HD 120 wraps the lower Clark Fork between Trout Creek and Noxon—as wet a piece of Montana as exists, with the Cabinet Mountains rising on the east side and the Bitterroot Range climbing up off the river to the west toward Idaho. Elevations run from about 2,300 feet at Noxon Reservoir up to over 7,000 feet on the divide ridges. The forest is rainforest by Rocky Mountain standards: western larch, lodgepole, western red cedar, grand fir, hemlock in the cooler draws, with a brush layer of menziesia, devil's club, and alder that swallows you whole once you step off a road. The drainages worth knowing—Bull River, Vermilion River, Rock Creek (the lower one, not the Missoula version)—funnel deer down toward the Clark Fork in the late season. Whitetail are the show; a handful of elk live in the higher backbone country and mule deer hang on south aspects above the cuts. Mostly Kootenai and Lolo National Forest with a heavy chunk of industrial timber ground (Stimson, Weyerhaeuser-legacy holdings)—some of which is enrolled in Block Management or walk-in, and some of which is gated. MT-200 (the Clark Fork Highway) is the spine and a network of forest roads climb both sides; the Bull River Road north of MT-200 reaches into the Cabinet Wilderness boundary. Trout Creek, Heron, and Noxon are tiny—gas pumps and a tavern. Thompson Falls down the river is the real supply stop. Cell service hugs MT-200 and disappears in the side drainages. The country is so thick you don't shoot deer at 200 yards—you shoot them at forty, in the cuts, on the old logging berms, in the rain. Grizzlies are around in low numbers; mountain lions are everywhere even if you never see one. This is hunt-by-foot, hunt-the-sign country, and patience pays better than scoped-up rifles.