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SWAN VALLEY - Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks captured a male grizzly bear south of Condon and euthanized it because it was food conditioned and had a history of approaching residences. FWP personnel captured the bear on the night of July 2 with a culvert trap at Grace's Greenhouse. The bear was estimated to be three years old and weighed 299 pounds. The bear was originally captured incidentally in the summer of 2017 on the Flathead Indian Reservation near Arlee after a different grizzly bear...
SEELEY LAKE – "How many people can say they still own their first vehicle?" asked Seeley Lake resident and car enthusiast Bob Stine. "Well the Seeley Lake Fire Department still owns its first fire engine." The 1929 GMC fire engine, known in Seeley as the 1929 Buick, was purchased from the city of Kalispell in the spring of 1967. The Seeley Lake Volunteer Firefighter Foundation still owns the engine - a mainstay at the Fire Department events and during the Seeley Lake's Fourth of July parade. A...
SEELEY LAKE - The Seeley Lake Volunteer Firefighter Foundation hosted their annual pancake, sausage and egg breakfast July 4th. They served 675 people. There were many raffle items donated by local businesses. Seeley Lake resident Robert Kelley won the 30-60 rifle. "The pancake breakfast went great!" wrote Lizza Kelley, head of the Seeley Lake Auxiliary. "We want to say thank you to all the volunteers who helped make this event a success and thank you to the local business who donated to our...
SEELEY LAKE – Over the weekend more than $2,600 worth of damages was reported to Seeley-Swan High School property. Law enforcement officials are seeking additional information regarding who was involved in the destruction of a snow blower that was pushed off SSHS’s roof. Missoula County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Bob Parcell said sometime between Friday, July 6 afternoon and Monday morning a group of individuals climbed on the top of SSHS. They brought bicycles up and rode all over the roof. Stored on the roof was a tarped $2,600 tracked snow...
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake was abuzz with activity on the Fourth of July. Activities included the Fire Foundation's pancake breakfast, Mission Bible Fellowship barbecue, the duck race and the Seeley Lake Area Chamber of Commerce's annual parade and fireworks. Winners of this year's parade: Group/Float: 1st: Veterans and Families of Seeley Lake- $150 2nd: Seeley Lake Chicken Coop - $75 3rd: Citizens Alliance Bank - $40 Vehicle: 1st; Blackfoot - $150 2nd: Rathbun's Mac. - $75 3rd: Jim Rogers and...
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake was abuzz with activity on the Fourth of July. Activities included the Fire Foundation's pancake breakfast, Mission Bible Fellowship barbecue, the duck race and the Seeley Lake Area Chamber of Commerce's annual parade and fireworks....
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake was abuzz with activity on the Fourth of July. Activities included the Fire Foundation's pancake breakfast, Mission Bible Fellowship barbecue, the duck race and the Seeley Lake Area Chamber of Commerce's annual parade and fireworks....
SEELEY LAKE - Mission Bible Fellowship hosted their seventh annual free barbecue lunch before the parade in Seeley Lake. It was a great success with no one leaving hungry and children decorated with tatoos and red, white and blue bracelets....
SEELEY LAKE - Spectators gathered at the Wagon Wheel Bridge across the Clearwater River the afternoon July Fourth to see whose rubber duck was the fastest. Due to the high water, the first ducks crossed the finish line in less than 10 minutes, half the time of the average race. The first ten ducks won either a cash prize or a free chicken dinner from the Seeley Lake Chicken Coop. This years winners were: 1. Lynette Ogilvie “Tank” 2. Ron Holiday “Monty” 3. David Daves “Carla” 4. Deanna Fowler “Karen” 5. MaryJo Barrett “Alva” 6. Cody Swigert “Ge...
SEELEY LAKE - The Pathfinder has been counting the crowd at the Seeley Lake Parade since 2013. This year's crowd was the biggest yet. We counted 4172 people lining the route from the Filling Station parking lot on B Street to the end of the parade on Redwood Lane. That's nearly 700 more spectators than last year. We asked our Facebook followers to take their best guess and as of press time the closest was Hunter Shelmerdine, guessing 4115....
I have been given written permission and even encouraged by Mr. Marshall to stand up for my rights and freedom of speech, so I will again. I am thankful that honoring the flag and anthem have been American traditions handed down for generations. I am thankful for all the men and women who have fought for, suffered grievous wounds of body and soul and many died for the United States of America. They suffered for me. I am unworthy, but oh, so thankful. How painful it must be for those heroes to see the flag burning and the kneeling for the...
SEELEY LAKE - I’m writing about the Big Larch Campground. I was called out to the boat ramp two years ago and the Forest Service people asked my advice on how to fix the boat ramp at the dock. I said it would probably cost about $2,000 to fix it per my advice. I called to see if it was fixed before the Kids’ Fishing Tournament and was told they had to study it. It went from $2,000 to $40,000 and it’s still not fixed. If you look at it today it’s tore up more than it ever was before. I also found out they couldn’t find any loggers to do the wo...
