Yellowstone: The Usual Suspects and a Surprise or Two

This fellow is one of the usual suspects: his name is Scarface, and I’ve seen him before in Yellowstone. He’s over twenty years old, with a mangled right ear, and..yes..a scarred face from too many run-ins with other grizzlies. I’ve only seen him from the road, which is just fine with me: coming around the bend on a trail and meeting this particular face is not on my bucket list. But it’s pretty exciting to watch him lumber across a meadow in the setting sun.

One of the great perks of living in western Montana (and being retired!) is that I can wake up on a Monday morning, check the weather, and decide that the time is right for a short jaunt to Yellowstone to see what critters are around. I did just that last week, and had a glorious three days. No wolves, although I knew they were around, but lots of other great activity.

My first evening I took a picnic supper out to one of my favorite spots to sit and watch: Slough Creek. There were plenty of wolf watchers on the hill behind me, so I knew something was going on, but no one was down on the little hill that I like to stake out. As I settled in, I saw dirt flying out of a ground squirrel hole about a hundred feet from me. As I got closer the digging stopped, and all was quiet. I sat and watched, and after about 5 minutes this guy popped up:

So cool.   He posed in triumph for a few seconds, and then headed off to bring dinner to his family:

And badgers were definitely a recurring theme.  The next morning I stopped by some more wolf watchers, and as they were all peering across the valley I spotted another badger right at our feet.

Those badgers were a couple of nice surprises, for sure.  Another surprise for me was how photogenic the wolf watchers can be:

Later that day I watched a coyote trying to get something from an old bison or elk leg.  He worked and worked at it, but I can’t believe there was much meat left for him.

I watched him until he wandered off, but then saw him about a half a mile away with some large piece of booty in his mouth.  He was so far away that I couldn’t get a decent photo, but here’s what I got:

Any idea what that could be?  Maybe a piece of old bison hide?  I needed someone with a good scope!

The weather was gorgeous, so I decided to just hang out by the Blacktail Ponds for the afternoon.  Good choice.  As the afternoon wore on the critters seemed to come to me: a Sandhill Crane (alone and with a beautiful Yellow-Headed Blackbird), a moose, and a big old black bear.   An American Avocet even posed with a pair of Cinnamon Teals in the background.

Just glorious.

OF course, even without the wildlife, Yellowstone is glorious:

The Osprey has Landed

When I’m photographing birds, my hope is that my picture will show the true spirt of the bird I’m seeing. It’s not easy. But sometimes I feel like I’m getting close.

 

(I’m participating in The Prairier Birder’s “Feathers on Friday” meme. Check it out at http://prairiebirder.wordpress.com/)

Solitude in Zion: Not on Angel’s Landing

The National Parks are certainly not lax about warning the public about the dangers that we will encounter within their borders – even cactus! – and Zion is no exception.  Warnings about falling from cliffs seem to pop up every time you turn around.

Not surprisingly we all become a bit blase in the face of these constant alarms. There is at least one hike, however, where the warnings are truly deserved. At the bottom of the hike up Angel’s Landing, there is a small brown sign with small letters: “strenuous climb, narrow route with cliff exposures, hazardous during storms, darkness and ice/snow conditions”. Not even one exclamation point! It’s as if a designer advised the the park service on the value of tasteful understatement in their warning signs.

Not that I really think a sign would make much difference; the hike up Angel’s Landing seems to become more crowded every year. It really surprises me that this trail has not become one that requires a permit, but that hasn’t happened so far. Here’s a example of the crowd starting up this scary trail:

As for me, I don’t need a warning sign to tell me that this hike is not for me.    The first time we hiked the West Rim Trail I was more than happy to sit at Scout’s Landing and wait for Bill to climb to the end.   And one time was plenty for him: climbing a narrow fin of rock a thousand feet in the air with hundreds of your new best friends is just not his idea of a wilderness experience.

