You guys have probably thoroughly OD'd on wilderness photographs the last few days, so I'll close out my Mystic Lake hike with just a couple more shots. The first photo is the cabin Charlie and I backpacked into -- a cute little building, 82 years old, but just in the wrong spot for a good photograph.



And here's a shot of the cabin interior. There was a little barrel woodstove for heat, and a big ol' Majestic stove for cooking ... and by the time I got there I was cold enough and wet enough that getting a fire going in that barrel stove was the only thing that mattered!



And finally, for the gratuitous dog photo, here's a shot of Charlie soothing his tired paws with a wade down at the end of the lake. Just what he needed!

Here's the second set of photos from my Memorial Day backpacking trip ... these are of the area around Mystic Lake, my destination for the night.

I took this shot hiking down from the ridgetop to the little valley where Mystic Lake is located. The lake itself is in the trees off to the left, and the mountains in the background are in the Hyalite country ... one of my hiking destinations last summer.



The trail works its way across a broad meadow upstream from the lake, which is in the mist off in the background.



Back into the forest again ...



And this little meadow is near where I found myself following the giant paw prints:



One more group of pictures tomorrow!

So Charlie and I are back from our latest adventure ... an overnight backpacking trip to a remote mountain cabin. We're both exhausted -- Charlie's been curled up in a muddy, comatose ball on my bed for hours, now -- but we did it! And I've probably got a at least three days worth of photos to share, too.

( Backpacking in the snow ... )

As promised, here are a few more photos of my overnight trip up to the old Eagle Guard Station this weekend. First off, a shot of the road just below the cabin ... pretty, but not too Corolla-esque:



This is how things are supposed to look at the end of May ... right?



Looking down from the cabin towards the corral:



I photographed this chair a year ago, in sunnier times:



And the old ranger station sign, now hanging inside in the kitchen:



And now Charlie and I are out the door on an even more ridiculous trip. We'll check back in tomorrow ... hopefully. :)

So anyhow, I mentioned yesterday that Charlie and I had spent the night in an old Forest Service cabin up in the Elkhorn Mountains. I'd kind of envisioned a green, summery experience up there ... but I would have known better, because it always seems to snow in Montana over Memorial Day. It was just raining down in the valleys on Friday, but I passed the snow line pretty quickly as I got into the mountains, on a slick and muddy little road that was definitely not designed for Corollas:



Though I considered giving up, I stuck with it ... and finally made it to my destination:



This is the Forest Service's old Eagle Guard Station, built back in 1895. Charlie and I had stayed there almost exactly a year before, under slightly greener conditions.



Despite the weather, it was great to be up there ... and Charlie had an absolute, absolute blast!

Here are some iPhone panoramas I took up at the cabin -- I'll put these behind a cut, to protect those of you with teeny monitors. I took the first one while out on a short hike; you can see the cabin just to the right of center in the view. Note the dog in the lower left corner:

( Read more... )

So Charlie and I spent last night at a remote old Forest Service cabin up in the Elkhorn Mountains, and I'll have a pile of photos for you tomorrow. Here's just a quick iPhone shot for today ... I took this up at the cabin this morning, while I was having my coffee and Charlie was standing guard at the window.

I've had the strangest food craving the last few days, drawing from a very old memory that somehow popped into my brain.

Back in my senior year of college, I was the editor of the school's weekly student newspaper. That was in the days before personal computers and page-layout software, so we prepared all our copy on electric typewriters, and once a week I would drive a big file folder full of stories and photos down to the printer who had our account. Someone down there retyped everything into one of their typesetting machines, and then I would drive back down there and pick up the typeset copy, printed in long strips on shiny paper with a thin coating of wax on the back, which made it slightly sticky.

Then it was time for the staff to lay out the newspaper itself. We had a long, angled table, and newspaper-sized sheets of cardstock printed with a faint, blue-line grid. We arranged the typeset stories on the pages manually, snipping the text with scissors at the end of each column. We figured out headlines and font sizes, and wrote all that on the pages with a blue pencil, and used border tape to make the separator lines. We burnished everything with a metal roller when we were done, so that it all stayed stuck to the page.

