June happenings

I hope you all are with me when I ask, "Where the HELL did June go?!"

Like typical Junes of the past the seasonals have come on board and the month consisted of a lot of bustling around and training. The parking lot is full at 0600 and people are roaming around until around 0700, when the army heads into the woods. This leaves the office ominously quiet, but provides a great environment to get some work done.

The past couple of weeks I've been helping mark and cruise a salvage timber sale up at Lookout Pass. It was nice to get out in the woods and it made the time fly by. This week is getting the package and the map together...short timelines are the norm anymore. But, when you have a lot of work to do it sure is nice to put your head down in the morning and get surprised by quitting time!

A couple weeks ago, Sarah and I made another try at hiking to Revett Lake off of Thompson Pass. You may remember how two years ago when we went up there, we ran into a dude who claimed to be lost. He had spelled SOS with pine boughs on the lake ice...he had a little minimalist camp...and a poodle which was wearing his tighty-whities for some unknown reason. He told us, "they'll be looking for me. Get in touch with search and rescue. We can't make it out because my dog is so weak...we've been up here for five days with only 8 ounces of food." Meanwhile the dog is running around and obviously excited at having some normal visitors. (Sure enough, he was on the missing person's list and I was able to get some deputies up there that night.) Weird.

So we returned. It looked about the same as the last time...a little puddle in the hills. We had our lunch and headed back down the trail. About three hours of driving for a short hour and a half hike (in and out.)


Revett Lake...about as alpine as it gets on the District.



Revett Lake

Sarah was signed up to run a 14-mile race up at Lolo Pass last weekend. Due to an injury she wasn't able to participate, but we went ahead and made our way over there Friday afternoon for a relaxing weekend. It was also Ironman weekend, so it was nice to get out of town and let the populous do their thing without us. Unfortunately my sister was in town that weekend and we were only able to spend one evening with her...but she came over to the house and cuddled the cats for us...which was greatly appreciated. (Makes the house look lived in too.)

We started our drive in the middle of the day and it was HOT. I've put off getting more freon (or whatever they use in air conditioners now) so we had the windows down on the interstate. I just had the truck in the shop to get new catalytic converters and I kicked myself for not having them do that. Turning onto highway 12, however, led us to TRY to see if we could get some cool air out of it. Sure enough, good ol' Scott had done the job for me....hmm 2.5 hours of heat. Always check I guess.

We had our choice of campsites, but many were entirely too buggy. I wanted a campsite next to Packer meadows, but along with the bugs it was very wet...so we ended up at a great little place down on Glade creek...about 1/2 mile from where Lewis and Clark camped. Pretty darn cool if you ask me. I'm positive they walked through our camp at some point, even if it was just poking around in the evening.


Our meadow


More of our meadow (my camera was kinda foggy that morning)

Campsite (post camping...dropped the ball on photos.)

Friday night a guy came rolling by and told us, "there are a lot of bears around here and we've got a couple bait sites pretty close to your camp." Great. We thought of bears the rest of the time we were there, but had no troubles whatsoever.

I spent the evening being a kid and flyfished the 4-foot wide Glade Creek catching fingerling cutthroat trout. It was nice to leave my 30-year old body for a bit. The next morning we watched everyone run by then snuck out a back road and headed to Powell to check a map. From there we made our way up toward the Lolo Trail and Indian Post Office. We came up on some serious snowbanks before reaching the top and there was no where to turn around! No matter. We just parked the truck, chocked the tires, and walked the rest of the way. It was chilly on the top, but the scenery made it all worth it. And our little snowdog had a great time rolling around in her favorite medium (sans poo of course.)

Sarah and I plus our view off Indian Post Office

Funny picture of Lucca smiling for the camera

Lucca doesn't understand cameras and photo-ops

She makes me smile though! Not a common photo of Tom...

We made our way back to the truck and had high hopes of being able to shovel through the snowbanks so we could access a turnaround about 30 yards in front of us. After looking at the four foot high berm, we rapidly changed our minds and I simply backed down the road. Obviously if I couldn't find a place to turn around, you can imagine the road was pretty damn narrow. We drove backwards for a mile and a half before finding a wide enough spot to do the deed. It made things interesting and gave me a crink in my neck! Good times.

After that, we headed to White Sands pond to toss a couple flies in the water. It was the heat of the day, so the bite wasn't really on. Sarah caught a trout on her first cast with my spin rod and I dabbed around the shore with a fly until I caught a finicky fish as well. We went back to camp and drove the race course. My Dad was right...there's a hell of a hill climb in there! Three miles (more?) at a steady steep grade! Looks like it would have been a hard race...next year. We drove by Packer meadows and I again didn't take any photos of the camas. The light wasn't quite right and I had hopes that I would remember to come back up in the evening...but no.

Sunday we packed up and headed back the way we came with a brief stop at Lolo Hot Springs for breakfast.

Lucca ready to go Sunday morning

Come ON Tom! Time for breakfast!

It was an entertaining weekend for me. Growing up in the country sealed it in my being and whenever I go back I can almost feel the weight drop off my shoulders. Sarah had to yard me in from fishing Friday night, "Can you get a fire going? It's 8 o'clock and I'm hungry!" Totally lost track of time. I dabbed in a tiny creek with a flyrod like I did as a little guy. I fished the pond like I used to do every night when living in Powell. We went to a place I remember being at as a kid...I couldn't remember getting there in the past...but I still kept the view with me for all those years. I had a good enough idea of what it looked like from the cache that I could see where we needed to be from a couple miles out. I like stuff like that.

Kind of a somber tone to this post. I have some bigger things on my mind today, but wanted to get this done before getting into that. "Not all those who wander are lost" kinda applies to my thought processes this morning. (And I cannot get the formatting for the captions to "stick" and I really don't want to get into HTML right now. I apologize.)