TROY, Mont. — The Kootenai River is powerful.
Staring down at it from a swinging bridge recently, that was obvious. It was big and loud, gnawing away at the gorge it blasts through on its way to Idaho. I looked at the river’s soft spots and wondered if there were any trout there.
Later, looking at the falls, I wondered whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s stunt double got paid enough to get washed down them during the filming of “The Revenant.”
I also wondered how many people speed past the parking lot on the side of Highway 2 and never think to stop.
I did that last summer. Twice, actually. First for a camping trip east of Libby, then for a reporting trip into the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area south of town.
Both trips came at the height of summer, when the Kootenai Falls parking area is buzzing and the county-run concession stand is slinging ice cream. Having someplace to be, I motored by, telling myself I’d someday make time to pull over.
Recently, my friend Perry and I decided for no particular reason that we should burn a couple of days in the almost-Canadian portion of Montana and northern Idaho. We ended up in Troy with plans that mostly revolved around visiting Cabinet Mountains Brewing Co. in Libby but did include the intention of cross-country skiing on some groomed trails in the area.
Sometime near the finalization of our plans, Perry asked whether I’d been to the falls. I couldn’t afford to miss them this time.
About halfway between Troy and Libby, the falls and the gorge that lays out below them are a sacred place for the Kootenai Tribe.
In the early 1800s, they were an obstacle for the explorer David Thompson. On his search for a river route to the Pacific Ocean, he portaged around them.
The spot’s star turn came in the past few decades. Before “The Revenant” got Leo an Oscar, the falls and the gorge figured prominently in the 1994 thriller “The River Wild,” with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon. No Oscar nominations that time.
The falls break up monotony. Below Libby Dam, the Kootenai is wide and flat, the epitome of calm. At the falls, the river turns violent as it rushes down a staircase of ancient quartzite and limestone before flattening out again.
We were there on one of those warm winter mornings that makes you wonder why you own so many jackets. From the parking lot, it’s a short hike down to the river, which is a couple of stair-step plateaus below the highway and on the other side of a set of railroad tracks.
When the trail wasn’t slush and puddles, it was ice. Neither of us had Yaktrax or any other sort of cleat we could strap to a shoe. There was a lot of careful walking, and more than a few moments when my foot slipped and made me confront the full weight of my mortality.
After crossing the railroad tracks on a viaduct, we took a left down toward the swinging bridge over the river, built in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Floodwaters destroyed the bridge in 1948, according to the U.S. Forest Service, and it was rebuilt in the 1950s. A suspension upgrade was done in 2019.
On the other side of the bridge, a trail network continues into the hills. We settled for walking across and back, and then headed for the falls.
Visiting in February meant low water. That provided a better view of the falls’ geological architecture — the ledges, drop-offs and folds in the rock. The rock dates back to the Precambrian era, and it was cut and reshaped after the end of the last Ice Age, when the river became free to exert its full power.
We poked around for a while, then hiked back up to the car. All told, we spent about an hour there, but we could have wandered the trails for a lot longer. It was enough to convince me that this roadside park will always be worth a stop.
Wright is the Outdoors editor of the Spokesman-Review.