All of that took a long time, and of course there was a lot of tinkering and re-arranging and editing, because we wanted the pages to look good, and because the amount of copy we had never quite exactly fit. And we were always up against our deadline to get the paste-up back down to the printer, so we stayed at it, and sometimes somebody brought in a pizza.

When the paste-up was finally done and I'd driven it down to the printer, we could all breathe easy for a little while. The next morning, I was usually the only person who came into the newspaper office, and I'd sit there and eat whatever cold pizza was left on the table, and I'd feel accomplished and satisfied that we'd gotten another issue out.

So anyhow, I've had a craving for cold pizza for breakfast the last couple of days. I know I could just order a pizza one of these evenings, and leave it out on my coffee table until breakfast the next day ... but it wouldn't be the same.

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Oh, and also: happy Towel Day.

So for quite a while now, I've been bringing my iPhone along on my regular hikes with Charlie ... and every now and then I'll use it to snap a photo, which then gets posted on Google+. It's kind of a fun way to make a scrapbook of my hikes.

Anyhow, here's the shot I posted to G+ today ... an experiment with a new panorama photo app for the iPhone. I thought I'd repost it here because the app was recommended to me by the good and noble lakeguy :)

Had to leave the house early this morning to get to a client meeting in Butte ... something that ended up lasting a good 4-1/2 hours. (I did get lunch out of the deal, though.) Made it to the office after that, and then had to rush back to Bozeman for a marathon meeting of the city Design Review Board ... that one ended up being over 3 hours long. Poor Charlie was stuck waiting in my car for both of those meetings, so I owe him.

The DRB meeting was fun, though ... I always enjoy those. We got to critique a really awful proposal for a Comfort Suites hotel, and a really interesting one for a building intended to house a medical equipment dealer. Great discussions on the philosophy of urban design.

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So I got home exhilarated, and but the mood was ruined when I had to spend what was left of the evening trying to troubleshoot a problem with my dad's computer over the phone. Years ago, he used to be really good with tech stuff ... but now whatever brain synapses were responsible for that are gone, and its utterly impossible to talk him through even the simplest troubleshooting. (And of course, as he gets less and less capable with that stuff, he ends up calling on me more and more.) When he calls, I'm still able to be a calm and helpful kid on the outside, but inwardly my blood pressure immediately goes through the roof, and I want to scream.

And to compound things, I was trapped on the living room floor the whole time I was on the phone, obviously unable to move:

So I worked all day, took the dog for a hike afterwards, and then wandered into my kitchen to fix something to eat. While I was doing that, I realized I had absolutely no idea of what to say on LiveJournal tonight ... so I just grabbed the iPhone and pointed it down towards the stove. Herewith, my dinner:



Considering the sorts of food posts I usually make, it's probably good that you see this photo ... proof that I'm not *all* about the Whopper Combos and the KFC Double Downs. :)

You know the old joke that it's a really bad idea to fry bacon when you're naked? Well, I didn't quite do that this morning, but ...

I was just cooking up a big bowl of hot cereal, stirring it with a big, long-handled plastic spoon. When I took it off the stove I somehow knocked the spoon handle with my arm, and it catapulted out of the saucepan, delivering a serving of boiling-hot cereal to the top of my bare foot.

And man, did that hurt! I may never walk again.

Spending way too much time playing with the new iPad ... and I'm loving it more and more. I hope the iPhone isn't getting jealous. :-p

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Took Charlie up Drinking Horse Mountain this afternoon, between rain showers. (There's a photo up on Google+, as usual.) Passed a couple other hikers wearing FiveFingers shoes ... one of whom reinforced my theory that such shoes are worn by the very cutest of hikers.

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And I'm getting to be in more and more of a summer mindset, which means I'm making outdoor plans and getting ready for the backcountry. This week I spent the last of my REI dividend on a new daypack, and a little backpackers' stove to replace my 30-year-old Svea.

I'm going to hit another series of backcountry Forest Service cabins, too, and I already have four of them reserved ... two of them are dirt-road drives, and two are wilderness cabins Charlie and I will have to backpack to. One of the overnight trips I'm most excited about is a backpack up to Windy Pass ... I was up there with Charlie last fall as a day hike, but it'll be great to overnight there and do some more exploring. Here are a couple of shots I took last fall of the cabin I've booked for next month.

