The Animal…

It was our second day in Glacier National Park… the first had been overcast, gloomy, and windy. Our first night in Glacier, it rained on us… a lot, and we awoke to this, our second day, to a dry but overcast and cold morning.

As we stood in the rain the night before, eating our Ramen quickly so we could get into the tent, we decided (after deciding not to leave immidiately) to hike up the Swiftcurrent Valley  past the three lakes that reside in the valley floor and the waterfalls that link them. We had been told afterall, by a very enthusiastic information-counter-staffer, that the edges of the three lakes, and especially the last, and farthest up the valley, were “Prime Moose Habitat”.

We began the morning with a heated discussion about whether I had fully informed Lexie about how miserable our stay in Glacier would be, and specficially how cold it was. As it turned out, I had brought 2 beanies, and several pairs of wool socks. As she had brought only one of each of the aforementioned items, she was feeling under-prepared and ill-informed. It was in this spirit that we began our slog, fully decked out in fleeces, beanies, and gloves, with the grey skies matching our mood… 20 hours of driving for this?

We told ourselves this would be our test day. We paid for only one more night in the campground, keeping our options for a quick retreat wide open. Thankfully, the sun began to peak out here and there, showing us glimpses of the splendor that surrounded us. Slowly the skies opened and the sun shown on the beautiful valley and glacier carved spires that surrounded us.  Our spirits (and our eyes) began to rise accordingly.

Finally, we were in full sun and Glacier National Park glittered all around us in its full majesty. While it was clear that the park was trying to make up for the misery and disappointment it had thusfar inflicted upon us, we were not quire ready to fully forgive it yet. We had come on this hike for the moose habitat and we were ready to see some wildlife!… which we did, all around us were squirrels… tons of squirrels, of all shapes and sizes (well all squirrel sizes at least). They scattered from the trail and called to one another as we walked through their townships. With each squirrel that scampered off the trail, our hopes lept to the sky. “An animal!!!”, only to come crashing down to the earth… “only another squirrel.” But despite our hopes and probing eyes we saw no larger wildlife as we made our way to the head of the valley and ate our lunch…  we continued to scan the lakeshores and marshes all the while.

We had turned around at approximately the 5 mile mark, and it was early afternoon as we began the return trip- disappointed not to have seen anything worthy of a zoo exhibit, and resenting the park a little bit for not going all out in winning our hearts (as it had seemed to go all out in crushing our spirits previously). Nonetheless, we remained optimistic that each new corner we faced would yield an awe inspiring cornicopia of fauna just a few steps further… it didn’t happen like that though.

Instead we were on a long straight section of the trail, about halfway back to the trailhead, hiking quietly, knowing that with each step, the likelyhood of spotting a fantastical creature diminished (because each step brought us closer to the more developed areas of the park). Then I heard something… a sigh… not unlike the sound made by a horse exhaling quickly to jettison annoying flies from its head or nose.

I called Lexie back, and we stood in silence on the trail looking up a hill into the dense forest from where the sound had come… nothing… then!… nothing… but wait… there was something… russling in the trees back away from the trail… then, the huffing sound again. There was definitely something back there, something big.

Since arriving in the park the previous day we had been unremittingly accosted by warnings of the wild and dangerous natures of all the animals in the park, and particular of the grizzly bears. The informational packet provided us upon entry to the park had advised that if contact with a grizzly took place, one should avoid eye contact and get away ASAP… further we were informed that if attacked by a grizzly, we should assume the fetal position and cover our necks with our hands to “minimize the damage from the attack” (this instruction seemed unnecessary to my ears, as I can’t imagine doing much else in the event of a grizzly attack besides quickly resorting to the fetal position).

“Is it a bear?”, Lexie whispered… her voice sounded as if she might be preparing to assume the fetal position.

Neither of us moved as we stared into the thick forest and waited as the sounds of a large animal moving through the underbrush grew closer. The trees seemed unwilling to reveal their occupant, and I began to feel as though I was staring at a magic eye poster, changing the depth at which my eyes focused hoping a 3-D animal would pop out of the seemingly random scribles of the tree branches… then, all of a sudden, there it was. A brown face… a LARGE brown face looking out at us, 40 feet away and 6.5 feet (at least) off the ground.

