Ptarmigan Ptunnel

Some pics from our Sunday hike with a couple friends up to Ptarmigan Tunnel.

Many Glacier

After relentless pestering over the past couple of months, I've decided not to give up on my blog. While I still haven't found much inspiration to post, I will continue to use this place to share my photography. But don't expect tons of photos with each post, since blogger is still incredibly slow at uploading images.

I spent the past two days helping with seasonal naturalist training on the east side of the park, which gave me a chance to see the Many Glacier Valley for the first time since 1992. I've always said that the Two Medicine area is the prettiest in the park, but after spending a night at the Many Glacier Hotel, I think I might have changed my mind.

Swiftcurrent Lake
Mt. Wilbur
Another shot of Mt. Wilbur
The Many Glacier Hotel
On Wednesday, I swung by the St. Mary Visitor Center to drop off a poster I made for the bulletin board when I noticed how calm St. Mary Lake was. I've never seen it like that before, so I took the opportunity to swing by the Wild Goose Island viewpoint and snap a few photos.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out my polarizer. Many of the photos I've been taking with it tend to be underexposed. But trying to adjust for it by changing the aperature/shutter speed seems to wash out the white areas. Maybe it's just a matter of me trying to take good pictures in bad light (when the sun is in front of me, rather than behind). I'll figure it out eventually.

Just up the Road

This afternoon I decided to drive a few miles up the road and take advantage of the gorgeous weather for a little photography. It's been a while since I've been up that way, which is rather unfortunate, really. Particularly considering I only had to drive for about ten minutes to get these pictures.

So here's what Glacier National Park looked like this afternoon.

Wordless Wednesday

Glacier National Park
Photo taken this morning by Sonja

I'm a Bit Jealous

Ok, so I must admit, I'm a bit jealous. Working in the office I find it easy to forget that we live in one of the world's most beautiful places. But Sonja doesn't have that problem. She gets reminded of it every single day. Take the above scene, for instance. That was Sonja's "office" today. Not fair.

I know, I shouldn't complain. All I have to do is step outside and breath the crisp mountain air and gaze up at the mountains surrounding park headquarters to remember that I get to live and work here, too. But I don't get to see things like that every day.

I also don't get to check out grizzly bear tracks, or watch Golden Eagles soaring overhead, or scan the cliffs for sheep and goats, or any of the other cool things Sonja gets to do.

It's not that I'm complaining about my job, really. I just have to work a bit harder to make sure that I can take advantage of the amazing resources this place has to offer.

And honestly, just knowing that Sonja gets to see goats standing on a snowy (and empty) Going to the Sun Road on a regular basis makes me really happy. I mean, seriously, check out the pantaloons on this guy! It's awesome!

A Montana Morning

Sonja and I took advantage of the beautiful Montana autumn morning to take the dogs for a walk through the neighborhood and down to the Middle Fork of the Flathead River (which forms the boundary of the park). Lots of fun was had by all...



Both the larch and the birch were resplendent in their autumn hues.

We found the schoolyard at West Glacier Elementary to be pleasantly unoccupied. Translation? Playtime!


Two very different styles of frisbee catching. Luna keeps her eyes on the prize while Harvey barrels down the field full-steam, trusting that the frisbee will find its way into his mouth.


This is our new house, although we haven't been able to move in, yet. Next month it'll be ours.


A final thank you kiss from Luna makes it a perfect walk for a perfect morning.

Sweet Agony

Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I am in a lot of pain after our big day hike on Saturday. 13 miles isn't a huge hiking day, but it's big enough to cause some serious soreness that lasts for a while. We decided to finally tackle the famous Highline Trail, which starts at Logan Pass and follows the ridge of the Continental Divide for about 7 miles before descending to the Going to the Sun Road. We got an early-ish start, as evidenced by the sunrise photo above, and were able to hit the trail by 9:30am.

The first, oh, seven miles of the hike were great. The trail to this point is very easy, almost a stroll, with little elevation gained or lost. So, as you might imagine, this part of our trip went quite well. And the miles just seemed to fly under our feet.

While we didn't see any grizzlies, there was certainly evidence of their presence.

Long-leaved Arnica
Arnica longifolia
When we hit the seven mile mark, we opted to take a little side trip up to the edge of the Continental Divide, to an overlook of Grinnell Glacier. The sign said it was only 0.6 miles. But I'm here to tell you that it was the longest 0.6 miles I've ever walked. I think the trail gained almost 1,500 feet in that half mile. It was brutal.

Here's the divide, with the Atlantic drainage on the left and over the edge, while the Pacific drainage is on the "gentle" slope down to the right.

Grinnell Glacier can be seen in the center and a bit to the right, at the base of the large cliff in the background. In the foreground, near the bottom of the photo, is Salamander Glacier.

