Summer's End

It was 81 degrees at Logan Pass on Monday, and as I stood outside the visitor center and held my hand over my head and said "Last time I was up here, the snow was up to here," the audience gasped in disbelief. Then I told them, "As hot as it is today, it will start snowing here anyday!" They laughed in disbelief. I was the one laughing when on Wednesday, the snow did start flying in the high country, dusting the mountains over 8,000'.

Many people are on their way as the season starts winding down. Many will leave in the next few days. Fall colors are beginning to show as leaves yellow and the mountain ash berries begin their change toward a bright orange-red.

In park news, someone saw a mountain lion near Rising Sun. We're also on a massive man hunt for a missing hiker. If he is where we think he is, he's probably already dead.

Juvenile Birds

I went down to Two Medicine to get away for a little bit and to watch Pat's "Bird Brains" program. I laughed my head off in the back row, sitting there in my camping chair with a festive beverage in the cupholder. I laughed so hard, people in the audience actually turned around to see what was wrong with me. There was something about Pat, silly bird hat on, dangling a gummi worm, saying in a fake German accent, "You ahn-swer a qvestion right, you get a danglevurm!" that had me in stitches. Wrong answers earned a pooping-on in the form of whipped cream that shot out of the backside of a puppet raven.

No bears came to the serviceberry bush by my tent, but the mountain chickadees and a group of juvenile golden-crowned kinglets were fairly noisy in the tree three feet over my head. I packed up my tent and went to sit by the lake for a while, where I noticed there was a juvenile robin in the lodgepole pine sapling next to me. It did not have its flight feathers in yet and one of its parents came to feed it a couple times while I sat there just a few feet away. It was too cold and windy to sit there too long and I went back to St. Mary by mid-morning.

Siyeh Pass on Monday was fairly brutal. Just driving out there in the morning, I knew it would be the second-worst weather I'd ever seen on the trail. At least there was no rain, but the wind was howling. Upon reaching the switchbacks in the alpine zone, where it is usually windy anyway, it was especially intense. It blew hard enough to flap my cheeks and cause uncontrollable drooling, and it made me lose mobility in my wrists because they were so cold by the time we reached the top; I only discovered this when I went to point out some geologic features. We did not linger anywhere on the trail and even with a half hour huckleberry bonanza, we still got off the trail an hour earlier than I'd ever managed with a group. I didn't have much of a group: one of our interns and a German hiker.

I also finished my last Highline Trail hike yesterday. I'm glad to get done with that because there were always such serious time pressures to get down to the road and back to Logan Pass before my shift ended. We saw goats and bighorns. The Loop Trail down from Granite Park Chalet to the road is miserable, hot, horsey, and dusty when the skies are clear. The rest of the time it's just miserable, warm, horsey, and dusty.

Massive Photo Upload

Thunderstorms cancelled my hike this PM so I have some time, and I finally got the camera down to the VC to get some photos up on the blog. Of course, there are many more pictures than I wanted to spend time uploading, but here is a sampler of some of the things I've been doing. I haven't hiked the last couple weekends and I've been hiking the same old trails for work. It's interesting how much has changed so quickly on the Highline even in 3 weeks.


Bowman Lake



Red-naped sapsucker at the nest



A wildflower sampler inside the Red Eagle Fire area



Yellow-rumped warbler



Heavens Peak viewed from Granite Park Chalet



Hollyhocks. I think I'm allergic to them.



Elizabeth Lake and the view from Ptarmigan Tunnel



White-crowned sparrow in Canada, but the background is in the U.S.



Carthew Lakes, Waterton Lakes N.P.



Shooting stars



Gunsight Lake



Medicine Grizzly Lake



Matt on top of Goat Mountain. The wind was extreme.



Golden-mantled ground squirrel licking an ice axe, Siyeh Pass

The World Keeps Spinning

Well I did not have a fun weekend. I woke up Monday morning and realized I couldn't walk a straight line to the bathroom. It wasn't because my leg was asleep but because my inner ear was playing tricks on me again. I spent all of Monday and Tuesday laying down unable to eat or drink too much. My dizziness was not helped by watching the Cubs pound the Brewers while I laid there. On Wednesday, in a drug-induced stupor, I was in shape to get transported to Cut Bank, where the only place a doctor could see me was in the emergency room. Needless to say, that was a more expensive venture than I had planned.

Exactly as I predicted, the doctor ran a series of tests involving my vision, reflexes, balance, and coordination, then kept me on precisely the same motion sickness drugs I already knew to take while offering a variety of inconclusive reasons why I might be experiencing nausea and vertigo. I, personally, buy the virus explanation. I did, however, learn a bit about ear wax as they uncomfortably scraped it from deep inside my ear.

While I can work and eat and drink again, I'm still a little dizzy, enough to keep me off of long hikes for the time being.

In other news, I'm going back to Theodore Roosevelt National Park for the winter! Goodbye, application-writing season!