Visiting Jeff at Glacier National Park in Montana
July 25 – August 2

Wildlife sightings: snowshoe hare, deer, bald eagle, great blue heron, redtail hawk, kingfisher, beaver, coyote, various woodpeckers (pileated, three-toed) , various ducks (mallard, merganser), grizzly bear, moose

Saturday – Fly into Kalispell.  Greeted by Jeff Stetz at the airport while he was on the cell phone.  He didn't say anything to me while on the phone, just nodded and handed me a can of Moose Drool beer while we waited at the baggage claim. We got caught up on things during the drive into West Glacier.  Dropped off my stuff and we headed to the bar (Frieda's).

Sunday – I wasn't feeling very well. Upset stomache, tired, etc.  Signed up for a 2:15 slot for white-water rafting anyway.  Jeff went to work for a few hours while I slept on the couch.  I started feeling worse so I didn't go rafting. Turns out it was the flu.  I slept most of the day – watched a movie with Jeff in the evening.

Monday – Feeling better. Amy Macleod and Jess had car trouble way up in the NorthWest part of the park.  They went into the back-country even though the battery "idiot" light was on.  Jeff and I drove a couple hours up to their spot and worked on the car.  Dead battery and wouldn't hold a charge – jumping didn't work.  Ended up rigging jumper cables from the battery cables under the hood through a gap in the hood, into the passenger window, and wired to a spare battery I had between my legs.  It was enough to get us into town where we got a spare battery.  It was a Sanford and Son moment.  We felt pretty smart, though.  The rescue and repair took about half the day.
Jeff and I took his one-man pontoon boats for a float down McDonald creek.  A nice, relaxing, slow float with beer, a cold stream, and peaceful wildlife.  We saw Deer, a Bald Eagle, Kingfisher, a Blue Heron, at least one Redtail Hawk, at least one Beaver (who smacked his tail at us), and a few different kind of fish below us.  After that Jeff and I went pistol shooting in a nearby gravel pit – just before it got dark.  We were goofing off with a little .22 – plinking at soda cans and small cardboard cartons. 
Before we hit the trail the next day, we decided we needed to go to the bar.  Because that’s always the right move.  We started at Packers Roost, then to Frieda's, and closed out Stonefly at 2 AM.

Tuesday – Today we were doing a complex dance of shuttles, trail work, and heading out for our 3-day hitch in the Northwest corner of the park – where the North Fork of the Flathead River meets the US/Canadian boundary. It was planned to be a very long day.   Jeff and Eric Penn had a bit of a rough morning from the night before.  Surprisingly, I wasn't the worst off.  We packed up our gear, food, and supplies needed to do project work on the trails (mainly setting up barb wire on favorite bear rub trees, and gathering bear hair samples on previously set up rub trees) and headed out.  We dropped off Eric at Bowman Lake for his 16 mile day.  He carried only day-gear because he was meeting us later that evening for a vehicle shuttle.  Jeff and I drove to the Akokala trail head near Polebridge.  We climbed up the bench at Akokala and hiked a couple miles to set 4 hair rub trees.  The idea was to save Eric some time at the end of his hike.  Each tree takes about 15-20 minutes.  The quicker Eric got off the trail, the quicker Jeff and I could begin our evening hike into Kishnina. After setting as many trees as we could with the time allowed, Jeff and I headed back to Polebridge to give a lecture to a University class.  From Polebridge we drove to a trailhead not far away. The students in the class followed us in their rig.  Along the trail we stopped to look at a few rub trees previously set up.  We ended at a large open meadow that was once a homestead location.  Jeff and I left the class there as we boogied out, back to the rig.  Lunch at Polebridge.  Then we went back to the Akokala trailhead to wait for Eric to finish his long day.  Sometime around 6PM or 7 PM he hiked in off the trail.  We greeted him with a can of beer and a toast.
Soon the real work would begin.  The three of us drove to the trailhead in a burned area near the North Fork – SouthWest of Kintla Lake.  We saw a wonderfully happy coyote on the road to the trailhead.  He had a big smile. We had about 5 miles to hike that evening to make it to our camp.  We hit the trail at about 8 PM.  I like this part of the park, but it is fairly remote in that few tourists go up there.  Typically the only people in this area are researchers like us (a handful each year) or border patrol.
Jeff and I donned our packs and headed into what he liked to grin and call "predator central".  Home to various types of cats and bears – and not a lot of regular human visits.
This was my first time with a full pack since I visited Glacier two years prior.  I was surprised but we were able to make it the 5 miles to camp just before dark….we lost the rarely-used trail several times and ended up bushwacking from time to time to find it again. That made for some stumbling on fallen logss and scraping up my clumsy legs. The stream crossings weren't bad, fortunately.  I was dead-tired, but we made it.  For Jeff, it wasn't much more than an afternoon stroll… but I dare say he was hurting a little from a long day after a rough night.
We ate dinner and made it to bed around 11:30 PM.

