One Month So Far in Glacier - Backpacking to Arrow Lake

This "weekend" (my new weekends are Wednesdays and Thursdays), Caiti and I decided to head out to the Trout Lake Valley, which is one of areas closer to our house that we could access without a car. There were two choices of places to go that we could access without cars and that were free of snow: Harrison Lake, and the Trout Lake area. Harrison had been our first choice, since it was closer to our house. But upon going to the Backcountry Office, we found out that the bridge over one of the streams hadn't been installed, and fording the river during spring melt is difficult if not impossible. So, Trout Lake it was, and then further up into the valley to Arrow Lake and the isolated campground there.
The only problem is that Trout Lake is somewhat infamous from the whole Night of the Grizzlies ordeal... That was the night, back in 1967, when two women, in two different areas of the park, were killed by grizzlies while camping. One of the areas was Trout Lake...
Now, just to be clear - and to illustrate that we're not foolhardy adventure-seekers - the parks bear management policies have changed drastically since 1967. Before the incident, there was no policy against feeding wildlife or properly storing food. So bears in both those areas had grown accustomed to finding and raiding coolers, tents, barbeques, etc. So when the campers at Trout Lake set up camp, a bear in the area had already been conditioned by previous careless campers to expect food where humans camp. Needless to say, that bear raided their their camp and killed one girl.
Since then, the park has instituted incredibly strict bear policies. Food prep areas are located well away from sleeping areas, and every smidgen of food, trash, soap, chapstick, bugspray, anything that has any aroma or fragrance, is hung in a bag 8 feet above the ground and at least 4 feet away from any branches or trunks a bear could climb.
In any case, we practiced good bear safety, and carried bear spray on our belts. And, we didn't see a single bear the whole trip, despite carrying binoculars and scanning all the ridges and avalance chutes. Speaking of avalanche chutes, this is us on an avalanche chute, crossing the old snow and debris!

My "awesome explorer" pic...

Another avalanche chute. The snow has melted, and now it's just a pile of ruble...

Except that new life is coming up from the chutes! Avalanches destroy trees, but they open up space for shrubs and wildflowers, like this glacier lily. Bears love avalanche chutes because they create all their favorite forage.

And, the obligate grosss bear scat photo, oozing down the side of the trail. Don't worry, this was definitely at least a day old! :P

At camp, Caiti is preparing our awesome chili. I took this photo especially for Uncle Pete, to show him how I am making use of my AWESOME knife and zippo lighter!!

The view behind our campsite: Mount McPartland with the last rays of the sun on its peak.

The entrance to our campsite.

The view from our "dining room" (two wooden logs with a nice wide stump in the middle).

Me, scanning for bears... We ended up seeing a pair of loons, and, for my first time ever, a bald eagle!!!

Gotta love that nature...

A couple more highlights from our trip:

- Crazy thunderstorm that ripped through the valley around 2am, the booming thunder ricocheting off the ridges and lighting illuminating our tent! Quite exciting.

- Beautiful weather almost the whole time

- A lovely evening in the tent reading Awakening to the Sacred by Lama Surya Das with Caiti - and thinking about the beauty of our surroundings...

So, I'm back to work again today, and preparing for my boat tour tomorrow~

~Emilie