Outdoors advocate Kreck dies

Longtime outdoors advocate Dr. Loren Kreck died Friday at his home in Columbia Falls.

Kreck, who had been a dentist, was 89.

Kreck, an avid trail user who has logged thousands of miles on trails all over the region, has lived in Columbia Falls since 1951.

He was a longtime champion of area natural resources, was instrumental in getting 285,000 acres of the Great Bear Wilderness protected in the 1960s and worked tirelessly for the passage of the original Wilderness Act.

He called the world on the trail “unendingly beautiful.”

“It’s sort of a spiritual experience every time I get out into it,” Kreck was quoted as saying. “The trees, the sky, the snow, the mountains. You could never get tired of it. We’re just darn lucky to live here and I hope we can preserve that.”

Ben Long, who knew Kreck for years and went sea kayaking with him in the Sea of Cortez, said Kreck was a highly skilled outdoorsman.

“He was a great spirit,” Long said. “Loren was always a fun guy to be outside with.”

Kreck’s many and varied outdoors adventures were well-known. He skied the entire length of the Apgar Range one winter and was there for one of the first descents on the Tatshenshini River in British Columbia with kayaking pioneer Walt Blackadar.

A World War II fighter pilot and avid hockey player well into his 80s, Kreck also was one of the founders of the Montana Wilderness Association.

In 2007, he donated easement rights along his Flathead River property for a public trail.

“I believe in public access,” Kreck said in a press release at the time. “I wanted to leave something for future generations to enjoy. I hope people will be able to come down to the river and fish, or swim, or just enjoy this beautiful place.”

In 1970, Kreck and his wife, Mary, filed a $21.5 million class-action lawsuit against Anaconda Aluminum Co. claiming property and human health were being harmed by fluoride emissions from the Columbia Falls plant.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 1973 but the aluminum plant later installed new technology to reduce fluoride emissions.