Wednesday – We got started at 8 AM for a tough 12-14 mile day.  We hiked up the North Fork to the US/Canadian border.  We put in hair rub trees along the way.  Once we reached the border we hiked along the "boundary swath" for about 4 – 5 miles or so.  The "swath" is an area of cleared timber about a chain wide. It goes up and over whatever happens to be in the way of the international boundary.  This also means hiking straight up and over what might lie in the way – no switchbacks here.  Oh yeah, no trees means no shade – fully exposed to the sun.  We put in a single rub tree on the Northern edge of the swath.  I think Jeff was just being evil – making sure that people would have to take this route in the future to check that tree for hair samples… rather than doing easier out-and-back hikes from camp.  We found the other trail we needed to take us back to camp.  This 4-5 mile trail completed the third leg of a large triangle.  We ended up setting a lot of rub trees and collecting some amazingly nice hair samples.  The bushwacking in parts of the swath took its toll on my legs – more scrapes, scars, and bleeding.  My knees really started bugging me that day.  The river crossings were very, very cold, but soothing as well.  We got in around 6 PM, ate, relaxed, took a few pulls off a bottle of whiskey, and went to bed.

Thursday – Woke up early.  Decamped and cleaned up the place.  We saw a grizzly bear about 200 feet away from where we were.  Nice looking bear – I was so excited.  It was a little closer than I prefer, but hell, you can't be choosy with these things.  We made noise so he could keep tabs on where we were.  He gave us a wide birth and slowly circled around us over the course of several minutes.  We set our first rub tree by 8 AM, about 100 feet from where we saw the bear.  Its anyone's guess, but he was probably watching us for long time after we lost track of him – perhaps even while we were setting the tree.  We hiked out of Kisnina to Kintla lake by way of Starvation Ridge.  It was a long 16 miles – setting trees and collecting hair along the way.  For parts of it my mind was completely absent… I was walking right past rub trees and Jeff would just laugh at me.  I guess I was just trying to ignore the pain in my knees and put one foot in front of the other – trying to make the distance.  We made it to the rig at the foot of Kintla Lake at 5:30 PM.  It really was a nice hike.  I was told only maybe 5 people hike over this ridge a year – researchers.  Its not used much by the public.  We hiked through some amazing stands of aspen.  My favorite was the open, park-like stands of western larch (one of my favorite trees).  We saw a moose on the way out.  He was standing in a low-lying marshy area.  Unfortunately there was a lot of blowdown in the area and when we spooked him he got caught up in some of it.  He was frantically struggling to get out and stumbled a bit.  Made me feel a little sorry for him.
After reaching the rig we loaded our gear into the back and headed for the camping area at foot of Kintla Lake.  Jeff went for a swim and I waded into the cool waters.  Crystal-clear waters with mountain backdrop.  The water felt so nice. We spent about an hour doing a vehicle shuttle for Chris Kenyon and her boyfriend out of Quartz Creek.  We had dinner at Northern Lights in Polebridge – Mmmmm trout.
Back to West Glacier and finish off the day with beers at Frieda's.

