Numa Ridge Lookout

Last Saturday Patti and I hiked up to the Numa Ridge Lookout.  The weather was not ideal, but with Winter soon coming there are few chances of having a better weather day.  Saturday's weather was not bad, but mainly cloudy.

It appears two weather systems were jockeying for position and they met over Bowman Lake.  Darker clouds came from the left and lighter clouds came from the right.  They met over the middle of the lake then moved north to Canada.  It made for an interesting photo.

Note the mountains on the right.  A later photo will show them from another angle.

Here is a closer view of the left side of the previous photo.  My destination.  Looks so close, doesn't it?

Here is the Lookout.  Yes, there was some snow higher up on the mountain.

The view from the lookout.  Numa Peak is to the north and Bowman Lake is to the SE.  I started the hike at the far end of the lake and climbed 2380 feet in 5.6 miles to get here.

If I remember right, those are Rainbow and Square Peaks in the middle of the photo with Rainbow Peak on the left and Square Peak the pointy (go figure!) mountain on the right.

Brian and Neil

August 15 my friend Brian and his brother came to visit me and Glacier Park for four days.  It had been three years since Brian last visited me and the Park.  This was the first time for Neil to visit the Park in over a decade.

We visited most all areas of the Park accessible by car.  We did some hiking but Neil has some health issues so our hikes were pretty minor.

We hiked to:

• the stream near the Loop
• the Hidden Lake overlook
• St Mary Falls
• Red Eagle (or Trick) Falls in the Two Medicine area
• Fishercap Lake in the Many Glacier Area
• around the end of Bowman Lake

Brian and I attempted to hike to the Cyclone Peak lookout tower near Polebridge, MT but it began to rain lightly just after we got out of Brian's car.  We put on rain coats and hats and started out in hopes the shower would be brief.  It wasn't.  It rained harder with each step so we turned around and quickly headed back to Brian's car.  We were wet by the time we got back inside the car.  The family picking huckleberries a short distance down the road were soaked when we drove past them again.  The man was in their pickup truck and looked wet while the woman and young child were just getting near the road and truck as they had been further up the steep mountainside picking berries.


We saw five bears in the Park keeping Brian's streak alive.  Our first bear was going through bushes above the stream near the Loop.  It looked to be a young grizzly.

While at Many Glacier Lodge people saw a mother grizzly and her two cubs on the mountain above the road.  The bears were a distance off so I sat and relaxed in the sun while others buzzed about excitedly.

The last bear we saw was at the inlet to Fishercap Lake.  I saw it first when the bear crossed into some willow bushes.  Later we all saw the bear, and definitely heard it, as it climbed through the trees above the lake.

Afterward I found some huckleberries when I went wandering off on a trail by myself.  The huckleberry bushes had signs that a bear had been through them earlier.