babies

glacier goats, part I

Sorry we've been M.I.A. for the past while. We've been on the move for the past two weeks, starting with our trip up to Glacier.

We left early on a Wednesday morning and drove north through Montana. We left the main highway after a couple of hours, and traveled on two-lane roads through cities we'd never heard of. One city we had heard of was Choteau--home of the Grizzly Bear Marathon, and where we stopped for tasty burgers at the Elk Country Grill. Much to Steve's dismay, our brief stopover in Choteau has revitalized my interest in running this marathon, and I was chanting "Grizzly. Bear. Marathon." as we pulled out of town.

After six-and-a-half hours over windy roads we finally reached the park. Luck was on our side, and we were able to snag one of the last campsites at the Rising Sun Campground, on the East side of the park.


I was itching to get outside, so I dragged Steve up to Logan Pass and onto the Hidden Lake trail.


Last time we were here I saw a ton of mountain goats on the trail, and I was hoping to see them again. First off was a huge, huge marmot:


And then bighorn sheep:



And then GOATS:

rain, rain, rain

It's been raining here for over 10 days. The rivers are overflowing, and part of Slough Creek and all of Pebble Creek campgrounds are underwater. There have been flash flood warnings and crazy thunderstorms, and every time I check the weather forecast it's more of the same.

We found a slight break in the weather last week and hit the Garnet Hill trail with a friend. This is an 8-mile loop near Tower Junction, the same one we did back in April where we found the huge grizzly prints.


The river was already high; I can't imagine what it looks like now.


The theme of this hike was MARMOTS! We must have seen over 40 marmots, the biggest, fattest marmots I've ever seen in the park.


We'd be walking along and all of a sudden spot a marmot tail wagging in the sagebrush, and then we'd start to count 'em. they were everywhere.


This big guy refused to get off the trail, and we actually had to detour around him to finish the hike. I can honestly say I've never had to make a marmot detour on a hike before...



In other news, the elk have started having their babies, and this little guy was actually born just a couple of doors down from the visitor's center.