Towards the end of August, 2002, my friend Lynde Howe and I took a week trip up to Glacier National Park. The week before I had been up there on a long day trip with three old college buddies, and the visit whetted my appetite to see more of the park.

We drove east over Roger's Pass, then up to Browning. When you enter the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, you are greeted by wonderful works of art:

Our first stop was the Two Medicine area in the southeast corner of the park. We camped for the night, then spent the next day doing a spectacular, long, 17 mile hike my friend Tim Swanberg had recommended. We went up the north side of Two Medicine Lake, then up to Dawson Pass, traversed over to Pitamakin Pass, and returned down the dry creek valley to the campground.

Here's Lynde as we started out with marginal weather and threatening clouds to the south; the big mountain just above her head is Sinopah Mountain. And a view of a rib of what I think is Pompelly Pillar on our way up to Dawson Pass. And yes, this is griz country, and no, we weren't clanging cow bells. But we were carrying pepper spray.

It's close to six miles to Dawson Pass, and the view from the top is spectacular. To the east is Two Medicine Lake, with Pompelly Pillar in the foreground, Sinopah Mountain behind it, and the Mt. Henry complex behind it; to the south some awesome looking jagged peaks, maybe Battlement, St. Nicholas, and Cloudcroft Peaks, made more awesome by the thunderheads building around them; to the north Mt. Stimson with its glacier; and to the west a deep valley with Nyack Lakes and then more peaks.

We lolled around in the sun and ate some lunch.

Then we headed off on the traverse over to Pitamakin Pass. This is a spectacular trail, winding along the side of a high alpine ridge. The sign at the trailhead says this part isn't recommended for horses. It would be possible for a good trail horse, but a not-so-good one wouldn't be a very happy camper, a pack horse wouldn't fit, and I know I'd be leading my horse instead of riding on some of it...

From the saddle between two of the peaks you could see clear out to the plains in the east, and everywhere you looked below you there was a new lake. The clouds to the south kept piling up and moving towards us. The interval between the lightning and the thunder decreased from 15 seconds down to five, and soon we were scurrying to get our rain gear on and get off the ridge. We arrived at Pitamakin Pass none too soon.

Lynde was hiking in shorts most of the way, and as we descended all the water on the shrubs managed to soak her socks pretty well. She didn't particularly like hiking with lakes in her boots.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife on this trip. A couple of mom Ptarmigan with a bunch of little ones, and momma bear poop and baby bear poop, but no bears. Darn!

Towards the bottom of the dry fork valley, we came across a wonderful waterfall. It would have made a great place to picnic or just take a nap, but it was getting late and things were still pretty wet from all the rain.

Despite being late in the year, there were still some pretty wildflowers, especially bright after the fresh rain. And the mountain ash leaves were turning bright red.

The next day we drove across the south end of the park and up the west side towards Polebridge, and then on to Bowman Lake. It's a long drive, on bumpy gravel roads, but worth it. We camped at the end of the road at the outlet to Bowman Lake.

The next day we put my canoe in the lake and paddled about eight miles up to the head of it.

On the way back, we found a great Mexican restaurant near Columbia Falls, "Los Caparoles". Way better than the place the guys and I ate at in West Glacier the week before.

A few days later we went diving in Canyon Ferry with a friend, Glen McKinnon, who has a boat. As usual, the visibility was way better the day before. Evelyn Joppa was showing pictures of their trip to Palau that evening, so we spent the 45 minutes after diving and before food and pictures dozing in the dugout canoe at the park for the dam. This was apparently pretty entertaining for some of the locals.