Guest Post - A Visit to Glacier National Park

 
Today's entry is a guest post by Ken Brown, the creator of Adgitize (a one-time blog advertising network). It seems that he had stopped by and seen my posts about tracking. So he sent me the first picture that you see below. I asked if he would like to tell about how he saw it, here, and he sent this great article and more pictures. (Great timing! I have an actual temp job that is keeping me very busy right now.) So enjoy this adventure, compliments of Ken Brown.

Three years ago, my wife Mary and I visited Glacier National Park in Northwest Montana. The Rocky Mountains rise to over 14,000 feet and is home for 35 glaciers. There are many trails to explore both for the average tourist and the more adventurous hiker.

The glaciers have carved the mountains into a wonderland of valleys, streams, lakes and sharp mountain peaks (known as horns if my memory of college geology serves me.) You can find many animals from mule deer to mountain goats in this mountainous region. But, today's article will be based on an animal foot print that we came across. Here is a picture of it. Go ahead and try to identify it as I tell you how we happened upon the print.

In the northeast corner of Glacier National park is an area known as Many Glacier. Coming into the park from the east you drive along Many Glacier Road which runs for 4 miles alongside Lake Sherburne on the south and the huge mountain peaks of Dancing Lady Mountain on the north. You finally arrive at Many Glacier Hotel. The Lodge was built between 1910 and 1915 and the room sizes reflect the needs of the people of that time period.

If you use binoculars you can see mountain goats grazing on the mountainside. The Hotel faces the large Swiftcurrent Lake which is over 1000 feet wide at points. The area offers outdoor activities like hiking and horseback riding. It is a great point to start an adventure of back country hiking.

We only had a day at this section of the park and chose to do a tour that included boating on two separate lakes and less hiking. Our goal was to do some hiking around the Lake Josephine area. We took the first boat which launched from Many Glacier Hotel onto Swiftcurrent Lake.

The Swiss Chalet style hotel is huge but as our boat traveled south on the lake the hotel was dwarfed by the mountain back drop. When we reached the southernmost point of the lake we disembarked the boat and walked half a mile to the next lake. Another short boat ride and soon we were in the old forests of Glacier National Park 3 or 4 miles from civilization.



We walked another mile with our little group of 40 tourists until we reached Lake Josephine. The guide told us about the different animals to be found in the region and she recommended that we yell out the words, "yo bear" every hundred yards or so.

Glacier National Park is home to over 600 grizzly bears. Many call the Many Glacier area their home. One of the favorite activities of tourists of the Many Glacier hotel is to spend the afternoon with binoculars watching for Grizzly bears foraging for food in the mountain meadows.

Lake Josephine and the surrounding mountain is a beautiful area. It was late September and winter was due to arrive in the next 30 to 60 days. Bears were harvesting food from the surrounding forest to prepare for their hibernation. The guide encouraged us to wander around the area just remember to get to the boat on time.



Mary and I decided to see some more of the area. It didn't take us long to leave the comfort of the large group of people and realize that we were in a wilderness area. The paths had been well traveled but were small and the large pine trees prevented the late afternoon sun from reaching all areas of the forest floor.

We realized that we weren't interested in visiting with the local inhabitants and continued to yell out, "yo bear." The surrounding quiet spooked us. Chicago is a noisy area with traffic noises, ambulances and few places to really "get away from it all." The wild raspberries were ripe and ready for picking which made us aware that bears might also be in the area.

Melting glaciers create mountain streams and eventually run into Lake Josephine. We crossed over a small bridge made of fallen logs and noticed the foot print formed in the muddy mountain stream bank. We should have put our hand next to it to give a comparison of size, but it would mean we would have gotten muddy and we didn't want to do that. The print was larger than a coffee cup saucer but smaller than a regular size dinner plate.

So, have you figured out what animal created the print? Yes, it is a Grizzly bear paw print. Have you ever seen a grizzly bear? We have seen a few through our travels. We have seen a couple of baby bears and their mother half walking half rolling down a mountainside. We have walked within 50 feet of a teenager grizzly. Luckily he was more afraid of us than we were of him. And have seen a full grown grizzly foraging in a meadow less than 100 feet away.

Put Glacier National Park on your list of must see places in the world. Spend at least 3 days to see all the majesty of this park carved by glaciers. There are easy hikes for tourists like me, Avalanche creek trail, St Mary Falls and Virginia Falls. I hope you enjoy the park.

Thanks, Ken! See you tomorrow, all.

Ken Brown's blog

Notes On the Alphabet

There have been some questions about the Alphabet series, so I thought I'd make a few comments today. A couple of people asked which letter was the hardest to find. Well, it wasn't G. I thought that would be one of the difficult ones, but on the hike with Marilyn Hoogstraten, there it was, on a tree, in lichen!