So, I suppose few of you will be surprised to hear that I came home recently to find a small box waiting by my front door ... and when I opened it up, I saw this:



And you also won't be surprised to hear that all in all, I'm thrilled to death. My long and ultimately-unsatisfying experiment with Android is over, and I've returned to the fold, and I couldn't be happier. Nighttime has turned to day. :)

Anyhow, I know that at least a couple of you have iPads ... so does anyone have any app recommendations? Any ideas would be appreciated, but in particular I'm currently looking for a good RSS reader, a note-taking app, and something to play porn AVI files.

And now, back to playing with my toy!

Here's the last set of iPhone photos from the weekend trip to Glacier Park. These are from a quick Saturday evening trip up to Bowman Lake, a few miles from Polebridge.

Anyhow, I pulled into Polebridge fairly late on Saturday, stopped at the hostel to say hi to Oliver, and then decided to make a fast drive up to Bowman to check out the sunset. It was a beautiful evening, and the road had just opened for the summer a couple of days earlier, so I had the place almost to myself. There was just a single vehicle in the campground, and Charlie and I were the only ones down on the lakeshore. This was the view when we got there:



The dog and I hung out on the lakeshore for a while, watching the light change. The sun was behind us, and just before it finally went down it must have broken free from a cloud or something, because there was a minute of the most wonderful light.



And then the darkness started to settle in.



Everyone back at the hostel thought the second picture was pretty cool, and Oliver put it on his website. But I liked the sequence of shots, which show how fast the mood of a place can change.

So yesterday morning I headed out from the hostel in Polebridge, stopped at the Merc for a huckleberry bearclaw, and then drove into the park for a little bit. I decided to take the little road up through Big Prairie, in part to see if the herd of elk I'd seen the week before was still there. They were gone, though ... last week's warm weather had reminded them that elk herds usually disperse during the summer months.

But then in the northern part of the prairie, up by the Akokala Lake trailhead, I noticed something slowly ambling down the road in front of me:



"Holy shit, Charlie," I said, "it's a wolf!"

I caught up with it slowly, and frantically grabbed the iPhone. The wolf gave way to my car, moving a few feet off the side of the road, still walking along slowly.



Charlie was intrigued and I was totally enthralled, but the wolf mostly acted like we were beneath his dignity. He was wary enough to keep moving, but still went about his business, looking for tasty rodents to snack on.



But then he grew tired of the attention, and headed across the road and down towards the river. Before long he was gone.

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It was a remarkable couple of minutes for me, one of the greatest thrills I've had in a very long time. Wolves are mythic and (I think) really wonderful creatures, and catching a glimpse of one out here is extremely rare ... even for people who devote their lives to the mountains. And to see one up close like that is just extraordinary, almost unheard of.

I stopped at the park's visitor center later to report the sighting, which you're supposed to do, and the person who took my report had been a member of a season-long wolf study team the year before ... and with all of that, she'd never seen a Montana wolf in the wild. And this was the second time for me.

So that brief encounter on Big Prairie totally made my day ... and then some.

So it was a gorgeous weekend, and I still had a few hours of fieldwork remaining on the Glacier project, so Charlie and I packed up the car yesterday and headed for the park. And I took another set of iPhone photos for LJ.

As usual, we made our headquarters in downtown Polebridge, probably my favorite town in the world:



Stayed at the North Fork Hostel again on Saturday night, and hung out with Oliver a bit. Since I had the dog along, Oliver gave me one of the little cabins he has at the place:



Charlie was in absolute heaven, running around the property with a couple other dogs, exploring his inner wolf. :)

Anyhow, I ate lots of baked goods at the Merc, as always, and I think I got all the work done, and I had enough time to take Charlie for a short hike up the side of a mountain. And I was mostly just happy to be there. It didn't hurt at all that this was my daytime view:



And this was how the river looked at sunset last night:



As gorgeous as that sunset is, it still isn't one of the best photos from the weekend. I'll save those shots for Monday and Tuesday. :)

So Charlie and I are road tripping again this weekend ... I'll try to get caught up on comments and stuff tomorrow night. Meanwhile, here's a photo for today, with some good advice.