Here is a view of Angel’s Landing from further along the West Rim Trail:

And some folks on the top:

The Park Service has put up chains along the route to “help” the hikers.   I can all too easily imagine myself frozen in fear while clutching one of these chains, and causing one heck of a massive traffic jam while we wait for the helicopter rescue.

The view from the top is dandy, but I don’t think anyone does this just to see the view.

The hike beyond Scout’s Landing is definitely more up my alley.    As is always the case, the crowds thin out dramatically, and you can once again feel that you’re out in the wilds instead of standing in line at an amusement park.

About 3/4 of a mile after Scout’s Landing, you can hike over to a point that looks down on Walter’s Wiggles.  The wiggles are a series of 21 tight switchbacks that lead up to Scout’s Landing, and they are quite an engineering feat.

After 4.7 miles and 2500 feet from the valley floor you reach Cabin Spring, which makes a good destination for a long day hike, or you could camp at one of the backcountry campsites near the spring.  We did that a few years ago, and it was a great trip.

Cabin Spring is on top of  this mesa. (You can see the spring dripping down the cliff side in this photo.)

The trail is cut into the side of the cliff.  I’m just fine with a drop-off as long as the trail is nice and wide like this one is. (But it’s no accident that I’m not hiking on the edge!)

The view from the top of the rim:

And our campsite.   See the Duraflame log on the ground in the background?  Someone with more brawn than brains hauled that up there.   And then didn’t even use it.  I mean, it’s illegal to have a fire there anyway, but if you’re gonna haul the thing up, wouldn’t you at least light it?  And a fake log?  Really?

That’s My Spot!

Earlier this week I was checking out one of the Bald Eagle nests I’ve been watching, and I spotted these two sitting on a branch a couple of hundred feet from the nest.     At first I thought it was a Golden Eagle hanging out with the mate of the Bald Eagle who was sitting on the nest, which would be pretty odd behavior.    Not something I’d seen before, at any rate.

But once I got closer I could see that the bigger one was not a Golden, but was most likely a second year juvenile Bald.     Could this be daughter sitting next to dad?    I know female balds are larger than males, but this one looks so much bigger!

As I watched, there was a commotion in the pine tree next to this dead snag, and “dad” flew away.    Once he left, another young eagle decided that the spot on that snag looked pretty darned tempting, and he (?) decided that a little territorial bullying was called for.

A little sibling bickering?

The winner!

 

Relentlessly Steep: the Tanner Trail in the Grand Canyon

I’m watching the sun sink behind the canyon walls, three miles and a couple of thousand vertical feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon.  It’s a beautiful April evening, with a welcome breeze that keeps the desert flies away.

The day before we’d stopped at the backcountry office to see if we could get a backpacking permit.  It was after noon by the time we arrived, so we weren’t counting on getting one, but we were in luck: there was a permit available for the Tanner Trail.   Now, we haven’t hiked much at all in the Grand Canyon, and I’d only read a little about the different trails.  The backcountry ranger looked us over pretty hard before she brought up this hike, and questioned us in what I thought was surprising detail about our hiking and backpacking experience.   She said that the Tanner was a “really rough” trail, with no water, and that normally she’d only give a permit to folks with experience on the easier trails in the canyon.      But apparently we passed whatever test she was giving us, because we got the permit.    (I think it helped that we could obviously read a topo map, and we had the Trails Illustrated map that she was using, and that we immediately made it clear that we had no intention of hiking to the bottom and up on a one-night trip.   And that I wasn’t standing before her in a tank top and flip flops and shorty-shorts!)

Was it steep?  Yep.  Rocky?   Yep.  Difficult?  Yep.

But worth it?   Absolutely.

Actually, we did this one nighter in what I think was a really smart way: we hiked down a few miles, set up camp, and then hiked a bit further in the late afternoon.   I was concerned about not having enough water for the hike up and out, but we were fine.  (The water situation was helped by the fact that I forgot to pack the coffee, so we didn’t get to sit around camp in the morning with a hot cup of coffee.   This would have been a crisis on a longer trip, but on this one it meant more water for the hike out.)

