Bighorn Mountains

I hiked up to an alpine lake surrounded by meadows...its such a nice suprise finding anything besides mud, dust, and pointy rocks on the ground in the mountains so I took off my boots and ran barefoot around the meadows.

Everyone else I saw up there was riding horses (lazy!) I think they may have thought I was crazy, as I hiked up and decided to run around when I got there. (Look Jordan, paint horses!)


The trails were rocky and muddy and it was cloudy or raining most of the day. Just like hiking in the Whites, reminded me of all the good times fording rivers and waking up in flooded tents.

Here is the ruin of an old outhouse.


And a moose.


These were the first Wyoming mountains I have hiked in that are grizzly free, which was comforting. In several days though, I am heading into the Teton backcountry, which is definitely not grizzly free (don't worry, I'll have a friend, a bear can, and bear spray).

Phibbing

Though I am a mammal person now, I have not forgotten my roots as an amphibian person. When Mark and Evan went out ottering with me the other day, we also found a lagoon full of tadpoles and got some phibbing (amphibian researching) in. Here is a silly chorus frog (PSMA) tadpole that has legs and a tail.

I also saw a coyote running around with a dead marmot in its mouth.

Rocks

There really are a lot of pictures of scenery and large mammals here…but today all the pictures will be of Yellowstone’s unappreciated inhabitants. Amphibians are certainly one, and rocks are also often overlooked but rather neat. These rocks near a thermally active part of the lake had bizarre purple swirly patterns.

Lots of rocks are volcanic, and the ones with ash formed around smaller rocks look like big concrete blocks in the middle of the backcountry.

Hot springs spew out sinter deposits, making these bleak landscapes. The first trappers to explore Yellowstone called the area Colter’s Hell. Altogether, I think that would be a better name for the park, as maybe less tourists would come to Hell National Park.

Sometimes the mineral deposits build up fast enough to kill trees.

Yellowstone Lake

The Lake in the morning, there is some good at waking up super early.


Burned area from a 2003 fire. The burned out areas are just covered with the bright magenta fireweed flowers.

Into Bear Country

This scenic backcountry valley harbors waterbourne parasites, hot springs that make the creeks run as acidic as lemon juice, and Yellowstone’s densest population of grizzly bears. Several days ago, Jamie and I headed in to look for otter activity. Of course, the trail is nowhere near the creek, so we had to navigate downed trees, steep riverbanks, and trecherous stream crossings on the way.

All over, there were bear beds, bear scats, and scratched trees. And wolf tracks (above). When you see a wolf track, you can just tell, it’s so much bigger than a coyote. We also saw a helicopter overhead, flying to fight a fire further up the valley. Later, it started to hail/snow.

Today, I went further up Pelican creek, helping another researcher retrieve some fish cages. After less than an hour of hiking, we saw a grizzly on the trail (small black dot in picture). Far off, but still much too close. Close enough to necessitate a wide detour around the trail. Further up, thermal features had spewed hot water into the creek, killing all of the fish. On the way out, it hailed.

Yet for all the scariness of the Pelican Valley, it is quite an amazing place. Seeing bear and bison is more fascinating when we are in their spaces rather than they in ours. Wolf kills and carcasses littered the valley, and we found elk skulls with enormous antlers (I honestly don’t see how the can hold up their heads with that weight). As we hiked out, two sandhill cranes flew out of the tall grass, and a pair of osprey circled over our heads, protecting their nest from us intruders.

Otter research...it's a hard life

It appears that up until now all these entries have been about hiking, fishing, and seeing animals… but I do actually work too. See this picture of Jamie and Dave driving our boat across the scenic lake on the beautiful sunny day? This is work.

The only not fun part of these boating days is waking up at 4:30 am. The lake gets rough in the afternoon, so we have to force ourselves out of bed to be on the water by dawn. Although the lake is quite lovely in the morning – all glassy with the islands and the Absaroka Mountains showing through the mist and plumes of steam rising from the geyser basins. I drove the boat over to our first otter latrine, on Columbine Creek, and we set to work. We set hair snares (modified trapping snares – they’re fastened with a paperclip instead of a lock so they let the otter go after some hair has been snagged). To find good snare sites, we follow trails of packed down earth and scat left by the otters, and construct little log barricades so the otter has to go through our snare.

We also collect plenty of scat for to get DNA. Otter scat has a lovely musky fishy smell – sometimes you smell the latrines before you see them.

Down in the southeast arm, we have to drive really really slow to protect nesting birds or something. Time to nap, eat lunch, or fish. I have one of the silly kids life jackets with the hood, which makes quite a nice pillow. Here’s Ken with a big cutthroat trout (these are the fish the otters like to eat).

At a latrine on Promentory Point, we find otter hair in our snares. The hair gets plucked off with tweezers and put into little envelopes that eventually end up in our freezer with our food.

On the way back, the lake is freakishly calm – no wind or waves, and its even sunny. Alas, such luck can’t last. The motor dies only a mile from the marina, and we are forced to call the fisheries boat for help (It’s fun talking on the radio, using our call sign and other radio talk). We take the cover off the motor and poke things until it works again, so the fisheries crew doesn’t have to tow us back after all.

Fishy

After catching many rocks and bits of aquatic vegetation, I finally managed to catch my first fish. Here is my dinner, my 8” brook trout from the Gibbon River.