We weren't sure how far we actually wanted to hike, but figured we'd just go until we felt like turning around. Unfortunately (for my knee, at least), we didn't reach that point until we hit the 7 mile mark (and after the brutal hike to the overlook). At this point we faced a choice: hike the 7 miles back to Logan Pass, or cut two miles off and continue along the trail, but then face a descent of nearly 2,500 feet and the need to hitchike back to the pass to get our car. For some reason, the prospect of hiking another seven miles seemed much worse than a mere five.

This is a good shot of the first seven miles of the hike. I highlighted the trail (as best as I could) with red, including the side trail up to the Grinnell Glacier Overlook. You might want to click on the image to see it bigger and get a better idea of what a seven mile hike actually looks like.

The highlight of the second half of our hike was passing the infamous "Granite Park Campground", site of the 1967 grizzly mauling made famous in the book "Night of the Grizzlies".

Overall, it was a tremendously enjoyable, yet exhausting trip. We were able to find a ride up to the pass in less than three minutes, which helped. If you ever want to plan a trip to Glacier National Park, I strongly recommend this hike. Just be prepared for a long day.

And in other news, we found out today that we will, in fact, get to live in park housing! Yay! No more having to beg landlords to allow our pets. You have no idea how much of a relief it is to no longer be in "housing limbo."

Notes from a Wildlife Technician

Sonja is now getting into the groove with her wildlife technician job here at Glacier. She's now seen several bears (both black bears), within about 15 feet of her. She got to chase one of them away from the road yesterday. For the most part, her days involve driving up the Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass, pulling over at specified points to scan the meadows and cliffs for bears, goats, sheep, and any other assorted wildlife that happens to be around.

One of her tasks during these surveys is to photo-document as many close encounters as she can. Here you can see a mountain goat approaching her survey site. Sonja's spotting scope is on the right. She's gotten much better, as she describes it, at "yelling at visitors" for feeding/harassing wildlife, too. It's almost a daily occurance now that she needs to admonish someone for giving a ground squirrel (one that should have been underground getting ready to hibernate for at least a month by now) assorted fritos, cheezy poofs, and raisins.

But I think what Sonja enjoys most are the daily reminders she gets of how lucky we really are to be living and working in one of the world's most beautiful places.

Now I just have to work on getting her to take more pictures like this one.

A Berry Good Weekend

Our theme for this weekend seemed to be "how many berries can we stuff in our faces before we throw up?" We never actually found out the answer to that question, but we did both experience berry-overload at various points during the weekend. Saturday we took a trip up to Huckleberry Mountain specifically to pick it's namesake berries. But as you can see from the handful, we didn't find just huckleberries.

Here's a photo-montage of the various, non-huck yummies we found along the trail.

Saskatoon (aka, Western Serviceberry)Because we left the plant guide in the car, assuming that we'd be able to easily identify any huckleberries we found along the trail, we were initially confused about whether or not these were hucks or not. Turns out they're not. Also turns out they don't taste very good. Not that they're inedible, just rather bland.

ThimbleberryThese were the real treasure we discovered along the trail. Incredibly sweet and yummy, we were amazed that other hikers had apparently been ignoring them. Not that we minded. Sonja and I were happy to exploit the other hikers' disinterest in these little gems.

Clasp-leaf Twisted Stalk (aka, Watermelon Berries)Another surprise were all the uneaten watermelon berries we saw. Either the other hikers along the trail were so intent on the huckleberries that they just didn't care about all the rest, or not many people around here know how good these things are. Oh well, more for us!

We also saw a couple berries that we did not try, mostly cuz they looked like eating them would give us a gastronomic experience we'd rather avoid. Here are two of those.

QueencupI don't know about you, but this just looks like a berry you don't want to eat. We didn't know what it was until we got back to the car and looked it up. All the guide says is that these neat little berries are "inedible". No fun descriptions of all the nasty things that might happen to someone who decides to try eating one. Oh well...

Utah Honeysuckle (aka, twinberries)The guide didn't actually say whether or not these berries were edible. But something just didn't look right about them, so we left them alone. Of course, we've made decisions like that about odd-looking fruits we've encountered before. During our trip to Hawaii, we hiked out to the end of the NaPali Coast Trail and made camp on the beach. The entire time we were there we noticed these odd little non-descript, round, green, ping-pong ball sized fruits dropping off the trees left and right. When you opened one up it was bright orange inside. We made the decision they were probably poisonous and left them alone. When we got back to town the next day we were chatting with some other hikers and they asked if we gorged ourselves on all the ripe passionfruit falling off the trees along the beach. D'oh!

Regardless of whether or not we made a mistake in not eating the twinberries, we certainly enjoyed eating the rest.