Monday, March 2, I skied to Bowman Lake with Joyce, her daughter Kendra, and Kendra's boyfriend, Greg. Sue Ann did not come along as she wasn't feeling well.
Since Bowman Lake is in the NW part of Glacier, and the distance from Columbia Falls to Polebridge (outside the park) is 35 miles on a rough gravel road, we left early. Joyce picked me up at 7:30 am and we met Kendra and Greg in Columbia Falls. We started skiing after 9 am.
A short distance south of Polebridge, as we were driving on the North Fork Road, through the thin pine trees we saw a large herd of elk mostly sitting and wintering in an open meadow on private property west of the road. The elk must have numbered 50 or so. Later that afternoon when we returned from our ski trip we saw the elk spread out in the meadow and trees eating.
We stopped at a rest area just outside the Park. When we got out of Joyce's car we discovered her right rear car tire was low. Greg and I changed the tire and we used the doughnut spare tire as a replacement. Joyce later found the flat tire had a small nail.
In the rest area along the north fork of the Flathead River were three men who had camped the previous night in their tents. The morning temperature wasn't bad as it was in the mid 20s, but they had a chilly night. They planned to cross country ski to the Big Meadow area on the road to Kintla Lake. I believe it is 4 miles one way.
When we started out we noticed a pair of skis and a backpack near the entrance gate. I didn't think much of it as I thought it belonged to one of the three men. I later learned it didn't.
The snow was good for skiing and the temperature was nice even without the sun. In fact we were happy not to have the sun as we were concerned it would make the snow too sticky for skiing. It wasn't long before we were shedding our coats and winter gear. I ended up skiing in just my shirt and pants and was plenty warm.
There were a number of ski and snowshoe tracks. Enough to follow but not so many as to mess up a good pair of ski tracks.
For about half the distance to Bowman Lake we skied through the open area where the 1988 fire burned the trees. The trees are coming back but it is slow going.
We saw lots of tracks including lots of wolf tracks. Big tracks. A few times we heard wolves howling briefly off in the distance here and there. Later a park ranger told us people camping at Bowman Lake the previous Saturday watched as five wolves chased a deer from the campground area out onto the lake ice. The wolves caught the deer a few miles out on the ice.
I am a stronger skier than the others and I reached the lake well before them. I decided to ski to the bridge over the creek's outlet from the lake. Beyond the bridge I stayed away from the open water but I skied onto the lake and over to the SE corner where the ranger house and boat houses are located.
Then further over to the east I saw a pole sticking out of the ice with a deer leg attached to the top. On the pole were a number of metal wires.
Having read the blog by the winter caretakers of the Many Glacier Hotel I realized this pole was for a study of wolverines. The short metal wires would catch the hair of any animal climbing the tall pole to reach the deer leg. I saw no sign of tracks in the snow or hair on the wires.
I skied out on the lake and found the strange object to be a large rock sticking up through the ice. The ice was covered with a thick layer of snow but every so often I could see the ice. I couldn't tell how thick the ice was but it seemed thick. It should have been as the weather had been pretty cold prior to my trip. However seeing long cracks every so often made me watchful and cautious.
I skied away from and around the open water as I headed back to the boat launch area. Joyce and my group began shouting for me as I was still out of sight around a bend on the lake. When I got back to them I discovered a park ranger was there. Those were his skis and backpack I saw at the gate. Sue Ann later ran into him in Columbia Falls and the ranger told her he was surprised to see skiers out so early.
The park ranger, along with another park ranger, were leading three secret service men on a back country camping trip. These secret service men had accompanied Laura Bush and her girlfriends a few years back when they visited Glacier as part of their annual get together at a national park. These secret service guys fell in love with Glacier and have come back yearly for a winter back county camping trip.
This day, a Monday, their goal was the head of the lake. Tuesday they would ski up to Brown Pass and camp. Beyond that the rangers would be returning while the secret service men planned to continue to Goat Haunt and then return south to the Sun Road and then to Lake McDonald.
This is a challenging route in the summer much less in winter and on skis.
These guys were friendly and in good humor. They stopped at the boat launch area to take a break from skiing and carrying their large backpacks before they continued on to their destination for the day. Joyce had questions and they showed their skis to her and us. They had alpine cross country skis and skins they would attach when climbing up to Brown Pass. One guy had a boot inside a boot and had to take both off to get to his sock. One agent said they got new better skis for this year's trip after last year's trip. Everything looked very nice and most likely were light weight and expensive.
One ranger and one agent looked so ruggedly handsome they could be models. I later learned the one ranger formerly did model. The one agent looked movie star handsome: over 6 foot tall and not a hair out of place. The other agents and ranger were solid but were people who could blend into a crowd. I am sure most women would swoon over these guys. I noticed Joyce sure asked the handsome agent plenty of questions about their trip.
He towered over little Joyce.
