Rattlesnake Wilderness - cont.

Picking up from the last blog... we spent the 1st night at Carter Lake. Many of the lakes up there were enlarged through earthen dams many years ago. They act to delay runoff and serve along with Rattlesnake Cr as a backup to Missoula's drinking water supply. At Carter Lake, the only flat spot we found to camp on was the top of the dam. I tried fishing at Carter Lake, but it only had very small cutthroat trout. Their mouths were just barely big enough to fit over the hook, but they tried.

The biting flies (specifically the no-see-ums) were out in force along with the mosquitoes. We really haven't had to deal with these bugs (no-see-ums) much in Montana. The extra summer moisture and a cooler year has resulted in a pretty wildflower display and more bugs. We got fairly bit up before we began paying attention to the flies. They leave a bleeding hole in you, but you don't really feel the bite. In addition, we didnt' bring much bug spray (saving on weight) so we had to economize on applying the spray. As a result, we didn't spend as much time outside of our tent once we got to camp as we would have liked. However, the bugs didn't ruin our trip by any means, just added to our story :)

The next two days we packed up and hiked to Twin Lakes and Glacier Lake respectively. They were easy days, with only 2.5 - 3 hours of hiking each day to reach our destinations. On the way to Twin Lake we took a small side trip and climbed to the top of Stuart Peak. From the peak one can see Missoula and the valley floor as you may be able to tell in the photo below.

Glacier Lake is a pretty lake and a large one as lakes go up in the Rattlesnake. Below is a photo looking down on Glacier Lake from our lunch spot on the trail. I thought for sure that the lake would hold fish, but there wasn't a single fish in the lake. An old timer has told me that there were fish in it at one time, so I don't know where they went to.

There were many good spots to camp on Glacier Lake. We chose to camp near the shore since there wasn't any else around (we saw only 3 other people during our 4 days). It was a good spot, except that night a thunder storm rolled through. When the lightening was crackling, we didn't know if our exposed spot was so good after all, but we weren't going to get out in the poring rain to more the tent.

That night, the rain must have loosened the rock on the cliffs/avalanche gullies on the east side of the lake. We heard rock falling during the night and in the morning saw some rock fall actually make it into the lake. A good place for mountain goats or bighorn sheep, but we didn't see any during our trip.

We packed out from Glacier Lake on our last (4th) day. It was an easy hike back to our bikes (approx. 4 miles as a crow flies) and then the 18 miles on our mountain bikes back to our house. What a difference going downhill makes, it took us less than 2 hours to bike home, about 1/2 the time it took to pedal in.

Rattlesnake Wilderness

Ever since we moved to Missoula we have wanted to hike in the Rattlesnake Wilderness just up the valley from where we live. Well, last weekend we finally went and had good 4 days mountain biking and hiking up and down valleys, over ridge tops and mountains and camping along mountain lakes.

As you may know we live in the Rattlesnake Valley. About 2 miles further up the valley is the Rattlesnake National Rec. Area and even further up the valley is the wilderness area. I (Erik) have mountain biked in the recreation area quite a bit and wanted to access the wilderness area on our mountain bikes for three reasons. One, to pass quickly by lower and less scenic elevations; two, to get up to the high country easier than hiking up and three, just to do something new. I only had to convince Tonya of my infallible plan. :)

She agreed to the trip including the mountain biking pretty easily. Despite not having carried a full pack (25 - 30 lbs) on our backs while mountain biking before, I figured we could do it - assuming we put in some miles on our mountain bikes before hand. Tonya's not the biggest fan of mountain biking so I wanted to make sure she was ready for the effort. So we went on several mountain bike rides to build up our biking legs. As a fail safe (for me), she promised me that she wouldn't have a "melt down" on the biking portion after I expressed concern in early June that we weren't getting enough mountain biking miles in. Both were important, as our first day was a long day.

The picture below are of Tonya at the start of our ride and of me about 1/2 way into our ride up to the wilderness area.

The mountain bike ride was on an old forest road that is now closed to vehicles and involved approximately 18 miles of biking starting our from our house. It took us four hours for steady climbing up a gradual incline following the Rattlesnake Creek until we reached the wilderness boundary. Since you can't bring bikes into a wilderness area, we ditched our bikes in the woods and hiked about two hours to Carter Lake before calling it a day. It was a long and tiring day with about 3000 feet of elevation gain (2000 on the bikes).

Below left is Rattlesnake Creek at our lunch spot (about 1/2 way into our ride) and to the right is me (Erik) swiming in Carter Lake after dropping my pack and kicking off my shoes. The lake water was cool, but not cold, and very refreshing after a long day.

Below is a video of Tonya biking up a portion of the trail.

Ghost Towns

After our big trip to Glacier we took a couple days a little more easy on my parents. We went to the Missoula Farmers Market, Lolo Pass (those gorgeous camas that bloom every spring were up in full show. see it here from a coupe years ago), Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Missoula Alliance Church and Mom and I had a little gal time shopping! On Monday June28th I took them to Garnet Ghost town (see above link for the time I took Erik's parents.) and then we went to Phillipsburg (aka P-burg).

On our drive to Garnet we saw TONS of bear grass, a super showy flower

Here we are exploring the old town.

Finally we went and had lunch in P-burg, shopped at the Sweet Shoppe and checked out the Start Sapphire in the Sapphire Gallery.

After that lovely day my parents had to go back home! BooHoo! But, we all had a wonderful time together and have lots of good memories. Don't you want to come and visit? ;-)

More of the Carmean Visit

Here are a few misc. pictures from Glacier:

Beautiful Vistas:Snow Chute on the Road:

View of part of the road:Dad by McDonald Creek:McDonald Lodge and the Refurbished Tour busses:

We had a great trip to Glacier. The only thing we didn't see was a bear!

TP's Mom and Dad visit!!!

Yippee! What a fun week for me! Mom and Dad were here the end of June and I tried to show them as much fun and surrounding sights as possible. The first two days they were here we spent in Glacier NP. My parents hadn't been there for 20 yrs and when they were there 20 yrs ago they only were able to drive the Going to Sun Road. So we made the camp with us!!

Here we are ready to go in the am:

Mom and Dad hiking Avalanch Creek hike:

Avalanche Lake:

All of us:

The next day, June 26th, was the first day the Going to the Sun Road was open to Logan Pass due to snow and contruction. Here's some shots of us playing in the snow at the Pass!

A parting video of silly Erik:

.... a few more Glacier pics in the next post. It will be soon I promise!!