I have to say that the letter X was very difficult because I was determined to not just use any old two crossed sticks. I kept hoping for two crossed jet trails in the sky, but that never happened. The first time I saw this vine twining around a tree, the pictures I took weren't in focus. So this was the very last letter I got.

This V was just dumb luck... well, and a lot of looking at the sky. I wanted to find SOME letter up there! I took a lot of lousy Js and Cs and even an F. But they were all displaced by the better choices you've seen.

The most frustrating one was the R. There was an R that I could see in the Geometer moth's wings. But the moth was so small that I couldn't get a picture large enough to use. I just can't seem to make the Super Macro on my camera work right yet. So I had to go hunt up just this silly juxtaposition of sticks. You could find all the letters easily doing that.

The one that I feel is the biggest cheat is the S. The trail makes a nice S shape, but is a mowed trail really a feature of nature? I really wanted to use the stream. Did you notice the S when I blogged Remember the Creek? But I used the creek for the C and the Z, so I didn't want to use it for the S too.

All in all, this was a fun assignment. Maybe I'll let you all give me another one over the winter. Meanwhile, there will be a guest post tomorrow. Someone, someone that many of you know, emailed me with a very interesting picture, and I asked him if he would like to tell you about it here. He would... and he did send me a nice article.

See the entire alphabet at Sharkbytes' Photos

Nature's Alphabet: U - Z

See Nature's Alphabet P-T See Nature's Alphabet K-O

A Brand New Feed Blog for Nature Lovers

Here's the news! I have finally gotten organized and started a collection of my favorite nature blogs. It's feed blog that will list the most recent 25 articles submitted by the sites that I've entered.

There are 20 "Charter Inductees," and you will quickly recognize many friends there. My criterion was simple. Each blog has more than 60% of its posts dedicated to things that include the quiet study of the natural world.

Here's the list! (alphabetically)

1. Animal of the Day
2. Birding in the Falkland Islands
3. Dances of Dreams
4. Duxbury Ramblers
5. English Wilderness
6. Everyday Adventurer
7. The Joys of Simple Life
8. Martha's Musings
9. My Birdy Blog
10. My Handycam
11. My Journey
12. My Quality Day
13. New York Wildlife
14. One Day One Image
15. Photography By Ginny
16. Photography Exposure
17. The Retirement Chronicles
18. Time Outdoors
19. Wild Facts
20. WiseAcre Gardens

But, the point is, you don't have to follow those links individually. Just click the birdie banner above and check it out.

I'll be e-interviewing all included bloggers who are willing over the next few months, so you can learn more about where they are and why they like telling us about the flowers and birds and bees where they live. I'll keep adding blogs as I find good candidates.

This has been built VERY simply on a blog platform. The feed is not "live" in the sense that a new entry will appear whenever someone posts. You would need to refresh the page to see if there is a new entry. I'll keep looking for a way to improve that. Check it out, and have fun!

I'll just leave you with the sunset from Saturday night.

Tracking with some "Help" from Maggie

 



When Maggie and I went out for our morning walk it was a different world from yesterday's wind and blowing snow and biting cold. The sun was shining! And something had made two parallel tracks across my back yard. Now if you live in the NE United States, you probably don't even have to go look to tell me what made those.


The tracks converged in one of my flower beds, and came out the other side looking like one track. OK, so there were two animals walking side by side, and then they got in line one behind the other. Do you know what it is yet? I went to try to find an impression, even though the snow was deep.

When the snow is this deep it's usually really hard to find a good footprint way down at the bottom of the trail. This was the first one I found. I was going to follow the track and find a better one, but Maggie had designs on that track and she put her nose into it and walked right along it for so far that I wasn't willing to go try to find a better print (leg is better, but snowshoeing makes it ache). If you roll over the picture with your mouse, I've tried to help you see what is deep in that trail.


Yes, it's a whitetail deer. Now let's back up and I'll show you some good tracks from a few days ago when there was only a little snow. This one is probably a doe. It's not too large. I REALLY need to put a little ruler in my pocket to put down beside these pictures. I'll try to remember to do that. So, what do you look for in deer prints? That V shape. It's pretty simple! The deer is moving in the direction that the V points, just like an arrow. Now there is just one little curve to throw at you.


Sometimes you will see the two marks of the dewclaws. This deer was moving right to left (just ignore that twig ahead of the track), but behind the track, see the two dimples? Deer have dewclaws, those little extra toes that seem like they are on the ankle. Both does and bucks will leave dewclaw marks in soft surfaces, but given the size of this track (sorry, I WILL put a ruler in my pocket), and the fact that the surface wasn't very soft, I think this was a buck.

So from now on, when you see those V's on my blog, your first thought will be... whitetail deer. Of course other species of deer, elk, etc will have very similar tracks. But we don't have other choices in the wild right here.

Tomorrow, I have a big announcement to make. Well, not that big! Come back and find out.

See Down By the Creek for deer tracks in mud