A bit of randomness!

Today I'm just showing some ramdom pictures from our last couple months in Missoula. In Sept Erik took me fly fishing on the Blackfoot River. It was a wonderful day and fun fishing even though we didn't catch anything!Here's a gorgeous sunrise I saw one morning in early Oct. In Oct. we did the Carlton Ridge hike that I've done several times before. Here I am part way up looking out over Lolo Creek and Hwy 12.Here's Erik. Way in the background in actually Missoula but it doesn't show well in this picture at all. Pretty snow and trees!At Carlton Ridge. Lolo Peak in bckground. Remember I climbed that in 2008?Two of Erik's fishing buddies. This was on Nov 25th. the day before Thanksgiving and 5 days before we left Missoula.
Watch for my sister Tara's visit in Oct.

Our last day in the tetons

Here are some of the pictures from our last morning in the Tetons. These first two shots were taken from Colter Bay, near our campsite. Wonderful morning! These next two were from Jackson Lake Dam. Which one do you like better?This one was taken from Willow Flats. One the way home we decided to drive though Yellowstone. We had never been in the southern part of Yellowstone. Each area of Yellowstone is so different. We had to stop at Old Faithful and have our lunch there. While we were waiting a huge buffalo decided to run through the parking lot! Boy, did that set the rangers to scrambling and yelling for people to get out of the way. The old boy was just passing through, no trouble at all!Do you see me?Then Old Failthful faithfully spouted off it's excitement.

Then we drove home! Thanks for stopping by!

Where have we been????

Well, most of you probably know that this fall was pretty busy for us as we decided to move yet again. We are now located in Seattle WA and Erik got a good job working for King County there. Me? Well, I'm at home right now, getting us unpacked and settled in. I'll be looking for a job soon enough! We'd like to wrap up this blog since we really aren't the Montana Peters anymore and start a new blog. But I don't want to forget to share about our last few months in Missoula! I think Erik left off on our trip in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. So, I'll continue there and hopefully over the next week or so bring this blog back into the present and get you all updated!

We left off with day 2 of our trip and the Cascade Canyon trail hike. Now we're onto Day 3 and the Garnet Canyon hike. You can check out a map if your interested here. Click on maps and look in the area near Jenny Lake.

This morning we got up early because our goal was to climb Middle Teton and we knew it would be a long day. So we were up and out of the campground by 6am. On the way we saw a ton of elk, our first sightings of elk in the wild. We even heard the males bugle it was pretty awesome. No picture because the camera happened to be out of batteries at the time! Here's Erik eating his breakfast at the trailhead.

So off we went into the wild blue yonder! I can't remember all the details like the miles or exact time hiked but I know we started around 6:30am and got back to the car around 4:30pm.

It took us about and hour or so to get here. The peak on the left is Nez Pierce and the peak in the center that's a little washed out is Middle Teton.Awwww, So cute and smiley!Tonya on the trail. Middle Teton continues to loom large!Tonya just about the enter the non-trail portion of the trail. We're headed into the south col and over our first small snow field. See the little snow field in this picutre. That's where I was standing in the last picture. It's hard to get perspective, just remember everything is WAY bigger than it appears on screen. Here's a view of the next part of our climb. Ahh, to climb the snowfield or climb the boulders??? Well the ranger recommended ice axes which we don't have, so we went without. Smart, not ro sure but at least we didn't die. Although I thought I was going to at one point during this portion of the climb! We took the left side of the snow field for a while but it was too icy so we "jumped" off (over scary boulder crevices!) and tried the boulders instead but ended up way off the unofficial trail in a loose boulder field. Even Erik got a little nervous, I think. So here I am thanking Jesus that I didn't die yet! Although heaven will be wonderful, I just wasn't ready to go there that day! This was our lunch spot and my get the feeling back in my legs spot. After this it was a steep climb but we found the "trail" again for it was easier going. Here is a picture that Erik took from the saddle of Middle Teton. I didn't make it, I was about 200 ft lower sitting on a rock shedding a few tears cux my legs were too woobly to go on and be safe on the descent. Erik also took this panoramic shot below from the saddle looking west. I'm not sure the name of the lake. Looking back down the way we came from my resting spot. See how far down the valley is?All smiles on the way down. It was getting warm again (it was cold up near the top). Se the people behind me on the snow field to the right? Goofing off!We did enjoy some pretty views!And pretty flowers!Almost down. I love this shot for some reason!Here's a shot of two lakes at the "mouth" of the Canyon. You can see where they were carved by glaciers long ago by the berms built up all round them. The darker line out int he distance is the Jackson river or the tree growing up around it. Down the valley to the right is where Jackson Hole is.

