned that the climb is strenuous under a full pack and that hikers should carry plenty of water, since there is none on top.

The motorized route continues 6.8 miles up Storm Castle Road, then about a mile on FS Road 3112 to the primitive Rat Lake trailhead at the road’s end. From there Trail 416 runs 6 miles to the summit. It is open to motorcycles and to ATVs under 50 inches wide from June 16 through December 1. No passenger car can reach the lookout.

From January 1 through May 15, Storm Castle Road is closed to wheeled vehicles half a mile from the highway. Renters park at the winter trailhead just past the Forest Service helibase. Snowmobiles follow the Rat Lake route, about 12 miles in all. Recreation.gov sends skiers and snowshoers up the summer trail, about 6 miles. Knight cautioned that the summer trail may be unsafe in winter because of avalanche danger, and that a ski approach via Rat Lake can run up to ten miles, depending on conditions in Storm Castle Creek. He and his wife spent two Christmases and two New Years at the lookout. Of the skiing, he wrote that the runs on the summit are short, “but you can ski right from the stairs of the cabin.”

A camp, a second-hand cab, and a concrete base

A lookout has stood on Garnet since 1930. According to the Fire Lookout Museum’s record, it began as a camp lookout, and no permanent building went up until 1950. That year a two-story frame cab, nine feet square, was moved second-hand to the summit from a Fish and Wildlife observatory on Lincoln Mountain. In 1962 it was replaced by the present 10-foot concrete base with an R-6 flat cab.

For decades, the Chronicle wrote, a ranger climbed to the cab each year and spent the whole summer watching the distance for signs of wildfire.

Dave Cary’s rentals

The lookout now belongs to a program that began with older buildings. Jane Ruchman, developed recreation program manager for the Gallatin National Forest, told the Chronicle that the forest’s cabins were built a day’s horseback ride apart for rangers traveling the forest. Once vehicles took over that work, the cabins fell out of use and began to decay. In the mid-1980s Dave Cary, a Bozeman ranger, saw that they could be used for recreation and started the Forest Service cabin rental program, the first of its kind in the region. Rental fees go back into upkeep. Rangers check each cabin after guests leave, and in some cases they come up to chop wood.

The Chronicle called Garnet the only fire lookout for rent on the Gallatin National Forest. The Fire Lookout Museum counts it among the most popular cabins in the rental system. “You might have to hump it in,” Ruchman said, “but my God, the views! And, you get these cabins all to yourself. I love them.”

The lookout still has its old job. According to the Chronicle, if a wildfire breaks out in the area, renters are asked to leave so the cab can serve again as an observation tower. The paper added that this had not happened in a long while.