"This should return some parking for folks and reduce some of the conflicts we were seeing from people parking on the roadway," Nate Kopp, the program and trails director at Prickly Pear Land Trust, told The Monitor in late August. He was talking about a small fenced-off lot at the corner of Martinez Gulch Road and South Hills Road. It doesn't look like much. On the map, though, it is the closest place to park for the Eddye McClure East Trail, the trail PPLT calls an important gateway to Helena's South Hills for Jefferson County residents.
The timing matters more than the lot. Montana's general deer and elk rifle season opens Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026. Hunting and shooting are banned on the city open lands this trail leads into. For the next eight weeks, a Montana City trail user's best option may be the one that starts at Martinez Gulch.
Four years to get eight parking spots back
People hiked and biked through this stretch for decades before PPLT built the official Eddye McClure East Trail in 2011. All of the trail is on private land, and public access is protected by three easements the land trust holds.
Things got harder in 2020, when the property changed hands and the area people had long used for parking was closed. According to The Monitor, the people who bought the Martinez Gulch Road parcel that holds the trailhead planned to subdivide it. They agreed to an easement that kept the trail open on the condition that the path and trailhead move 200 yards south. Trail users then started parking on both sides of Martinez Gulch Road. Neighbors reported cars parked on dry grass, which they saw as a fire hazard and a safety problem. In 2022, homeowners near the trailhead drove steel stakes along both sides of the road, and the buyers put up a fence at the parcel entrance. Both are still there.
The fix came this summer. PPLT says Jefferson County worked with a new landowner to remove a fence from the public right-of-way, and PPLT built a new fence along the legal property line. The Monitor reports the new fence sits about 15 feet back from the road and estimates room for six or seven cars. PPLT's own estimate is about eight vehicles. Either way, eight cars or fewer fill the lot. On a nice Saturday, arriving early is the difference between using the new lot and finding it full.
From the lot it is still about a quarter mile on foot along the road to the trailhead.
Where the trail goes once you're on it
The two Eddye McClure trails reach the South Hills from the Jefferson County side. PPLT lists the East trail at 2.3 miles. Its September access update calls it 2.2. Either figure gets you across the east flank of Mount Ascension and into Mount Ascension City Park. The West trail is about a mile and climbs to Mount Ascension's summit.
Past Mount Ascension, the South Hills open into what PPLT describes as more than 80 miles of regional singletrack, with named areas like Rodney Ridge and Wakina Sky. This year PPLT added a new connector between the Pinchot and Top of the World trails. It is just over half a mile long and took more than 300 volunteer hours and more than 800 Montana Conservation Corps hours to build. The land trust says part of the goal is to spread out use on Rodney Ridge and cut down on conflicts between users. PPLT also expanded its online trail guide in 2026 from seven entries to more than 120, after assessing the condition and accessibility of 15 trails. If you last checked that guide a few years ago, it's worth another look.
The calendar between now and Thanksgiving
From the Martinez Gulch lot, the next eight weeks break down like this:
- Through Oct. 18: Archery season for deer and elk is open.
- Oct. 15 and 16: Youth deer season.
- Oct. 10: PPLT's Harvest Moon Banquet and Auction runs 5 to 10:30 p.m. at the Helena Civic Center. It supports the group that maintains the Eddye McClure easements.
- Oct. 24 through Nov. 29: General deer and elk rifle season.
That is five weeks of general season stacked on top of the archery weeks already behind us. For anyone who walks a dog, runs or rides on the Elkhorn side of the valley, the rules on each piece of land start to matter more than they do in August.
What changes on Oct. 24, and what doesn't
The City of Helena's open lands rules are short. "Hunting, firing a bow, or firing a gun is prohibited on city open lands." The only archery allowed is at the Davis Gulch range, and only for members of the local archery association. Mount Ascension, where the Eddye McClure trails end up, is part of that system.
