Mid Winter update

Boy, this winter is lingering on and on!! WE were starting to warm up here in Missoula. Spring was on the way and Old Man Winter shook his head and yelled, "No Way!" It's cold with snow flurries the last couple days. I don't think it would be that bad but for the fact that it had really warmed up here for a few days so it lures you into thinking it's going to stay that way! Uggggh! Well, at least we can continue skiing! ;-) We've been to visit to friends and ski with them in Feb. One is west in Sandpoint, ID and on is east in Bozeman, MT. We had great times of skiing and fellowship with our friends. Heres a few pics:

This is Picnic Point on the x-ctry ski trails at Schweitzer near Sandpoint, ID.












Here we are at Bohart Ranch x-ctry ski trails, Bridger Bowl downhill ski area is in the background. Gorgeous, huh? This is outside Bozeman, MT.









Laughing about something on the ski trails.













Erik pulled our friend' Jennifer's daughter, Eva in the sled. He did great, only dumped her once, HA! Jenifer is in the rear of the picture. We had turned Eva around so that she could talk to her mom.
Well, That's all for now! Until next time!

Recent photos, Christmas and more

Hello all!
Well, we've been having a good winter so far. We were able to make it "home for the holidays" back to good ol' MN and we saw lotsof our friends and family while we were there. We have finally begun to x-ctry ski out here. We have yet to make it downhill skiing. Not that it's far away, cuz it's not. But it's soooooo much cheaper to x-ctry ski! Like free in many areas out here! Anyhoo we're still just waiting to hear that we've been picked for an adoption. God is good while we're waiting! Your prayers are welcome though! Here's a few pics from the last couple months:
Me, Mom and Tara:














Me and Erik:














Here we are digging out our car at the Spokane Airport: (It was a couple feet of snow!):













Now it's 2009 and here's me skiing:



















Erik and me:














Well, Happy 2009! Drop us a line and tell us how you're doing!

Meowwy Christmas!

Hi It's Rio and Sophie and we wanted to wish everyone a Meowwy Christmas and Happy New Year. Our humans will be with friends and family in MN from the 26th thru Jan 5th. They said to tell you that they will see a lot of you there. We can't wait to have the house to ourselves for 10 days! MEOWWWW!

Glacier N.P. Continued

The Two Medicine area was a new area to visit for the both of us. We camped at Two Medicine Lake for two nights. While there we did a 17 mile day hike that included 2,500 ft of climbing the Continental Divide, around Flinsch Pk, Mt. Morgan and Rising Wolf Mtn before ending back at Two Medicine Lake. This was our epic hike for the weekend and to encourage ourselves to do the entire loop we told ourselves that is may be our last epic hike for awhile since we may have adopted a little baby by next summer.

The first photo is Erik stretching and reading the topo map before our hike. We started hiking at 9:00 AM. Then a photo of the start of our hike looking from the east end of Pray lake (more like a large pond) west to Medicine Lake and the Contential Divide in the distance. Dawson Pass (6.7 miles into our hike) is to the right of the furthest mountain and can't be seen.

The next two photos are on the hike up to Dawson Pass; Tonya with the western half of Two Medicine Lake in the background and then further up the trail pointing to Dawson Pass.

On the way up to Dawson Pass we stopped to wait for a mama moose to eat her way off the trail and passed by some big horn sheep (ewes) also eating. The moose was pretty docile. Other hikers told us there were some very large bulls in the area, but we didn't see them and wouldn't have gotten as close if we had.

We made it to Dawson Pass and the top of the Contential Divide in pretty good shape. We ate lunch at the pass with two other hikers we met on the trail, enjoying the view down into Nyack Creek valley on the other side of the Divide (photo below on lt). After our hike we walked north, along and below the Divide which was fairly steep and exposed (photo below on rt). We had perfect weather for the hike. This part of the hike wouldn't have been a good place to be during a storm of any kind.

About 8.5 miles into our hike we came to a point where we could see down into the valley (Dry Fork) we would eventually take to hike back down to our campsite. In the photo below we are standing on the Contential Divide, looking east, down to Oldman Lake and the Dry Fork Valley. We didn't desend here, but still needed to walk around Mt. Morgan (off the photo to the left) and then hike down the ridge you can see to the left above the lake, the ridge is actually a pass (Pitamakan Pass).

We were both still feeling good at this point, not to tired and we knew we were going to finish the day in good shape. The photo of Tonya was taken from the same viewpoint, but looking to our immediate right an Flinsch Peak.

Well when we finally made is around to Pitamakan Pass to drop down to Oldman Lake we had a good view of where we had been when we took the photos above (the saddle at the base of Flinsch Peak). The trail down was steep, but not as steep as the photos may appear to show it.

Once we got down to the bottom near Oldman Lake all we had left to do was hike the ~ 7 miles to our campsite. We didn't take the short detour to see the lake, although it looked pretty, because we were getting tired and didn't want to add any more distance to our hike that day. The hike out was pretty, particularly the upper part of the valley. The photo to the left is looking up the valley after a little less than 30 minues down the valley and the phot to the right is looking down the valley after maybe an hour down the valley.

Finally we made it back to our campsite. The last two miles seemed to take a lot longer to walk than the first two miles of our hike. It didn't feel like we were walking that much slower, but either we were slower of the mileage markers are off. The last photo is Tonya resting at our campsite.

Glacier National Park

Glacier is our favorite national park to visit. The second week of September we spent a 3-day weekend up in Glacier getting in what is probably our last epic hikes in of the year. The first day we puttered on up and stopped for a short hike to Hidden Lake overlook at the top of Logan Pass. Both times that we have gone on this hike we have seen bighorn sheep rams relatively close and mountain goats up close and personal.

Here I am at the overlook to Hidden Lake with a couple of the fluffy goats behind me and then a picture of Hidden Lake from the overlook.

The next day we hiked to Iceberg Lake from Many Glacier campground (~ 10 miles round trip). On the hike up Tonya got to see her first grizzly and cub eating berries above us on a mountain slope. They were pretty close to us (~ 100 m) and mama griz knew were we were, but she wasn't concerned and we weren't either with the amount of people using the trail. There was a lot of bear poop on the trail. You wouldn't want to go hiking in the dark by yourself.

The picture of Tonya is near the beginning of the hike and the bears were feeding on the slope to the right. The bushes were turning their fall colors making the hike even more prettier.

Iceberg Lake is a pretty little lake and much to our surprise there were still blocks of ice floating on the lake in September. It's located in a cirque (bowl) and receives little direct sun. Consequently, the snow remnent is able to stick around and the water is coooold. All of the glaciers in the Park are small/tiny, more like snow fields, and shrinking rapidly.