Sagittata Hill

Arrow-leafed balsam root is balsamorhiza sagittata. In spring, the extensive south-facing slopes of this hill are covered in this member of the sunflower family. The hill has no name on maps, so we call it Sagittata Hill.

We have hiked, bike, run, skied, and snowshoed on the slopes of the hill many times. We hiked over the top and down the other side once. This time, we snowshoed a complete loop around the hill at the end of January.

We linked sections of trails and routes. For this loop, we started at the upper end of the grasslands south of McQueen Lake and worked out way over to Clay Lake, then to the trailhead of the Grasslands Community Trail. We followed the trail past ponds into the forest, then followed the trail as it wound around the north side of Sagittata Hill. The trail is not used much in winter and there were some trees down, but the trail is fairly easy to follow. Right before the trail starts a steeper drop into McQueen Creek, we cut across the forested sidehill aiming for a bench on the east side of the hill. We stayed high at first, but we dropped down to enjoy a series of sunny, open benches on the east side. There are no trails on this side. We just looked for the easiest route and softer snow kept our fee flat on the longer snowshoes.

the southwest shoulder

As we started to come around the SE corner, wide views down into the grasslands were laid before us. Across the eastern side is the Batchelor Range, with Strawberry hill, Mount Lolo, and Tod Mountain on the eastern horizon. To the south is Long Lake, surrounded by glaciated features of the grasslands, all clad in a winter mantle of snow.

looking northwest to Opax Mountain

Any route can be taken along this side, so we just took a long angle, climbing over the shoulder of the hill. Once back to the western side of Sagittata Hill, we followed snowmobile and snowshoe tracks through the grassland meadows and aspen groves to close the loop.

snowshoeing in the aspen groves

This was 8.5 km and took us nearly 3 hours to complete. We would do this route again, but we would drop down to a lower bench on the east side sooner and we would stay a bit lower on the southwest corner too.