Flying into the wild - Remote airstrip gives pilots Montana’s only wilderness runway
By BRETT FRENCH/Photographed by LARRY MAYER/Billings Gazette
Deep in Montana’s 285,000-acre Great Bear Wilderness, right next door to the wild and scenic Middle Fork of the Flathead River, ita’s not uncommon for summer visitors to hear the drone of an airplane engine.
Schafer Meadows airstrip, managed jointly by the U.S. Forest Service and Montana Aeronautics Division, carves a thin, orderly, east-to-west stripe across the ragged and remote country. It is the only wilderness airstrip in Montana.
“It’s such a pristine hideaway notched into a Montana wilderness area,” said Kalispell pilot Chuck Manning. “We’re very fortunate to have the ability to go into an interior trailhead.”
“In Montana, I’d say it’s our crown jewel,” said Debbie Alke, administrator of the state Aeronautics Division.
A Cessna prepares to touch down at the Schafer Meadows airstrip in the Great Bear Wilderness.
Grandfathered in when the Great Bear Wilderness was designated in 1978, the airstrip was carved out of the timber in 1932. According to an historical account, a team of horses was used to help clear the 3,200-foot-long strip. The first flight recorded into the airstrip was in August of 1933.
The strip’s name is derived from the surrounding meadows, which sit at 4,855 feet, just across the river from where Schafer Creek joins the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. The place names come from William Schafer, a trapper who built a cabin in the area. Schafer was found murdered and robbed in 1908.
Although backcountry pilots drop in to picnic, camp and fish, they also perform annual work at the site’s facilities, which include a campsite with potable water, pit toilets, tables and grated fire pits. The work is coordinated through the Montana Pilots Association and the Aeronautics Division, and includes filling in potholes on the grass strip as well as fixing fences around the landing site.
“We usually get between 80 and 100 people, up to 30 aircraft,” Alke said.
River rafters and their boatloads of gear are some of the main users of the strip early in the summer while river flows are high. Pilots fly the floaters in, who run the whitewater section of the river in four days - or less - out to Highway 2 or Essex, bouncing on the Class III and IV waves along the route. It’s the only float of its kind in Montana.
“Early summer to midsummer is when the outfitters use it most heavily,” said Sue Johnson of the Spotted Bear Ranger District. “It drops off after that due to river levels.”
The number of flights into the airstrip is limited by the Forest Service, capped at 550 flights a year and no more than five flights per day on 90 percent of the days. The flights include pleasure trips along with Forest Service administrative flights and commercial flights by outfitters. The strip usually becomes too snowed in for landing between late fall and early spring.
Once it’s cleared of snow in the spring, the Forest Service uses the airstrip to fly food and personnel in to its work center next door to the landing field. The center includes a ranger station, bunkhouses, a barn and corral. The ranger station dates back to 1936.
The work center is a supply station for trail crews and is also manned during the summer to keep track of the number of people in the area, flights in and out, as well as acting as a remote point for medical evacuations. After the snow is cleared, a packer takes a mule string in to keep the center supplied. Two trails lead into the facility, one is 16 miles long - the Big Bill trail, while the Morrison Creek trail is about 14 miles. The livestock also graze on the runway to keep the grass mowed down, one chore the pilots don’t perform.
Schafer Meadows wasn’t the first site chosen for the airstrip. Originally, pilots had carved a runway out of the woods at Three Forks in the late 1920s, just downstream, Johnson said. Pilots later decided the Schafer Meadows area was more favorable to planes.
The public can charter a one-way, 20-minute flight into the airstrip for a cost of about $350 out of Kalispell.
Manning said pilots usually make a pass over the strip before landing to make sure it is free of the moose, deer and elk that often congregate on the grassy field.
“It’s not a particularly difficult place to land, but you should have knowledge of mountain flying,” Manning said.
In 2004, a plane carrying Forest Service personnel in to Schafer Meadows crashed into a mountainside en route. The pilot and a passenger were killed while two others managed to hike out.
Although it’s located in a wilderness, the Montana Wilderness Association is not opposed to the airstrip.
“That’s an agreement we’ve always respected as part of the history that led to the Great Bear Wilderness,” said John Gatchell of the wilderness association. “And it’s important to recognize that the pilots support the wilderness. And the pilots are good partners with respect to managing and maintaining it.”
Brett French can be reached at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.
