New life plan: live in Glacier forever

Glacier National Park is so BEAUTIFUL. The dramatic topography in Glacier was mind blowing, and the wildlife was INCREDIBLE.

We (5 of us from the Landmark crew) did some backpacking by the Canadian border along Belly River for three days. The entire time we were surrounded by steep mountains that rose so quickly out of the U-shaped valley floor. The stratigraphy on the rock faces were continuous as far as you could see with vibrant patterns and colors. Trees, lakes, meadows, waterfalls, mountains, valleys, stars, sunsets, rocks, stromatolites, glaciers, snow, ice, Narnia, rivers, critters, ahhh Glacier has it all!

After spending time in the back country, we headed to the more touristy places in the park ....along with thousands of pushy people. As beautiful as those sections of the park were (sooo beautiful!), there is something precious about the less traveled sections of the park. The solitude of the back country is a huge part of its appeal, especially with such beautiful landscape. To mitigate against the crowds, we visited the more popular sections of the park during the evening and early morning.

Here's a list of the animals I played with:
Moose
Black bears
Yellow-bellied Marmots
Hoary marmots
Mule deer
Mountain goats (!)
Big horned sheep
Martens
Ground squirrels
Bald eagle
Coyote
Birds birds birds

I now love mountain goats because they are devastatingly cute and completely defy the laws of science. They can climb 72 feet in 60 seconds! That's on a near vertical slope, on a loose-rock surface, with HOOVES.
Here is a photo of my new best friend and I gazing into each other's eyes:

Backcountry views in the Glens Lake valley

Not the best photo quality of our moose friend who visited our camp site at Glens Lake. He hung out with us for about an hour, munching on his evening snacks.

Pretty flowers that were along the trails

Buck Mule Deer along the Hidden Lake trail ~9pm.

Hiking up the Hidden Lake trail on snow and ice in my Birks and shorts. (Note: sweet sock tan)

Mountain Goat along the Hidden Lake trail

Mountain goat friends along the Highline Trail at 7:30am. This trail was along a cliff edge that was hundreds of feet above the valley floor. At some points the trail was only 3 feet wide.. 

The prairie is not made for humans: an idea of what we're doing out here

As I've mentioned before, our job out here on the prairie is to observe wildlife and document their behavior and locations. We work in teams of two and each group hikes one of the eight transects that are mapped on our GPSes. There is one team who is on 'car team' and their job is to check certain cameras and pick the hikers up when they're finished. We have 27 cameras on the Sun Prairie that are motion triggered. Therefore, most of the videos are of the grasses blowing in the wind. And each camera can have up to 250 one-minute grass movies - really exciting stuff...

Because it is a trillion degrees starting at 8am, we get up at 5am to get our hikes started. Don't worry, napping commences around 1 after we've returned from the hikes and have replenished our energy with lunch. 

About once a week we conduct 'Bison Counts' and sunset wildlife scopes. The bison counts require two teams to walk 5ish miles and count only the bison they see. The herds can be up to 200 bison!

The prairie doesn't cater to humans. In the winter it's absolutely freezing with harsh winds, spring still has snow and occasional storms, July and August are f##king hot with mosquitos, late summer and early fall is the wet season with lots of storms and fires due to the lightning, and then it gets freezing again. 

Sounds nice doesn't it? We have had a couple of families stay at Buffalo Camp, and we can't understand why on earth anyone would want to come here when Glacier and Yellowstone are 5 hours away... But then again, why am I here?! Oh yeah, to enjoy the unique landscape and collect data towards this giant conservation project that will (hopefully) obtain nearly 3.5 million acres within 10 years! It is pretty rewarding to be a part of something like this at the end of the day (when the sun is down and it finally cools off) and be around people who share a passion for nature and the earth we live on! 🌎✌️

An idea of what out transects look like

The gear we take in the field, along with a million liters of water and high energy snacks (thank you Clif Bar company for sponsoring us and providing is with a plethora of bars) 

Shannon and myself on a sunset wildlife scope, protecting ourselves from the mosquito swarms. (Photo: Leah Mabee) 

Shannon and myself (photo: Leah Mabee)