Luckily I knew what to do. I was in the fetal position before you could say “Bear Attack!!!!!”

Turns out that all of my training and quick reflexes were for naught, as the bull moose that was looking out at us from the trees didn’t seemed inclined to maul anyone… did I mention that it was a REALLY big bull moose.

After picking myself up off the ground, I started snapping pictures. The above is the first picture I took, so you can see how the moose appeared. We watched him for probably 5 minutes as he worked his way down towards us. We summoned one other approaching hiker who happened upon us, and the three of attempted to stay out of the moose’s way while taking pictures of it.

Eventually, the moose crossed the trail right where we had been standing as we tried to see what was rumaging around in the brush. Lex was ecstatic, and as we watched the moose cross the trail, I realized two things… 1. Moose (Mooses?) (Moosen?)  are HUGE, it’s shoulder was higher than my head, 2. This was a turning point of the trip, after a miserable first day, a wet first night, and a dreary start to our first hike, things were looking up.

As the moose walked off into the forest and out of sight, Lex hugged me and said, “I’m so glad we came!”… Funny, I was starting to think the same thing

We just got back from 2 weeks of vacation and travel in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, and I will soon be posting some images from those adventures. But first, I wanted to put up some images that are a little bit closer to home. For my birthday at the begining of June, my beautiful wife got me 2 tools for macro photography. A set of magnifying filters and a reversing ring which actually allows me to shoot through a lens backwards and get VERY close to my subjects. Below are a few images I have taken around our house!

If you’re interested, I would definitely recommend clicking through the thumbnails below to see the larger images!

Hope you enjoyed!

Well, I have a couple more HDRs and panorama images that I’ve put together from my trip to Utah, so I will throw them up here with some commentary… then I will try to catch up on the first part of our amazingly busy summary so far!

The one backcountry landing strip that Dad and I returned to on this trip that we had been to on our previous trip was the Wee Hope Mine. This abandoned (but maybe soon to be resurected) uranium mine is in a beautiful location and has a large number of interesting artifacts scattered around. This picture shows the (labelled) entrance to the mining shack.

The next picture is of our camp at Boulder Landing strip (on the very first night). It ended up snowing lightly on us, but the stormy clouds made for a beautiful sky at sunset!

This image is a panorama of Metate Arch in Devel’s Garden outside Escalante, Ut.

This next one is a highly stylized image of Dad climbing through the double arches at the mouth of Peek-a-Boo Slot canyon. Overall our experiences in hiking slot canyons on this trip were amazing. Being able to climb through tight quarters over sculpted sandstone is an experience I hope to soon repeat!

Finally, I leave you with 2 panoramas of the twin bridges (not exactly the same, but pretty close) across the Colorado river at Marble Canyon, Az.

This post is made for Lexie, since she doesn’t post much on this blog. Nonetheless, over her spring break she had the opportunity to follow through on a longstanding dream to travel to Europe with her best friend Chelsea! The two of them decided to stick to English speaking countries for ease of planning  (and because Jamie and Dave [i.e.-husbands] had strong desires to go to the other places on the girls’ shortlist) and settled on England and Ireland due to the girls’ ethnic heritage and recommendations from friends.

Click the image below to go on a picture journey through London, Bath, Stonehenge, Galway, Cliffs of Moher (i.e.- the Cliffs of Insanity), Shannon, the Irish Countryside, the Guinness Brewery, and Dublin. Clearly an exciting trip!

Well, I’ll continue tricking out more pictures from the recent Utah Trip. This post will focus on Gold Creek landing strip which was situated at the base of the Henry Mountains. Farther up the mountains was an ill conceived development that had 2 houses in it, and down below the airstrip was an old, abandoned ranch.

