Lupine Lake and Ashley Mountain

Friday June 6, Joyce, Bill, Gary and I hiked to Lupine Lake and then up to Ashley Mountain.

It was good seeing everyone. This was my first hike since I returned to Montana. And it was their first hike of the year also as they hadn't gone on any hikes without me.

A half mile or so in from the trail head is an overlook of a beautiful waterfall on Griffith Creek.

Photo 1 is looking up at rock. The right side is where I first saw the waterfall.
Photo 2 is the bridge crossing Griffith Creek.

Lupine Lake is a nice lake and we stopped and ate our lunch here. It seems as none of the sources agree to the distance to the lake, but I tend to believe the sign at the trail head: 2.5 miles.





We were all feeling good so we decided to hike to the top of Ashley Mountain. It was only another 2.5 miles. The following is a photo of Ashley Mountain taken earlier from the overlook of the waterfall.



For a while a stream that fed into the lake was near our trail.




Later, near a bend in the trail, we came upon this wooden marker.

In Memory of
Beloved husband
"Daddy"
Grandpa
Richard V. Bain
Nov 5, 1978

We stopped and studied it. We still have no idea if this is just a marker, or if it is a marker for an actual grave site. I believe Gary said it wasn't until sometime in the 1980s when it became illegal to bury bodies out in the woods.

Apparently I had not recharged my camera's battery in a while as once I took a flash photo of the grave marker my camera died and I was unable to take any more photos.

After the marker, the trail began a noticeable climb upward. Because time was passing quicker than we realized, and Gary had an appointment later, he and I continued ahead while Joyce and Bill followed. We still took time to move the small deadfall off the trail as we hiked.

The weather was a mix of sun and clouds. We crossed a gravel road/path, and while it was sunny where we were, we could see clouds and moisture to our west. A sign said we had one mile to the top.

Soon after crossing the road we came upon patches of snow on the trail. I was in the lead and tried to find areas of least snow to cross. Eventually that became impossible as everywhere was snow. Wet snow. Fortunately not deep snow.

We debated whether to continue and did so since I felt were were close to the top.

And we were. The mountain top was rounded and flat and was surrounded by thick trees. We had no view. The better view was near where we had earlier crossed the road.

At the top there was a large metal squat square structure with an antennae sticking up. The structure was weighed down by a collection of large rocks in a metal wire basket on each of the four legs. We could see anchor points in concrete on the ground that was used for the previous structure.

Then it began to snow. Heavily. For a while we took shelter under one of the large pine trees before deciding to return down the trail. Gary was interested in taking the road from the structure back down to the place where we had crossed it earlier. While I would have liked to have done so also, I reminded him that Joyce and Bill may be on the trail above the road and we would miss them.

Between the snow and the trees we couldn't find where the trail started down. Odd, we just came up it. Gary thought it was further left than I did and after failing to find it in that direction I came across it to my right.

It was a good thing we took the trail back even though that meant crossing all that snow: Bill and Joyce were a half mile from the top when we met them. Because there was no view, and snow was covering the trail, we all decided to return down the mountain. The falling snow ended by the time we crossed the road again. The tops of the trees were swaying, and we could hear the wind, but could not feel it.

There was an interesting tree stump that Gary took a fancy to on the way up the mountain. On the way back I picked it up and carried it for Gary. This was partly thanks for him carrying a good sized rock I fancied on our Elk Mountain hike when my hands were full with other rocks. And partly because I hadn't been bewitched by any rocks on this hike.

Gary and I traded carrying the stump to Lupine Lake. From Lupine Lake I carried the stump a half mile until I remembered leaving a rock when Bill and I hiked this trail last year. Sure enough I found the rock again. And being a nice rock (the photo doesn't do it justice) I couldn't resist it. That meant Gary had to carry his stump back to the car himself.

I had two miles to carry this rock. Down, then up a steep climb at the end. I began doubt the wisdom of carrying the rock. Once I got home I weighed it and found it to weigh 42 lbs. No wonder I got a workout carrying it.

Even though we were carrying items, Joyce and Bill had lagged behind. We waited for them to catch up. I went off trail to take a bathroom break. As I picked my way through the trees I put my hand on a large dead tree trunk and over it fell with a loud crash. I hardly touched the tree, I swear!

As we continued I went slower because Bill was lagging even more. He was tired. I found out he was out of food so I gave him some of mine. As we began the final climb upward I discovered Bill was out of water so I gave him half of mine. Shortly thereafter Gary returned and he helped Bill up the trail as I went on ahead.

Joyce was at the car and gave me some of the bread she had baked. I noticed an interesting large rock on the ground near the car and decided it would be a worthy addition to my rock garden. Once Gary returned with Bill he thanked me for loading the rock into Joyce's car for him. He had found it on the side of the road while waiting for Bill and I.

For the drive back home we went north through Star Meadows and near Tally Lake. We passed through some of the Brush Creek fire burn area from last Summer. Some of the dead trees were being logged and we passed a few piles on the side of the road with signs saying no firewood cutting of these logs.

