This is Heidi...Signing out for the season

Alright, we've finally reached the end! Jeff will be leaving Many Glacier in just a couple of days, and will have a couple of days to get adjusted to the real world before he heads to the big cities of San Fransisco and Chicago. I believe that he is in for quite the culture shock. As you all know, I decided to spend half of the winter in Whitefish, MT this year, so I am well adjusted to civilization. I was able to get in a couple of great pre-season hikes which made me more than happy. My latest excursion was to the Mount Brown Lookout. I was feeling the the pressure to get up there before I headed back home to Pennsylvania, and last Monday was the perfect opportunity. There wasn't a cloud in the sky when I finally turned on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. I stopped down at Lake McDonald to photograph the perfect mountain reflections in the glassy water before heading to the trail head. I hit the trail by 8 am, determined to use my snowshoes as little as possible. I passed one gentleman on the Sperry trail, but otherwise, I was alone. It felt like home being back in the woods, my feet pounding the trail and the smell of moist dirt in the air. I hit very little snow and ice on the Sperry trail, so I made good time approaching the Mt. Brown junction. It wasn't long on the Brown trail (three and a half long switchbacks) before I hit snow. Luckily, the early start and the brisk morning allowed me to hike several more switchbacks before I reluctantly strapped on my snowshoes. The woods around me were very quiet making the sloshing of my snowshoes sound magnified. I took my time climbing the trail, stopping to take lots of pictures along the way. By the time the trees had thinned out, I had given up on the trail and just headed straight up. It was easier than walking sideways on the steep slope anyway. Finally, the lookout was in sight, and I had a final burst of energy to make it the last little bit. The sun was nice and warm up there, and there was a refreshing breeze. I climbed up the snowy stairs to the lookout and baked in the sun for the next hour. I gorged myself, took photos, and lusted after the brew I neglected to bring. I could have sat up there all day, but the snow was getting softer every minute. So, I packed my things, signed the register, and headed back down the mountain. The trip down was a pain in the rear with the mushy snow but went by quickly nonetheless. I loaded myself into my car, drove until I found a deserted beach spot, then pulled off for a little rest and relaxation. I dug a homebrew from the back of my car, used a cast iron skillet to pry off the top, then headed to the beach. I basked in the sun for a full hour before I gave in to my hunger and headed home.

The next day, I heaved my bruised and sore body into my car and set off for the mid-west. I spent a night in a state park near Bismark, ND before heading to Minneapolis to meet my big sis for a Twins game. Go figure that they actually lost to Cleavland (yep, that's right) 8-1. Nonetheless, we had a great time, though that's inevitable when good friends and smuggled in whiskey comes into play. Luckily, we weren't watching the Pirates lose 20 to zip that day! Now, I'm back home in Pennsylvania visiting my family for a few more days before I head back to the Big Sky state. I will be back at Lake McDonald living the good life in mid-May.

I hope everyone enjoyed the winter blog. I'm sure Jeff and I will leave this blog up for a while, but this will be my last entry. Jeff will be posting at least one more, so stay tuned.

Here's to the many adventures that life brings!

The Park Is Alive!!

Vic and Allie came out to stay a couple of nights before the road opened out here. We did quite a bit of exploring and saw an awful lot of wildlife. Six moose in all including a cow with two calves. The weather has been amazing and it feels so nice to get some sun on my face. My boss Troy came out to work and stay this week and we have been setting up the lodge for water. The wildlife that has been around includes bears, beavers, moose(lots), sheep, goats, groudsquirrels chipmunks and coyotes. It is exhilarating to see the animals being so active. Wednesday evening I made dinner for Troy, his wife Geri Lee, Sumio, Kumi and myself. Earl hung out for a couple of beers as well. We had a great time visiting and Troy gave us all fly fishing lessons. Kumi grabbed her spinning reel and quickly caught a beautiful brook trout. The tracks in the pictures are of moose and mountain lion, notice how the lion steps directly in it's own track. The lake is 3/4 of the way thawed and the snow is disappearing at a rapid pace. The maintenance crew arrives on Monday and I will leave next Friday for the West side. I will write one more blog once I get to Whitefish.Ta-Ta!

Goat research ain't so easy!!