Thus ended our hike for the day. It was an amazing experience. Scary and testing of our courage and strength but I think we both passed! I probably could have made it to the saddle or even the top if we hadn't just put in a 14 miles hike the day before and maybe we'd started out earlier.

Watch soon for our last day in the tetons. Adios!

Grand Teton N.P. & Cascade Canyon hike

Over Labor Day weekend we visited Grand Teton National Park. The Tetons are not a particularly large range, but they do jut up from the surrounding landscape and make for magnificent views. This was Tonya's first time visiting the Park. I have been through the Park a couple of time and did a backpacking trip into the Teton's with my sister many years ago.

The first full day we had there we decided to hike the Cascade Canyon trail from Jenny Lake to Lake Solitude. It's a little over 14 miles, but the trail is relatively gentle. We read the trail is also the most popular trail in the park. In the photo below, Cascade Canyon is the distant background.

We got a late start since it was Tonya's turn to be a slug getting out of bed (I usually take that role). We decided to take the boat shuttle across Jenny Lake to avoid adding 2 miles each way to our hike. However, the last shuttle of the day left at 6:00 and by the time we started hiking it was almost 11:00. We ended up talking all day whether we were going to be able to catch the return shuttle and how far up the canyon we were going to go, kicking ourselves for not getting an earlier start. The photo below is from the boat shuttle looking up Cascade Canyon.

The first part of the trail climbs ~600 feet relatively quickly past Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. Then the canyon bottom flattens out as seen with the photo of Tonya.

Lake Solitude is a pretty lake below a ridge. The photo with Tonya at the lake is looking back down the canyon we hiked up. Grand Teton (highest mountain) is in the distance.

We didn't stay long to enjoy the view because we wanted to catch the boat shuttle and it became overcast. Just as we were leaving it started to rain and then it rained hard for about 10 minutes or so and then lightened up. When the rain stopped after 1/2 hour or so the view in the photo below opened up. The tallest mountain is again Grand Teton and the photo is taken looking down the trail.

As I mentioned earlier we were trying to catch the boat shuttle before they stopped running for the day to avoid an extra 2 mile hike. We made the shuttle with time to spare. Once we got to our car and started driving back to our campsite another storm front came through. The last photo shows the Teton Range and the dark clouds over the valley.

Holland Lakes

Near the end of August we did a day hike up from Holland Lake to Upper Holland Lake and back via the old Holland (fire) Lookout in the Seeley/Swan valley. It is a hike we have talked about doing ever since we came here and now we've done it. It was a pretty hike and we enjoyed the day.

It was supposed to be about 12.5 miles of hiking. But we took a wrong turn near the end of our day and added another ~1.5 miles to our day. We were tired, walking on a path we were somewhat familiar with and our feet ended up taking the wrong fork in the trail.

From Holland Lake on can see the most spectacular portion of the Mission Mountains to the west.

The hike up the canyon began eventfully. We can upon a pack train wreck! Two horses had slipped off the trail on the other side of the canyon and had rolled several hundred feet down to Holland Creek (with their packs). When we came upon them, the horses where standing in the rocky creek with their handlers who where trying to figure out how to get the horses back up to a trail. We felt very bad for the horses and wondered how they had managed the fall without breaking a leg or worse. We don't know how the handlers managed to get the horses out (we assume they did!).

Further along the trail we came upon a small falls where I took a photo of Tonya. Along the hike we also came upon some pretty purple flowers.

Upper Holland Lake is a pleasant lake. Many fish were jumping at bugs along the shoreline so it seemed like it would be a good fishing lake.

We stopped to pick huckleberries along its shoreline and the northern slopes as we hiked up to . We came prepared with 2 Nalgene bottles to store the huckleberries. We spent about 3 hours picking huckleberries. Huckleberries are in the blueberry family. Bears like them and we do too. We came across the best berry patches at the end. We would have been quicker filling up our 2 bottles if we had come across those patches earlier. At the end our hands were stained purple from picking berries.

After filling our bottles we continued hiking and climbed up to a old fire lookout station (since abandoned). From the old lookout it is approximately 4000 ft down to Holland Lake and the trailhead we started from.