Finley Mountain Roadless Area

Index to the other Roadless areas in the Western Okanogan National Forest

Selected campfire stories from this area from Lost and Forgotten - A Trail Guide to Roadless Area Hikes and Vistas in Western Okanogan County

Finley Mountain, RA 857

Finley Mountain roadless area, and its roaded counterpart, Finley Canyon, mark the location where glacial meltwaters took advantage of weaknesses in the country rock along the Chewuch-Pasayten Fault, a major feature dividing the Methow sedimentary sequences from the crystalline rocks to the east. Finley Mountain's canyon walls dip steeply into the gash of Finley Canyon. Although the bedrock surface is buried in glacial till, in the late 1990s, snow falling on dry ground sealed the sandy alluvium, forming a mile-long lake where none had ever been seen before. Slopes are clad with mixed Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and western larch, the latter reaching its southwestern extent in the area. The south-facing side of the summit trails away in open ponderosa pine - sagebrush steppe, which experienced a large wildfire in the late 1980s. The fire was named the Minnie Fire after the nearby Minnie Mine, an environmental disaster caused by abandonment of a cyanide heap-leach mining operation. The disseminated veins of gold in the area also crop up inside Finley Canyon, where the Red Shirt mine became one of the richest mines in Okanogan County history, extracting several million dollars worth of gold before playing out.

Roadless Area Map of this area (data from Pacific Biodiversity Institute).