This last week has been very eventful so I will try to keep this entry short. As I left off last time Eric had left and a goat research team had made their way in to stay at the ranger cabin. The group was Stefon, Nick, Weez, Deborah, Kelly, Renee and Lishu. The weather has been pretty crappy for the last month so they were definitely in for a tough go of things. They were out here to ground dart a female goat and this terrain in not the friendliest for ground darting a goat. As they explored the area they were not to optimistic about their chances of getting a goat in a safe area for the animal and the crew. I went on a couple of their scouting hikes but then had to go back to work. The third night they were here they had me over for dinner and I brought some boxed wine(that's all I had to offer). A couple of days later I had all of them over for dinner and we had a blast, all of us boys were the boozing night owls and the girls hit the hay early. After two more days the guys came by again and we had some drinks and told stories, come to find out that Nick and I were at Coast Guard bootcamp together and knew a lot of the same people. The guys left the next morning and on the way out they found A huge Moose antler shed, both sides which is rare. They let me know that it was up by the entrance station and very close to the road. The plows had been in and I figured that more and more people would be biking the road so I told the rangers that I would go get the rack and put it at the entrance station house so they could have it for park use and that way no one could get in trouble for trying to take it out of the park. I couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures of myself with the rack and I have to say that those things are heavy! On my way back to the cabin there was a mama and baby moose by the road so I was able to get some great pictures of them as well. The next two nights the ladies came over and cooked dinner for me and we watched movies, Lord of the Rings was the unanimous choice. I had to go get my mail so I gave them a ride to their cars the next day and they took me to lunch at Duck Lake Lodge, they were all so nice and I really appreciate all of their company and generosity. It is just me out here again and the storms have really been beating on the newly plowed roads, right when I am expecting a big package in the mail. I have made many claims that spring is here but mother nature is just shoving that right in my face. All of March and so far April have been the worst months of the winter. I feel kind of bad for the plow guys because they have to get the parking lots and access roads cleared but if they have to keep clearing the main road it will never happen. Vic and Allie are heading this way for the weekend and I am very much looking forward to their visit. They will be hiking out and I hope that the weather will cooperate with their stay. I am happy that the moose are back but I am still eager to see some bears. Til next time!

If you want to complain about something my e-mail is jeffe1975@yahoo.com

I forgot to rotate Steph's sliding picture. First things first! Someone who checks out this blog issued a complaint to one of the big bosses of the park about one of my pictures on the blog. I used this title because I assume that whomever made the complaint just looked at the pictures and didn't bother to read the explanation which was in the text. I hope this person will at least read the title so I can hopefully explain things to him/her before a flurry of phone calls and accusations start flying between the public, park and my bosses. In the next blog there will be some cool pictures but if you just view the images and neglect to read there will be questions and I hope I will be contacted first. It has been extremely busy out here and seems as though it will be mellowing out a bit. As Heidi covered in the last entry we had a wonderful time hitting the top of Altyn while they were here. Steph really showed Jimbo who has the "stones" when it comes to getting up these majestic peaks. You kick ass Steph, Jimbo you are a Sally!! After they had taken off I had a couple of days on my own to work and scout around. I saw some golden eagles cruising the cliff edges with some ravens in tow and I figured there might be something going on so I hoofed it up the road for a better look. I got a little bored with the birds after about 10 minutes so I decided to follow some Linx tracks that I saw near the road. Now, I had followed grizzly tracks a month earlier and that was easy, but this cat has a little more controlled chaos going on when it is cruising. This frickin thing went through a creek, up the base cliffs of Grinnell, wedged its way between dense forest and then hit the trail. One thing that I did notice was that it always seemed to come back to a set of coyote tracks that went around the lakes. I decided to follow the dogs and sure enough the linx and coyotes always seemed to have the same route. after a complete trip around Swiftcurrent lake and half of Josephine I was worn out and the cat had officially won, props to you linxy! Eric rolled in a few days later and he was out to take the wolverine posts down. We had 5 in all to take down and I was determined to knock them out as quickly as possible so we could play then I could get some work done. The goat researchers (I will cover all that on the next blog) were out so we met up with them out at Red Rock Falls and hung out to ogle the goats. On the way back we grabbed the Fisher Cap Lake post - 1 down. We were up early the next day and set out for Josephine and grabbed both of those posts, while we were out there we saw about 30 goats all over the cliffs, man their crazy. While we were on Lake Josephine a big storm rolled in, the temperature dropped and the snow was dumping. We were chillin(literally) on a bench at the foot of the lake and Eric was to gung-ho on going out to Cracker Flats to grab the 5th post but I was able convince him that if we did so he would be very happy about it the next morning. We left Josephine and headed for Swiftcurrent-3 down. That one was easy, off gto Cracker Flats-4 down. The ski to the flats was rather difficult terrain but we made it and decided to take the edge of the flats back and climb the side of the waterfall back up to the cabin,AWESOME!!! It was such a beautiful way to go and I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before.All in all it ended up being about 18 miles and 1 really wet boot that post holed through a snow bridge. Now that all the posts were down we invited all the goat researchers over for dinner that evening. 9 people at once in this cabin! We had a blast and everyone got to know each other over chicken parm and spirits, fun. The weather has been absolutely erratic and I think March was the worst weather since December. I have been able to get quite a lot of work done in between all the visitors and I am just doing clean up now and it is nice to be able to cruise around rocking the headphones. The lakes have all been breaking up here and there, some more than others, especially Sherburne. The road has been plowed and I am now able to drive out to grab my mail. I will cover more of all this stuff in the next blog in a couple of days(moose are back! pics). Take care all and I will post again very soon. I almost forgot to mention, the collar on the sheep is what the researchers use to keep track of them. I thought you all might like to see what they actually look like and no it is not the kind that shocks them if they bark ; ). I also put a picture up of my new washing machine since I have had the plumbing problems. I never realized how easy we have it these days until I had to hand was 2 loads of laundry and 2 sets of bedding. What a forearm workout!