Sorry No Posts for awhile

Sorry that there haven't been any recent posts. Between having friends in town and socialising lots and my computer refusing to connect to the wireless at Brownies, I was not able to get much done.

Here are a few things I missed posting about.

Triple Divide Day Hike (17 miles): I hiked from the Cutbank trailhead up to the Triple Divide Pass and then down to Medicine Grizzly lake with a few people who work at the Browning hospital. It was a pretty great day. (Click on the link to see the photos)

Painted Tipi (16 miles or so): I hiked up to Two Medicine Pass and then out a ridge to Painted Tipi Peak with Jane (from Sierra Vista) and a few of her friends from the East Glacier area. It was a great day. We had good views and it was awesome standing at the top of Painted Tipi. We also saw a herd of female big horn sheep on the way up.



Swiftcurrent Lookout Take 1 (16 miles or so): This was a very interesting hike in that I was almost "beared out" at the beginning when a bear heading the same way as I showed no concern that I was on the trail. I couldn't get by it. I was walking along with bear spray in one hand and a camera in the other. It finally moved off (SLOWLY) when a group of ten more people came on the trail. I had some great views of the Swiftcurrent Glacier on the way up. The hike was beautiful but by the time I got to Swiftcurrent Pass the mountain top was clouded in. I hike up to the Lookout anyway. It was a cold hike into the cloud but kind of cool in its own way. There were, of course, no views from the top. I had driven a group of Chinese girls out to hike Grinnell Glacier on a ranger led hike. When I got to the bottom, I found out that they no longer do that hike but the girls were okay. They did the hike on their own and had a fabulous time.

Avalanche Lake and Hidden Lake (8 miles)
The weather did not look good today. I ended up cancelling my hike (Siyeh Pass) and taking the Chinese girls to Avalanche Lake. It was good to hike it again when it wasn't raining. I finished the hike early and read my book while waiting for the Chinese girls. In the meantime, my friends from SLC (Matt, Yun and Arwyn) showed up and I had a chat with them before they headed up the same trail. When the Chinese girls finished I decided to try Logan Pass. Of course, there was no parking but at least it wasn't raining. I dropped the girls off to do Hidden Lake and drove down the road to the nearest pull out. I was waiting for parking there when a bunch of goats showed up. Then it was chaos as everyone pulled in to take photos of them. I was about to despair about getting a parking place when a flag girl for the construction held up the traffic so I could get the next parking space. Then I hoofed it up the road and on to the trail. I saw a deer eating some of the millions of wildflowers and soon caught up with the Chinese girls. It was good but short day.

Cobalt Lake (10 miles)
Watching the backcountry report I saw that one of the routes that I wanted to backpack was available so I got up early and went to Two Medicine Ranger station and got permits for two nights backcountry. Since I was there I hiked out to Cobalt Lake. There were so many ripe berries on the trail - huckleberries, service berries and whortle berries. On the way back I heard a noise and saw a moose. I watched it for quite awhile eating various plants and sucking up water. Pretty cool.