Sofa Mountain rises to the west of the Chief Mountain Highway (#6) and the Chief Mountain Port of Entry into the United States. Kootenai Brown recalled his first impression of the mountain: "Coming down from the mountain, where we got our first glimpse of the buffalo, we soon reached the prairie shore of a large lake at the futher side of which a mountain rose to a sofa-like peak among the clouds. This mountain was afterwards called Sofa Mountain." When viewed from the north on Highway #6 it is easy to see the large cirque which forms the seat of Kootenai's sofa. Thirteen years later Kootenai led a group of six Indians to search for a Kootenay hunter and two women who had climbed part way up Sofa Mountain to skin two sheep which the hunter had killed the day before. While the women were skinning the sheep the hunter climbed still higher after another. A storm blew in and trapped all three on the mountain. Kootenai and the rescue party found the two women wrapped in the sheep skins but frozen stiff. The hunter too had frozen to death, but only after exhausting all his matches trying to start a fire and trying to kill himself with his rifle, and failing. The Indians brought the body of the hunter down to where the women had perished and built a stone cairn around them.