Ready to go.

The trail starts out deceptively smooth and nicely graded.   But it quickly gets rockier and steeper, and just keeps heading pretty much straight down Tanner Canyon.

There aren’t any sheer drop-offs, but there’s lots of scrambling down and over boulders, and plenty of loose rock.

After a couple of miles you reach Seventy-Five Mile Saddle, which has a grand view of Seventy-Five Canyon.

The trail heads down from the saddle, following Tanner Canyon, and then climbs slightly uphill on the other end of the saddle, below Escalante Butte.  There were a couple of nice campsites at this point, and we wisely decided to set up camp there, and then we hiked without the heavy packs to check out the trail toward Cardenas Butte.   This part of the trail is not difficult at all, and there are a number of good campsites on the benches between the two buttes.     After Cardenas Butte the trail descends steeply again, and reaches the Colorado a few miles later.   I’d love to return to this area and hike down to the river in a day, spend a night or two there, and then spread the hike back up to the rim over two days.

Our campsite had, of course, grand views.

We even had a view of the Watchtower up on the rim at Desert View.    See the vultures circling above it?

And of course, sunset and sunrise:

The hike out was hard, but – as is usually the case – not as hard as I feared.

The next day the weather changed, and the views of the canyon with it.    These are my favorite pictures of the canyon, but I’m glad that I wasn’t hiking through that barrage of sleet and hail and snow!

Zion Spring

Zion National Park, March 2013

 

It’s All Downhill From Here: A Backpack to the East Rim of Zion Canyon

Zion is a perfect little gem of a national park.   The ruby red rock, the sapphire skies,  the incredible soaring cliffs and towers surrounding a beautiful little winding river:  it’s hard to believe that so much beauty can be concentrated in what is really a pretty small space.

It’s a grand example of how to run a small national park, too.  Beginning in March only shuttle buses are allowed in Zion Canyon, which means you can look down from the top of Cable Mountain (as in the picture above) and not see a steady stream of cars.   And it’s not hard to lose the crowds, even if you arrive during the ridiculously busy weeks surrounding Easter.    As in most parks, once you hike a mile or two from a trailhead, you are pretty much guaranteed solitude.

The hike to Cable Mountain on the East Rim of the canyon is a perfect example of this.  There are three ways to reach the mountain: a really strenuous 11 mile hike from the bottom of the canyon, past the Weeping Rock, through Echo Canyon and then up and up,   an 8 mile hike from the East Rim trailhead on the east side of the park that is not as spectacular, but also not as hard, or a 4 mile hike from the Stave Spring trailhead that is really not difficult at all, but is at the end of a 4-wheel drive road that can be not too passable if the weather is wet.

We’ve taken the first two options on previous trips and have ended up camping below Cable Mountain.   This time we wanted to camp right on the rim, and I didn’t want to kill myself getting there, so we chose the Stave Spring Trailhead.

When you get to camp at a spot like this, you know you’ve made a good choice:

The trail starts high, and I think it only climbs about 500 feet over 4 miles to get to the top.  (You do go up, then down, then up again, so if you do this hike be prepared for that!)   Water can be an issue, since Stave Spring is not always flowing, but on our trip water was trickling from the spring’s pipe, and there were plenty of snow patches around for melting.

The trail crosses the mesa top, and then begins a gradual climb to Deertrap and Cable Mountains.

After a bit of a climb, the view starts to open up.

But it’s the views from the rim of the canyon that are the real reward.

We found a campsite away from the trail, but on the edge of the canyon, and spent the afternoon watching vultures and ravens soar below us.   We were visited by western bluebirds and a fearless chipmunk, and I could even watch people hiking the switchbacks across the canyon on the trail to Observation Peak.

All in all, not a bad way to start the backpacking season!