Yet even these sweeping vistas aren’t temptation enough to draw many hikers up the trail to the lookout – on average 60 to 80 a summer sign Ms. Duffey’s guest book at the summit.

There’s a small wooden cabin at the top of Northwest Peak, a few miles from Montana’s borders with Idaho and Canada, and Chuck Manning, 79, believes lookouts like this one deserve a second ...

If, on a hot, dry day a fire should break out within a certain 300,000-acre patch of northwest Montana, in an expanse of backcountry between the crest of the Whitefish Range and the glacier-carved ...