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.

Jasper National Park

On another day in Jasper we hiked Bald Hills and saw Maligne Lake and the Elizabeth Range on the other side of Maligne Lake from Bald Hills. The Bald Hill hike was an easy hike (1,500 ft elev. gain, 12 km total distance), that provided an excellent view of Maligne Lake despite the cloud cover.

Here we are on top of Bald Hill and Tonya beginning our decent from Bald Hill. It was a bit windy and chilly on the windswept top. It never did rain on us, but we could rain showers falling elsewhere in the valley.

After our hike we decided to warm up at Miette Hot Springs. We (particularly me - Erik) aren't really hot spring soakers but it was a good use of our time that afternoon. On the way we was a large bull elk feeding right along the highway. The rack on the animal was huge. There were several cars stopped to take its picture. On mother had here little kids (all less than 5 years old) lined up within 10 feet of the elk taking a picture. If that elk had gotten spooked, the mom might have had a rack of munchkins - very unsafe. We don't have pictures of the elk as we didn't stop, but we do have a picture of female bighorn sheep in the parking lot of the hot springs looking for a handout.

Banff/Jasper continued!

Sorry it's been a while again since I've posted. I've been working hard. Both at home and work. I have some top secret stuff that I'm working on at home, but the fun part I can share is that Erik and I closer and closer to being on the "ready and waiting" adoption list. We've recently gone through our homestudy and now will be awaiting some final paperwork items. While we've been waiting we've also been doing lots of good research on strollers and car seats! Fun stuff I'll tell you. I'm appreciative of the wide range of the internet for research purposes. It sure does get you to lots of info, almost too much!
So backing up to August and our Banff and Jasper trip. We had to make some changes to our very loose itinary due to weather. The third day we woke up and did an early hike on one of the most popular trails in the parks: Johnston Canyon. It's an easy short hike up a steep walled canyon with good views of some waterfalls. We went all the way up to some ink pots about 5 miles or so from the trailhead. Here's just a couple pics from the hike.
Here's me in front of Lower Falls:
Here's Upper Falls:


Here we are in the valley by the ink pots: (no pictures of the ink pots, they didn't turn out so good. )
Here's a view of the walkway clinging to the canyon wall. Not scary because it wasn't that high up. Then we headed up to Lake Louise area and it rained and rained. Luckily they have kitchen shelters at the campsites becuase we hung out there all evening with a family from Winnepeg and one from Germany. The next morning it was still raining. So I couldn't do the one thing I wanted to do besides hike, and that was canoe on Morraine Lake. Here I am enjoying the pouring rain!
So we asked at the visitors center about the weather and they said it was a good day to drive north and go on the Icefields Parkway. Check out the website for specific info and great pictures. Our pics are good BUT it was a partly sunny/partly cloudy day so it made for lots of lighting issues. Here's some of the better pictures from our drive up. We drove most of the day and stopped when we wanted to. All of these pictures are taken from the side of the road literally, you didn't have to go on a hike to see glaciers, lakes and huge peaks!
Tonya in frint of Waterfowl Lake, not sure the names of all the peaks in the background.

We did stop to hike, of course. WE hiked up Wilcox Ridge to have a birds eye view of Athabasca Glacier which is part of the Columbia Icefield. It's huge and amazing!!

Here's Erik on the ridge when we popped out of the trees. You can see the small glacier (forgetting the name) and then down in the valley that's the road we were traveling on!

Here's another view where you could see both glaciers and part of the visitor center in the lower right hand corner. Here we are with Athabasca Glacier over Erik's shoulder. Great view!After we hiked the ridge we hiked the trail right up to the edge of the glacier. But it was a COLD wind near the glacier!!So that's just a few of the pictures. Hope you enjoyed them! More later.......

BANFF!!!!

Wow! If you've never been to Banff or Jasper National Parks in Canada you must put them on your list of places to see. They are friendly even for the car traveling people, you can see LOTS without leaving your car or the parking lot.

In August we were able to take a wonderful trip to these two great parks. We left on Sat the 23rd and came home on the 29th. Originally we had planned to stay until the 31st but the weather wasn't the greatest so we came home a couple days early and went to our friends cabin. It only took us about 7 hrs to drive to the park entrance. Not too far at all! Once there we camped the whole time, hiked and drove to see the sights.

We entered the parks through Kootenay NP. Here's one of the first views we saw. A shot of the Kootenay River and and the beautiful backdrop of mountains.

The first day we just set up camp, planned the following day and checked out downtown Banff. Nothing too exciting. The next day we hiked in a wondeful area called Sunshine Meadows. In the winter it's a ski area so we had to pay for a shuttle to bring us up there. Then we got to hike all over at about 7700 ft elevation. We were there most of the day. Here's me at the begining of the trip where the trail splits. We ended up taking both paths at some point in the day.

Erik on the hiking trail:

A view of Rock Isle Lake:

Rock Isle Lake up close and personal:

A panoramic of one of the stunning views we saw that day:

And those are just a few of the great pictures we got! That was a wonderful day. We saw lots of great peaks, valleys and lakes. And if you're wondering... "Doesn't it get old?" NO! it always looks amazing and new! That's why we take so many pictures.
Later we went to Banff Springs Hotel. No great pictures there. And then driving back to our campground we stopped at a bridge to check out an osprey nest on top. Fun to watch them est some fish, even though we couldn't see that well. Right after I took this shot and turned to walk back to the car this guy flew off the nest!

Here's a shot of Castle Mountain and Bow River right near our campsite. Gorgeous isn't it!

Awww, aren't they cute?
More later..... that's all I can write for now!