quartz lake

our cabins


bowman lake


me, nate, and robert down by quartz lake

so finally the weather's gotten beautiful... it's gotta be in the high seventies at least which is pretty nice. it's warm but definitely not too hot (like i hear ny is..) as much as i loved hawaii.. i love montana more. it's more my domain.. the mountains, amazingly clear lakes, lots of rivers and creeks, and gorgeous boreal forests with lots of trails to hike through. i hear missoula's a cool town too.. we have a friend working down there now so i think we're going to have to go check it out. yesterday we did a 13 mile loop called west lakes trail in glacier np. it took us about 2 hours to get there because the actual trailhead was at the nw corner of the park, about 45 min past the main entrance at west glacier. the main road through the park is finally opened up too since last year, so that's exciting. the rivers are down already, so i think the biggest part of the melting is over. the loop we did started at bowman lake. it's probably the most still lake i've ever seen in my life. the picture looks fake because the reflection is perfectly symmetrical. i regretted so badly not bringing my kayak out here with me when i saw that. there was a mule deer just chilling in the parking lot when we got there too. the trail started out by going over this ridge, then you peaked over it and could see down into the valley where lower, middle, and big quartz lake are. it's really quite a sight walking down towards the main lake, because all the forest on that side of the ridge had been burned in fires in 2003. you could see everywhere because there werent big tall pines blocking the view anymore, but it was amazing how much had grown up already.. lots of short new pines, and lots of lupines, paintbrush and other wildflowers. the national park service had a policy for a lot of the last century that called for putting out any fire, naturally (like lightning) or human caused, immediately. that means that all this underbrush is building up since the park service is stopping the natural fire cycle, so when you do get fires starting that you cant stop, they are out of proportion since there is sooo much material in the understory to burn. we hiked down around the lakes and they were all pretty and mosquito laden. the hike back over the ridge was pretty tiring, but all in all it was a pretty nice day hike. we stopped at cajun mary's on the way home for some good bbq chicken.