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Day 80, Looking for goats, finding ducks
23/July/2009
On this journey I was also doing mountain goat surveys for the Park Service. At the first survey site I found no goats, but I did happen across a harlequin duck and her brood. It looked like a perfect place to be a duck. But not a human. The flies were awful. I grew up on a dairy farm and the barnyard, full of cows, had less flies. They didn't bite, they just crawled all over you. A note: On this trip I lugged the 400mm lens. It weighs an additional 15 pounds (with camera and monopod) but it's the ONLY way to get photos like this.
Day 79, Journey into the heart of Glacier's wilderness
23/July/2009
This was the first stop on a five day trip doing the Nyack-Coal Creek Loop, which is the heart of the Park, a wilderness area with rushing streams, old growth forests, fire-burned landscapes and mosquitos and flies. The bugs, quite honestly, were relentless. This is the first Nyack Creek Gorge, a vertigo inducing sight that I never tire of. You cross Nyack Creek to get there — right off the bat. It's a bone chilling ford right up to your waist.
Day 78, Glacier's gift
18/July/2009
Probably not the best photo of the day, but a good sign. The first huckleberries are ripe and the crop looks good. That's good news for bears and other creatures. Huckleberries are a main food source for bears. Good huck years, bears stay out of trouble. Bad huck years. They don't. Off on a five day adventure. See you next week.
Day 77, Better luck...
17/July/2009
On Day 73 I lamented my lack of success with common yellowthroats. Changed a few tactics today and did much better. I like the way the leaf frames this male's head. This is how you typically see a yellowthroat, a flash of a bird, hidden in the bushes.
Day 76, Panorama
17/July/2009
Bighorn sheep, Haystack Butte. What can you say? I think I got everything I could have asked for in this picture. Rams herd up into bachelor groups in the summertime. While they're famous for knocking heads in the fall during the rut, they knock heads frequently in the summer as well. They're always jockeying for rank.
Day 75, Mr. Grasshopper
15/July/2009
If someone had snuck up behind me, or flown a plane over low and slow, they would have thought, "He's lost his mind out there, crawling around on his hands and knees in that meadow."
Perhaps they would have been right.
Day 74, Sunrise, boat dock
13/July/2009
Generally, I don't even photograph Lake McDonald in the summer. The best light is the winter — a cold day in December or January being my favorites. But I got up this morning and decided to see what I could see and this is what I saw. Not too shabby.
Day 73, Frustration
13/July/2009
The common yellowthroats have been giving me fits. This one is soft, but I think the spider web makes the picture. They're one of those birds that simply don't sit still and while they are, in fact, common, it always seems like there's a stick in the way when you press the shutter. Sigh.
Day 71, Bear grass sunset
11/July/2009
Bear grass is not really a grass at all, it's a member of the lily family. The heads are made up of hundreds of small flowers. The plant blooms en masse once every three to 10 years. I suspect the blooms are spurred by two things: A solid snowpack and good precipitation in the spring and summer. Snowpack was a little below average, but we've had timely spring and summer rains. This scene is from the Highline Trail, a busy trail during the day, it is almost deserted in the evening.
Day 70, Hope, a reason to turn around
10/July/2009
Tonight I went looking for grasshopper sparrows, their song sounds like grasshoppers — sort of. I found them and got a few pictures and in the meantime thunderstorms were sweeping all around me but not at my exact location, so I stayed put. Then the skies got real dark — too dark to take a picture and I started walking back to the rig, expecting to get swamped. But the shower somehow dissolved and the sun began to come out so I turned around and headed back. A big black cloud now loomed behind me and the skies were swirling and the sun was setting and then a perfect rainbow as the rain fell all around. The blotches are raindrops on the lens — even with a cloth at hand it was raining too hard to keep the lens clear. I shot most of the scene with a film camera that captured the rainbow in its entirety. But this is one of the few I took with the digital.
Day 69, The Grayest birds have the sweetest songs
09/July/2009
The song sparrow is one of the first birds to start singing in Glacier in the spring. They can be both secretive and boisterous, one minute deep in the brush, the next minute at the top of a limb, singing their hearts out. The push is on to successfully photograph 100 different bird species.