Some of the roads didn't match the map I got from the Tally Lake ranger district. According to the map we should have come to the east side of Star Meadows, but we came to the west side. Okay... I'll remember that in the future.

While we started our day's activity at 9 am, and only hiked 10 miles, it was now 5 pm when we returned to our vehicles. Where did the day go?

Canoeing in ND

I went canoeing with my friend Rod on the southern section of the Souris National Wildlife Refuge.   We started our canoe trip near the Lake Darling Dam.

  

We started at Pool A on the "Beaver Lodge Canoe Trail" below the dam. To get out of Pool A one had to push their way through a small gap in the tall cattails. The following satellite photos show Pool A and the cattails. The two "dividers" in the second photo are the lines of cattails.

Photo 1: Pool A near the start of our canoe trip.
Photo 2: The first line of cattails.

The day was nice. The wind was 5 to 15 mph with most of the wind only around 5 mph. Some sun, some high clouds throughout the day which was disingenuous as both Rod and I got sunburned. Rod wore shorts so I wasn't too surprised when his legs got sunburned. Me... I wore long pants.  But it was a surprise when my head and forearms got sunburned, where I rarely get sunburned. The difference was this year, caring for mom, I have spent almost all of my time indoors out of the sun. A few days later my face swelled up from this sunburn.

I had a hat and put it on during our return trip. However we went under some low hanging tree branches shortly after I put the hat on and a branch snagged my hat and tossed it into the water. I grabbed the hat immediately before it got away but it already was soaked so I did not wear it anymore.

Rod got scratched up by a dead branch from a submerged tree. We were not the best navigators and sometimes slid too close to branches. The branch did not break so Rod was pushed backwards and down into the boat by the branch as he was caught by surprise by the branch and how fast we were moving.

The following branch is not one I have described, but one of a number in the river.



We saw plenty of ducks and birds along the way.

There were many yellow-headed blackbirds, which I don't ever remember seeing before. The refuge has lots of duck nesting structures attached to trees along the river bank. A number of beavers swam in the water and we saw a number of tree chewed on by the beavers. The beavers may explain why there were less old and large trees than I expected.

We also saw quite a few turtles sunning themselves on logs. They would drop in the water before we got close so I had to use my camera's telephoto lens to get a decent photo of them.

Three miles down the twisting and winding river we came to dam 87. This is a small dam to create a pool of water. We had lunch here. As you can see on the marker, the river elevation was about 1578 feet.

Under part of the dam's structure were a number of swallow nests. The swallows would whirl around and around in the air before disappearing. After a while they would come back and many would enter the holes in their small mud nests to feed their young. Then the group would be gone again.

North of the dam were green areas that appeared to have been burned last Fall. Other areas had piles of trees drying for a later burning. The refugee is not that wide, and with the fencing it appeared the private land was not far from the river.

After our one hour lunch Rod and I decided to portage around the dam and continue down the river.

We went quite a distance before turning around. Later when I read the refuge material we picked up after our canoe trip, it appears the Beaver Lodge Canoe Trail only goes to dam 87.

A few times along the river, or down short side channels, were the following structures. Rod and I had no idea what they were. The part on top had wheels and it looked as the frame work could be used to lower stuff into the river. And the government is worried about molesters again. If you remember my blog post about the sign in Yellowstone National Park warning people not to 'molest' the animals, well, signs on these structures warned against 'molesting' government property.

We also saw an old abandoned windmill on the river bank. One could see the old lettering on the vane that had not completely faded.

Even though we were on a river, we later checked and found the cubic feet per second flow during our trip was almost 2 CFS. No wonder when we were not paddling we floated upstream as that was the direction the breeze was blowing our canoe.

We were running out of energy by the time our canoe trip ended.

After we finished canoeing Rod and I walked on the nearby Oxbow nature trail. Along the river a number of people were fishing. I didn't see anyone with fish.

Rod is an avid birder and he was looking for birds he hadn't seen before. I don't believe there were as many birds out and about as Rod had expected.

Here are few photos from the nature trail (purple path shown in the GPS image at the end). I expected that being on a refuge and near water there would be more and bigger trees. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps the beavers had something to do with the lack of trees.

A major pest when we were on land were ticks. I have never had so many ticks on me in my life. I picked dozens of them off me as we walked. As we drove home I still felt ticks crawling on my body and I threw them out of Rod's pickup window. After I got home I removed most of my clothes outside and found a few more ticks. In the shower I found three or four more ticks. Thankfully since the shower I have not found any more ticks.

Here is a panoramic view of Pools B and C in the refuge taken from the south shore.


Lastly, here are our canoe and hiking routes. According to Rod's GPS unit we canoed 12.8 miles at an average speed of 2 mph. We hiked (the purple path) for 1.4 miles at an average speed of 1.4 mph. It felt strange walking on land after canoeing for hours.