A Wonderful Weekend

What an awesome weekend we had here in the valley. Friday, Ken and Megan came in to stay with us. They are both volunteers for the wolverine study. They made it in about 2:00 pm after walking the bare road. We headed out for a ski to Lake Josephine shortly after they arrived. Ken also volunteers with the track surveys in the park, so he surveyed the trail to Grinnell Lake. I followed closely behind trying to retain some of this important knowledge. We saw tons of tracks, ranging from snowshoe hare, vole, and weasle, to lynx, coyote, and wolverine. We made it up to Grinnell Lake (this time with no appearance by the wolverine) where Ken directed Megan and I over and over again until he got the "perfect" shot with his fancy camera. Eventually we headed back to Josephine to collect hair samples. We made it to the lake just in time for the tail end of sunset. Shortly after we watched the moon rise over Mt. Wynn. What an incredible view! We skied across Josephine with the moon rising to collect hair samples from the foot of the lake. Soon, we were cruising down the trail (some more gracefully than others) towards Swiftcurrent Lake. We skied back to the cabin by moonlight and enjoyed the rare night with no wind. After dinner the four of us headed out for some moonlight sledding. We only have one sled, so we pulled out the cardboard and had a blast. Once again, Ken spent many tense moments directing Megan to get his perfect shot of her sledding. I think it worked out in the end.

Saturday morning, Megan, Ken, and Jeff headed out to Apikuni Falls. After hiking to the falls Megan headed back out, but Ken stayed behind. The three of us left in the afternoon for the Iceberg Lake trail. We hadn't made it very far up the trail when our other guests arrived. Leslie, Dan, and Nick (more wolverine volunteers) met us up on the trail where we spent the next couple of hours fooling around on the hills. Jeff and I raced down the hill and unfortunately, he beat me two out of three times. Bummer! The boys were being boys and trying to do jumps off of some of the hills (Again, some were more graceful than others). Leslie was a rockstar and tried it herself. Unfortunately, things didn't go so well (blood was involved). We all decided to head back to the cabin when it started to get dark. We heard the coyotes going nuts on the way home. Once home, we had a good 'ol time playing DDR and flip cup (sorry GPI) and drinking some high class whiskey (Black velvet, baby).

It was a rough go of it Sunday morning, but we all rallied and headed out to actually get some work done. Well, all of us except Jeff who stayed behind to try to fix the toilet that was destroyed. Don't worry, I won't say any names. Ok, yes I will...Nick. (Alright, alright, it wasn't his fault so much as bad timing and bad plumbing). Anywho, we made it to all five of the wolverine sites to collect hair samples and replace some of the deer legs. We were out all day which was a nice cure for the hangover. The wind started howling about 3:00 pm, but at that point we were almost done. Leslie, Dan, and Nick headed back out around 5:00, so it is once again quiet around here.

Monday, I will be heading to Whitefish for anywhere between a few days and a couple weeks. I will apologize in advance for the lack of blog writing in the mean time. Perhaps I will get a few blogs in from Whitefish or will be able to get Jeff to blog.