The first ranger had mentioned that the others were secret service agents. None of us asked them about being a secret service agent. I don't know... maybe because they were on a great adventure and we had plenty to ask them about their trip, or maybe because the word "secret" made me less likely to ask them about their job.
These guys were all looking forward to their trip. Their main concern was the weather. Not of cold, but with warm. Rain was in the forecast. I later learned it rained Monday and Tuesday while the rangers were out there. I wonder how the agents fared as a cold front came through Wednesday night and Thursday and stormed and dropped lots of snow. The agents then mostly likely were high up on the trail between Goat Haunt and the Sun Road.
The two rangers are on the left.
After the rangers and agents left across the lake we left also. I was so torn... I wanted to join those guys on their adventure. Of course I couldn't as I had no backpack or back country equipment.
We weren't far from the lake when we met three men skiing to the lake. They, along with three others, were staying at the
Wurtz forest service cabin further up the North Fork road towards Canada. One of them was from Choteau, Montana and I asked if he was "Ear Mountain" from the
glacierparkchat.com web site. No, but he knew who Ear Mountain was.
After chatting for a short while with the men we continued on. We met two women skiing to the lake. One was friendly and said "hi" back to me, the other noncommittal. Then at the top of a short hill were four more women. They waited for us to ski up the hill before they headed down. These must be the six women the guys said were staying at the
Ben Rover Cabin (and another link to a cabin description is
here) just outside the park near Polebridge. The six women were all attractive and appeared to be in their 30s to mid 40s). They said "hi" but seemed to be wanting to get to the lake and we didn't take time to chat.
A half hour from the lake I caught up to two young men. They had not been to the lake as they did not know how close they were. I and the others convinced them that since they had skied this far they had to turn around and go all the way to the lake. They took our advice.
The rangers told us about an elk calf carcass from a wolf kill a few days earlier. We missed it when we skied to the lake as we thought that ski tracks off the road were from people going to the bathroom. Greg did mention that he thought he smelled a dead animal when we skied in.
On the way out we watched for the carcass. I was in the lead. It was well after we passed the carcass and had gone down a big hill that Greg said he saw the carcass. He was well behind us at the time. He never shouted his find to us.
Grrr!
Apparently the carcass was off the north side of the road where we had spotted the fur on the road when we stopped and studied it on the way to the lake. The fur looked to be cut and not torn. The fur was on the road on the south side and in our study of it we didn't look off the road to the north and see the carcass. And my sense of smell must be poor as I didn't smell anything.
And I don't know what was wrong with me as on the way out I missed seeing the fur again as I was busy checking the north side of the road for signs where ski tracks had gone off the road. I missed both the ski tracks and the fur - though I did find where someone had skied off the road to go to the bathroom. Yellow snow.
During our trip back to the car the snow was a bit stickier, but not too bad. It was sticky enough to help slow us down on the bigger hills which was nice. Especially as one big hill had a turn with a steep drop off on the outer side.
I never crashed on this trip until near the end when I stood to take a photo of a sign and I fell over. A simple fall and I ended up cracking the sole of my left shoe. Remember this as this factors in my next ski adventure.
We skied 12.6 miles (I skied 14 miles as I skied out on the lake and off the road on my way back to check out where a side road went (a gravel/sand area and a place for the Park to dump unused and broken tables and odds and ends)). Our total time was about 5 hours, or almost 2 and 1/2 mph (including our time at the lake). We are not speedy skiers.
I counted the number of people who had signed in at the entrance, and including us, I counted 19 total skiers.
On our drive back to Kalispell we saw a half dozen or more pickups and trailers on the side of the road gathering firewood. This area was the site of the Moose and Robert fires of 2002 and 2003. One can get a permit to gather firewood from the national forest. It is tough to cut down a tree and get it out to the road when it is cold and snow. I noticed that some men worked on steep hillsides where it was easier to roll the trees down to the road.
Either these men misjudged the amount of firewood they needed for the winter else they are trying to gather and sell firewood in order to make some money. Times are tough in the Valley as the
unemployment rate is now 11.3%. And this number apparently doesn't count all the
self employed or independent building contractors without jobs as being their own boss most can't collect unemployment and don't count in the numbers.
Anyway, here are a few more photos...
Photos of Bowman Creek. The mountains in photo 1 are those we see when we get to Bowman Lake.
This photo shows the remnants of the 1988 fire along the road to Bowman Lake. The Whitefish Range (outside the Park) is in the background.
Numa Lookout as seen from the boat launch at the foot of Bowman Lake.
It is a nice hike to, and a nice view from, the lookout.
During the drive home on the North Fork road I took these three photos of Huckleberry Mountain. I have not been to the top but I plan to hike up to that lookout this year.
The 'return' part was south along the road and we decided to take a side trail (that had ski tracks) away from the road. This side trail led us around and back into the north side of the loop. We had to backtrack most of the way towards the road until we got to new growth where we had room to ski through the trees. We made our own trail until we reconnected to the outer loop trail.
