High on Mt. Sentinel!

I put this picture in my last post, saying we planned to hike up to the "M" soon. That time came today, 'do or die'! We and lots of other folks had the same idea.

Just a little history from a sign at the parking lot: "Mount Sentinel has provided one of the state's most popular hiking trails since forestry students cut its switchbacks in the early 1900s. In 1909 students built the first M with whitewashed rocks, and freshmen gave it an annual whitewashing until a concrete M was built in 1968. The M is 125 feet long and 100 feet wide and sits 620 feet above the Missoula valley floor."
(You may click on any of these photos to enlarge them.)

The path is quite steep, at least to two old 'out-of-shape' coots like us. We saw several young people actually jogging up or down the trail, as if they were using it for their work-out time. This is Keith huffing and puffing.

And here I am looking back at him.

The view from the trail was outstanding. This photo shows a building on the grounds of the University of Montana. The building is central in the campus layout, but I don't know what it is.

This photo is for my daughter, Jessi, though it's not a baseball stadium. It's the Washington-Grizzly Football Stadium. Quite impressive from this vantage point!

I love these flowers, the arrowleaf balsam. They remind me of the Wenatchee Valley in springtime. Below is the city of Missoula, so beautiful and full of lovely, large trees. The highway in the upper right of the picture is I-90 going west. The river flowing through the middle of town is the Clark Fork River.

And here I sit among the flowers after taking the above shot.

We really made it to the top! Once there, we couldn't tell the white concrete was an "M". It was too large. We climbed to the top of it and looked down, and pretended it was a "W" for Wenatchee! Or it could have been for the University of Washington instead of the University of Montana. Just being silly!

Here we are, two old coots feeling quite proud to have climbed to the "M" even though we were exhausted. A friendly fellow climber wanted to take a picture of us with the city in the background.

And one last photo. I like old stumps and was glad to find this one on the hill. You can barely see Lolo Peak in the distance.