I took this shot on the way up to Glacier last week, near the railroad depot in a little town called Paradise.

Another late day, and way too much to do ... so all you're getting is a couple more gratuitous dog photos from yesterday's hike. First, a slightly-goofy shot of Charlie:



And one of Harlow, looking all stereotypically Golden Retriever-ish:



Dropped Harlow off at her owner's house a couple of hours ago. She was happy to be home, but definitely sad to leave me and Charlie. We all talked on the front lawn for a while, and when it was finally time for Harlow to head into the house, she came over to the car for a moment first, stopping at the rolled-down back window, very clearly just to nose Charlie a goodbye. It was adorable.

As any dog person knows, there's a real synergy when you get two compatible canines together. Simply stated, the insanity level of a pair of dogs is exponentially greater than the sum of the insanity levels of the two individual dogs.



For the last two days, Charlie and Harlow have been running roughshod over everything -- my office, my house, the trails at the edge of town.



I'm exhausted, and I have to admit that I'll be a little relieved when Harlow gets to go back home tomorrow night. But both the dogs have truly had a blast, and that makes me very happy.

Sold my Android tablet on Craigslist yesterday, and got a reasonable sum. The guy who bought it was just spectacularly gorgeous ... longish auburn hair, tanned and athletic looking, a loose tank top and sweats. His presence definitely had an effect on me, and I probably would have just given the damn tablet to him if he'd asked me to. :)

Anyhow, now I need to decide if I'm going to replace the Android tab with an iPad.

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In other news, a friend of mine got word this morning that her grandmother had passed away, and she's flying out Wednesday for the funeral. So I volunteered Charlie and me to dogsit her pup for her while she's away. Say hello to Harlow, the golden retriever:



I took that photo a year or so ago, the last time she stayed with me for a few days. It went well, but both Charlie and Harlow are older and more self-confident now ... so it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Regardless, expect more dog pics. :)

No time to compose a post tonight, but luckily there's always a fallback ... yet more photos of the dog. Here are a couple of Charlie out in the back yard, enjoying one of his hobbies -- gnawing on a big ol' beef bone.

Well, this Montana road trip is nearly at an end ... another three hours or so, and I'll be home. Stopped at my sister's this afternoon and retrieved Charlie, and now the view out my rear-view mirror is back to looking like it should:



So the iPhone photo experiment is done for now, and tomorrow things will be back to normal. I'll try getting to comments and my friends list them, too.

Here are a few iPhone photos from my fieldwork today. First up, a shot of the place I stayed at last night. Highly recommended, and the owner is a friend of mine.



Anyhow, after I left the hostel this morning I stopped at the general store for some fresh baked goods and thick coffee, and I drove up to Big Prairie while I ate. There was some cross traffic on the little dirt road:



Then it was time to get to work. This was my morning commute:



Back on one of the main park roads, I was doing some fieldwork when I noticed some movement beside me. It was a coyote, who walked past my car with a complete lack of concern.



Hit the archives for a while later, and at the end of the day I decided there was time for a hike. Went up to Avalanche Lake, which looked particularly lovely in its still-snowy cirque:



Now to find some dinner, before tackling the long dirt road back to my lodgings.

Drove into town last night to find some dinner ... none of the places in the park have opened for the summer yet, and West Glacier is still nearly a ghost town, too. It had been raining during the day, but the evening was lovely.

Drove around a little afterwards, and watched Amtrak's Empire Builder glide across the low cliffs in Bad Rock Canyon. Then I stopped the car at the springs, and took this iPhone photo of the sunset on the Flathead River.



Up into the North Fork country tonight ... one of my favorite places on earth.

So I finished the first part of my Montana drive last night, and am now settled in at the place where I need to do a couple days of research and fieldwork. I took this shot yesterday, right after I arrived, to show you where I am:



I'm just guessing, but I suspect that at least today, my work location might be better than yours. :-)

Anyhow, I might be somewhere that has Wi-Fi tonight, so I'll try to get to comments and my friends list then.