Friday – Breakfast at Spruce Park.  Unpacked from the hike and did laundry in the morning.  Jeff and I went white water rafting on the Middle Fork at noon.  Rafting was awesome as usual.  We tried to take the run as hard as we could.  Jeff and I were up front, of course.  Feddy was our raft guide – he's a fun guy with lots of personality.  We'd been running into him all week at various bars in the evenings.  After rafting Jeff and I floated and fished the Middle Fork on his one-man pontoon boats.  We put in at West Glacier and took out at Blankenship.  We drank a 12 pack of tall boys on the float.  It was an incredible float – very peaceful and scenic.  We caught fish with fly rods we brought along, saw beaver, deer, Redtail hawks, etc.  Amy and I went to Frieda's and Jeff met us there a little later.  Bought Feddy a beer for giving us a good run on the river.

Saturday – Jeff worked in the morning and drove to Corum for some Community Bear Awareness thing.  He got back around 5 PM.  At 11 AM Amy and I floated McDonald Creek in the pontoon boats.  We took the slow, long way – through an extra oxbow and over a beaver dam (yes, over the damn).  We had lunch and dessert in West Glacier, then window shopping at a sporting goods store.  We got back around 4 PM and waited for Jeff to get back.  I think I fell asleep on the couch reading a book.  At 7 PM Jeff and I floated and fished the Middle Fork again.  We took longer and spent more time fishing than the day before.  We had a good time horsing around on some rocks in a steep canyon part of the river.  On one part of the river there were fish jumping all around us as we floated on.  We only managed to catch one or two apiece, though.  It was a pretty short window for fishing….the sun got lower in the sky and they stopped jumping and biting.  Saw a Bald Eagle again.  Jeff says he saw an otter.  The sun was mostly down and a bright moon began to climb.  You could see it poking in and out through the timber as we passed along in the current.  It was almost completely dark as we took our boats out at Blankenship.
We showered and dressed up as "White Trash" for a big bash the rafting guides were having.  We skipped the Hog Roast and Live Music at Packer's Roost (we had been kicking around the idea of going there all week).  Instead, Eric, Jeff, Amy, and I went to the "White Trash" party.  Almost all of the party-goers were rafting guides.  Some of them really went for the theme.  Wow.  The party was arranged back in the woods behind one of the rafting companies.  They had made a large square with several of the School Buses used to ferry rafters to and from the river.  They had music, dancing, a massive fire, lots of beer, booze, and punch.  Everyone was very drunk.  Hundreds of people.  There was even a little mud wrestling in a mud pit.  Only two people wrestled – I wasn't surprised to see one of them was our fearless raft-guide Feddy.  We stayed there until 2:30 or 3:00 AM.  Eric, Jeff, Jess, and I went to Apgar to stargaze off the Lake McDonald dock.  It was a nice night.  We got home at about 4 AM.

Sunday – We got up at 9:30 AM and had breakfast at Spruce Park again.  I packed up my things, hung out, said goodbyes to Eric and Amy.  Jeff and I went to the airport around noon.  We discovered the flight was running late due to a mechanical failure.  I was guaranteed to miss my connection in Denver to Austin.  There was no way I was going to get to Austin that day.  They put me on a standbye flight in Denver, but the chances were slim.  I ended up staying overnight in a hotel in Denver and flying out to Austin the next day.  It wound up being a very tiring trip… waiting in long lines.  The "customer service" line took 2 and a half hours.  I had to do it because it was night-time in Denver.  I needed to arrange a flight for the next day and a hotel that night.  I was lucky to even make it back on Monday.  I guess I got the last seat for Austin.  It was a great trip.  I had such a great time and look forward to making it up there again soon.