Plutons and the Humbug Spires

The spires the panel points to are protected ground as well as geology. Their name comes from Mount Humbug, just north of them, and the Moose Creek pluton's quartz monzonite stands there in some fifty spires, nine rising 300 to 600 feet. The Bureau of Land Management made the area a primitive area in 1972 and later recommended its 11,175 acres for wilderness, managing them since as a study area with no motor vehicles and no mountain bikes. The Wedge is the best known of the spires, and the area was among Montana's first developed climbing grounds.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mai Wah Museum — 14 mi
  Two brick buildings left from Butte's Chinatown, and a store whose goods came home after seventy years away.
• Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine Memorial — 15 mi
  An overlook above the shaft where the 1917 fire began, and the letters some of the trapped men wrote while they waited.

More markers nearby

• Keep Watching The Skies! — steps away
• Meaderville — 15 mi
• The Boulder Batholith and the Richest Hill on Earth — 15 mi
• Butte — 15 mi