Day 68, Cheeseburger, please
08/July/2009
It's been a phenomenal summer for bear grass. Here, it blooms en masse below Painted Teepee Peak. The stomach is feeling better and I'm thinking about a cheeseburger lunch. Mmmmmm chesseburgers. The backcountry trip is over. A nice painful adventure.
Day 67, Well blow me down
08/July/2009
At dawn, a bull moose swam the lake. I get out of there and the stomach bug isn't any better. I have to drop 1,000 feet then gain about 3,000 feet to the top of Chief Lodgepole Peak at the top of Two Medicine Pass.The stomach bug has killed my appetite and I've had exactly a half of a bagel and a half of a candy bar.
Just below the Pass I run out of gas and take a nap, right in the middle of the trail. There's no one around anyway. In fact, I haven't seen anyone in two days. It' hot, muggy and the skeeters are relentless.
Off in the distance it looks like rain. So I gain the elevation to the pass and it definitely is going to rain. Crap. I had planned on spending the entire afternoon and evening up here, because camp is just a couple of miles below at Cobalt Lake. At least it's not thundering, I think.
Then crack!
A bolt of lightning and then another and then the wind picks up to a howl. I have to get off this rock. The wind is blowing so hard my pack is pulling off my body and the camera, stuck on a monopod with a 400mm lens, is an expensive 14-pound lightning rod.
Day 66, The Stomach Bug
08/July/2009
For the first time ever in the backcountry I get a stomach bug. I don't have diarrhea or vomiting, it just feels like someone is punching me in the guts. So I pretty much stop eating. The hike to Isabel is just under 10 miles from the lower Park Creek camp. It's not all that difficult, the the last 1,000 feet to the lake are hot because the Rampage Fire of 2003 scorched the place. But the stomach bug saps my strength. A big old thunderstorm rolls in right after I set up my tent. I take a long nap. My tent is wonderfully waterproof. That evening the sun goes down low and red. To the right is Vigil Peak. The mountain in the distance is Grizzly. The mosquitoes are as thick as soup.
Day 65, A woodland visit
08/July/2009
Today was the first day of a backcountry traverse through the heart of Glacier, from Park Creek to Lake Isabel and then up and over Two Medicine Pass and then to Two Medicine proper. While sitting in the woods taking a drink of water, a pine marten, hunting on the forest floor, almost walked to my feet. Usually you can let out a little bark, like a dog, and they'll scoot up a tree. But when I barked at this one it ran like no tomorrow. Sigh.
Day 64, A yellow day
04/July/2009
It was a yellow day. Several yellow flower species, yellow warblers, and a nice wind to keep the mosquitoes away. the mosquitoes have been horrendous, but somehow you get used to them.
Day 63, The squirrel
04/July/2009
Ground squirrels are a dime a dozen in Glacier. The idea here was to show one in context and even though I'm not a fan of crowds, Logan Pass is still a pretty special place, particularly when the glacier lilies bloom. I sat down and waited, leaning over toward the squirrel. I'm maybe two or three feet from it when I take the photo.
Day 62, Sepia tones
02/July/2009
The Nikon digital camera I use allows you to do sepia toned prints in camera. You simply convert the file, which is a nicer way than the old sepia toned prints, which were made using harsh chemicals, like ferrous cyanide. Old black and white prints exposed to the sun or ones that are coming "unfixed" will take on the same color. As this project progresses, I find myself going back to places I really like. This is my favorite tree in the Park. It's an old juniper, which lost a limb over the winter. I fear it will die soon. This summer it was home to a family of bluebirds and a ground squirrel has a burrow beneath it. I could spend hours here.
Day 61, The grove
01/July/2009
On the east flank of Apgar mountain there is a grove of Ponderosa pines that somehow survived the gigantic Robert Fire of 2003. From a distance they look like they're in a straight row, but once you get in them, they are spaced apart. Groves of Ponderosas are some of my favorite places. One of the most impressive groves in Northwest Montana is at White River Park in the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. In Glacier, there are several groves in the North Fork. They often have meadows beneath them and the diversity attracts a wide variety of plant and animal species.
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