Crossing the Divide

On the Continental Divide, rain on one side of a ridge runs to the Pacific and rain on the other to the Atlantic. Where wagons could not go, everything went over on the back of an animal.

Supplies moved in pack strings: a line of loaded horses or mules, each tied to the one ahead and led by a packer on a saddle horse. Packing was a craft with its own rules. A load had to balance side to side, or it would rub the animal raw and work loose on a steep grade. Cargo was wrapped in canvas tarps called manties and lashed down with hitches like the diamond hitch, named for the shape the rope makes on top of the load.

In 1930 the Forest Service bought a ranch at Ninemile, Montana, to raise mules for its fire crews, and at its peak the remount depot there kept more than 1,500 animals. A Forest Service pack train still works out of it.

Here the string winds along a rocky switchback below granite spires. A rider on a dark bay leads, two canvas-wrapped pack animals follow, then riders on a gray and a bay, and more riders are coming down from the pass above. A lake lies far below.