Mountaintop overhaul: Volunteer effort stokes historic fire lookouts back into peak condition
Northwest Peak Lookout sits at the top of Northwest Peak in Lincoln County. (Hailey Smalley/ Daily Inter Lake)
Volunteers make repairs to Northwest Peak Lookout on July 25, 2025. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
Volunteers from the Montana Northwest Lookout Association carry lumber from the site where it was dropped via helicopter near Northwest Peak Lookout. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
Chuck Stearns winterizes Northwest Peak Lookout on July 26, 2025. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
Peter Kitts uses a spare two-by-four to reinforce a crossbeam on the Northwest Peak Lookout. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
John Vardis sands a shutter from Northwest Peak Lookout on July 25, 2025. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
Hinges and screws removed during repairs to Northwest Peak Lookout are scattered across a table. (Hailey Smalley/Daily Inter Lake)
At first glance, Northwest Peak Lookout is not much to look at.
Nearly a century of solitary confinement at 7,700 feet of elevation has worn the one-room structure down to a brittle-boned skeleton. The shutters sit skewed, and the walls waver. If not for the steel cables that tether it to the mountainside, the lookout may well have fallen to total ruin long ago.
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