I want to respond to Mike Marshall’s letter in last week’s Pathfinder. Mike disagreed with some people’s dissatisfaction with other people’s method of protesting. I think Mike is very wrong. There are acceptable ways of protesting and there SHOULD be unacceptable ways. Nations have even attempted to make rules of fighting wars. In that light there should be rules of protesting. When a person burns our flag, or stomps our flag into the ground, to me that means he/she hates everything about this country and there is nothing good, redeema...
I want to reciprocate the feelings of gratitude to Lee Bridges for running a primary campaign that focused on the issues rather than personal animosities. Playing to divisive rhetoric for short-term political points hurts all of us in the long-term. As Bridges noted in a recent Letter to the Editor, this was an ideal that she and I both agreed to before we ever started campaigning. I want to thank her for being true to her words. What Montana needs now more than ever is civility and the ability to build bridges towards common ground. Lee...
SEELEY LAKE – Commercial morel harvest season ended on the Rice Ridge Fire July 7. Seeley Lake District Ranger Rachel Feigley said the season went well with significantly more personal and incidental pickers than commercial pickers in the area. Feigley said the area designated for commercial picking was based on input received from the community. It was limited to the area of the fire that burned west of Richmond Ridge Road, Forest Road #4353. “Community members were interested in a post-fire economic recovery based on recreation tourism and...
In late 2017, Montana legislators voted to substantially cut funding for mental health care, in response to a budget shortfall. Some of the effects on the state's mental health system were immediate: Mental health centers in Livingston, Libby and elsewhere closed or contracted, leaving many, especially in rural Montana, stranded without care. Other services may be lost or weakened over time. In the rural U.S., around 60 percent of residents already live in areas with a dearth of mental health pr...
Sarah sat in her Livingston home with the front door locked and her eyes closed, picturing the path to Gallatin Mental Health Center in Bozeman for day treatment. It's 26 miles, across a pass, with strangers at the end of the trip - too far, for someone who struggled to imagine walking around the block. Her dark hair faded with grey lines, Sarah has dissociative disorder. That means she lives with episodes that steal reality, creating people who aren't there and stalling her sense of time. "I'm...
SEELEY LAKE - Strings, anchors, balloons, the colors of the rainbow: To hear students and teachers talk about the Kaleidoscope Connect program's lessons sounds like listening to attendees of a New Age carnival. But to the seventh and eighth graders at Seeley Lake Elementary, each color and code word represents a concrete aspect of what each student needs in order to be resilient and healthy. Kaleidoscope Connect is a program Seeley Lake Elementary uses to help middle school-aged students build...
MISSOULA – Three grizzly bear cubs orphaned in Montana in June will have a new home. We can only hope they don't mind cold winters and the sound of French. As conservation biologists embarked on an exhaustive search to prevent the cubs from being euthanized, a message board post by Stuart Strahl, board chairman of the Missoula-based Vital Ground Foundation, led to an adoption agreement for the cubs with Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Felicien, a facility in Quebec, Canada. The zoo features large native h...
SEELEY LAKE - The sixth annual Seeley Lake Car Show on Saturday, July 6 gave old friends a chance to gather and community members the chance to show off their cars. The show's founder Ken Keith and his wife BeAnne began the car show five years ago. It wasn't intended to be a big event but just a group of friends hanging out. The Keiths, of Great Falls, have a cabin in the area and the car show started while they had other friends visiting them. "The first year we did the car show, it was just a...
SEELEY LAKE – On June 15, Betty and Adrian Vanderwielen celebrated 50 years of working together while encouraging one another to be independent in their marriage. The Vanderwielens met when they were in the same speech class at junior college in California. "Betty got up and talked about a poem by E.E. Cummings and I thought I've gotta go out with this girl," Adrian said. It took Adrian several weeks to convince Betty to give him a shot, but eventually she said yes to a date. Six months l...
Having been convicted of 49 murders and confessing to 71, Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, is considered to be the worst serial killer in U.S. History. In his 2003 court appearance, his consecutive confessions to each individual murder were completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever...“stonefaced and cold,” as one reporter described him. The judge subsequently allowed families of the victims to address him directly and most all were rightly heart-broken and enraged, up to wishing a “long, suffering, cruel death” upon hi...
Rammel Wins Lions Firewood Raffle SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake's Carlin Rammel won the Seeley Lake Lions Club Firewood Raffle held during the Fourth of July festivities. Rammel donated the load of wood to his mother-in-law. Holland-Gordon Trail #35 Closed for Public Safety SWAN VALLEY - An unfortunate incident occurred on the Holland-Gordon trail #35 where a mule, owned by a private outfitter, had to be put down due to a broken leg. The mule was able to be moved 15-20 feet off of the trail but may pose a safety threat by attracting bear or mountai...
OVANDO - Ovando hosted their annual parade on the Fourth of July. True to tradition, "Everyone participates. No one watches." Following the parade, attendees enjoyed the beer garden at The Stray Bullet and a hamburger and hot dog barbecue hosted by the Ovando Volunteer Fire Department....
OVANDO - Ovando hosted their annual parade on the Fourth of July. True to tradition, "Everyone participates. No one watches." Following the parade, attendees enjoyed the beer garden at The Stray Bullet and a hamburger and hot dog barbecue hosted by the Ovando Volunteer Fire Department....
