A Road Less Traveled
In the remote North Fork of the Flathead River, the century-old Polebridge Mercantile will offer respite from winter’s isolation and the escape from the pace of life on the grid
By Tristan Scott
Editor’s Note: This is one of the stories featured in the winter edition of Flathead Living magazine. Pick up a free copy on newsstands throughout the valley.
No matter the season, the trappings of civilization abate on the journey to Polebridge, the nagging fixtures of workaday refinement receding the further one travels north over this far-flung, off-the-grid landscape, its remote, rugged terrain stripping away the polished layers of urbanity like acetone.
Driving through the wild and scenic North Fork Flathead River corridor, the cell phone signal and chirping email notifications are the first to retreat, their attendant, tech-induced anxiety quieted and retooled with a streak of uncompromising individualism that runs deep through the valley and its scant population of year-round residents, who are handily outnumbered by the wildlife.
The pavement vanishes without protest, fading to rutted gravel, and the power lines along with their hypnotic refrain taper off 20 miles up the pockmarked stretch of Montana 486, known simply as the North Fork Road, the nearest town of Columbia Falls situated 35 miles to the south.