The same page sets the dog rules. Dogs stay leashed at trailheads and within 100 yards of them. Farther out, they must be on a leash or within sight and under voice control. Horseback riding is not allowed on city property, and neither are campfires.
The Eddye McClure East Trail itself is a different case. It crosses private land under PPLT easements, and we could not find a posted leash or firearms rule specific to that section. The city rules cover the city parcels you hike into. They don't automatically cover the easement corridor you hike through to get there. Plan for blaze orange on the walk in, since you are on private ground in a rural part of the county during general season.
The other no-hunting choice close to Montana City is Prickly Pear Park in East Helena, a 240-acre park with The Loop and the Out & Back Trail. Hunting and firearms are banned there, and so are dogs, all year. For a walk without the dog during rifle season, Prickly Pear Park works. If the dog is coming along, the closest no-hunting option is the South Hills, reached through Martinez Gulch. That is why the eight parking spots matter.
Smoke on the ridgeline
On Sept. 11, the Helena Ranger District announced a series of prescribed burns southwest and south of Helena for this fall:
- Bear Gulch: 550 acres along Grizzly Gulch, scheduled for Sept. 16 and 17.
- Wakina Sky: about 330 acres south of Helena and west of Orofino Gulch Drive, planned for the week of Sept. 21.
- Brooklyn Divide: about 500 acres near Brooklyn Bridge and Skihi Peak, expected to start the week of Sept. 28.
Those dates moved. The Forest Service update posted Oct. 1 said Friday, Oct. 2 "may provide a window" for a 300-acre Wakina Sky burn and 450 acres near the Brooklyn Bridge trailhead. It also listed Monday, Oct. 5 as a possible day for 180 acres in a Telegraph unit near the Continental Divide south of Highway 12. We have not seen confirmation of whether the Oct. 2 burns happened. The same update said no trail or road closures were expected, but asked people to drive carefully around fire traffic near the units.
Wakina Sky is one of the South Hills trail areas PPLT names. If you see smoke from the Martinez Gulch lot, it may be a planned burn. The Forest Service says the burns are meant to change how a future wildfire behaves near homes and how intense it gets, not to stop fires altogether. It points people to AirNow for air quality and to the Helena Ranger District at 406-449-5201 with questions. Check the InciWeb page for the Helena-Lewis and Clark prescribed fires before a weekday hike.
Two trails that don't exist yet
Neither of the two biggest improvements for Montana City trail users has been built yet.
The first is short. Kopp told The Monitor that PPLT hopes to build a trail with the county within the next year, "in the right-of-way but off-road," so hikers no longer have to walk a quarter mile up Martinez Gulch Road. Until then, that road walk is part of every hike from the new lot. It feels longer in November, when the light is gone by late afternoon.
The second is a much bigger project. PPLT has started negotiating easements with landowners next to Prickly Pear Park for a trail through the park's mostly empty southern section and on to Montana City. "The hope is by connecting the two cities through this recreational corridor, we'll see more people coming in from Montana City to East Helena," Kopp said in May. He added that once access agreements are final, construction could still be a few years away while planning, design and crew hiring catch up. For now, both no-hunting options mean driving to a trailhead first.
Afterward, Hardware Cafe at 11 Bankers Lane is right in Montana City. It opens at 7 a.m. every day and stays open until 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. On Sunday and Monday it closes at 2 p.m. If you've been out on the West trail to the summit of Mount Ascension and back, a Monday afternoon visit won't work.
When PPLT describes the trail's namesake, it quotes Eddye McClure's obituary, which suggested remembering her by taking a hike "with your favorite two-legged or four-legged friend." Through Nov. 29, Martinez Gulch is the nearest place to park for doing that on ground where hunting is banned.
If you'd like to know which trails, easements and access points sit near a property you own or are thinking about, Jason and Joszie at Joszie and Jason Driear are glad to talk it through, with no pressure and no rush. Get in Touch.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