First things first, the runway at Gold Creek was soft, and after landing the plane got stuck when it sunk into the surface a little bit. Given that a similar situation in a dry lake bed had led to a prop-strike less than a year ago, Dad was understandably concerned, but with two of us, and some digging and pushing we were able to turn the plane around and point it downhill for a take off.

Here is a panorama of  the airstrip and plane, with the Henry Mountains in the background.

After situating the plane we walked down to the ranch that was about 1/2 mile down the hill from the airstrip we spent sometime exploring the old ranch, which consisted of 2 outhouses, a 2 bedroom shack with large porch, some fences and several rusted out cars.

This panorama shows a fence and a car with the old shack in the background, just to the right of the Henry Mountains:

Here we have one of the outhouses in HDR:

And here is the view through one of the old cars:

After the ranch we walked back past the airstrip, up hill to a development, creatively named “Gold Creek”, where things hadn’t quite gone as well as the developer expected. First off, lets clarify that this “development” was at least 3 hours drive (mostly on gravel roads) from a town of any significant size, and the airstrip was definitely “rough”… nonetheless, someone had put in roads, and lots and a water system and a centrally located pool.  The picture below shows the pool with the mountains in the background… I wish it was full… I’ve always wanted to swim in a gold pool…

Against strong odds, 2 lots at Gold Creek had been purchased and built upon. We had a snack on the deck of one (the nicer one) and it wasn’t hard to see why this place might appeal to some (solitude and views).

As I’ve gone through my Utah pictures again, I’ve been able to put together some HDRs and panoramas  from the images I took on the recent trip Dad M. and I took to Utah. I’ll trickle them out here over the next few days… enjoy!

Today I’ll put up a few images from Bryce Canyon Airport. It took us probable 4-5 hrs to fly there from Columbia and we fought with the wind the whole way. The wind at the airstrip itself was >20 mph, but the clouds and sky were beautiful!

First off, the snowplough for the airstrip:

This was the lone hanger at the airport… constructed of rough hewn logs by the CCC during the Depression:

And planes within the hanger itself, along with the framing of the roof visible in the top of the image:

A couple weekends back we had the opportunity to go to a game in the Battle of the Bay series (A’s v. Giants) to celebrate Matt Griebel’s 23rd birthday. Great times were had and I snapped this panorama of the field and Pilar Alomia’s excitement! Click the image to see it bigger

At the beginning of May, Jamie and Dad M. headed back to Utah for a second round of flying around back-country airstrips, camping, and hiking. We took the 182 again due to the recent undoing of the 170 that we’d planned on taking, but everything seemed to work out in the end as we took a lot of stuff.

Click here to see a gallery of ~50 images from the trip!

Even though we were in the same plane, this time was a little bit different than last time (Fall 2008)  because we went in the spring, so we were dealing with different weather. Most notably wind which made afternoon flying very bumpy (I threw up 3 times on the first day). Also it snowed on us during our first night. Nevertheless, we had the opportunity to do some great hiking including some amazing slot canyons. Below is a picture of Dad working his way through one called Spooky Canyon:

This was an amazing experience and we had fun with our guide whom we met through Craigslist.

There were a lot of flowers in bloom which spiced up the desert.

Also had the chance to revist an old Uranium Mine (the Wee-Hope), explore and old ranch and a remote “development” (at Gold Creek).

Overall we had a great trip, and I can’t wait to go back soon! I’ll post some HDRs and Panoramas soon!

Just a quick post. It occurred to me that I should throw up an example of a picture that Matt Beardsley took of me flying kites awhile back. For those of you in the know… I’m flying the SkyTiger, meaning that this is just about as big as I’ve ever gone with the kite… it’s nice to have a photographer friend to make it look good haha.

For the rest of the sequence, follow the link: http://mattbeardsleyphoto.zenfolio.com/p650419311

Well after our hike (see previous post), I (Jamie) took 2 days to drive the Northern California Coast, following Highway 1 all the way from Ft. Bragg to Muir Beach. Below are a few images from my trip back. Hopefully I’ll get some pics from Lexie’s trip to England and Ireland, and my trip to Utah with Dad Mullins soon! Thanks for Looking.