Glacier National Park!

Last winter, I saw a notice in a newsletter about a workshop being held for biology teachers in Glacier National Park. I thought it looked like a great opportunity, so I signed up to go, even though it would mean missing 3 days of school.

I had visited Glacier two times before. I was there with my family on a summer trip, when I was 14. Then, in 2001, I drove out to Montana during the summer and spent about a week in the park, including a 5-day backpacking trip.

The group for this trip included roughly 30 teachers and a few spouses. A few were retired, but most were currently teaching biology (and many also environmental science) at high schools. A few were teachers at community colleges. We were led by a retired teacher from Colorado who has been organizing trips to natural places for student and teacher groups for more than 30 years.

We had many great opportunities to learn about Glacier National Park as an educational resource, and about scientific research being done in the park. Sessions were led by enthusiastic park staff as well as USGS employees - who are based in the park and may as well be considered park employees too. The experiences included talks/discussions on the famous grizzly bear study in the park, which involves capturing hair samples for DNA analysis; studies of melting glaciers and other impacts of a changing climate; and fascinating research on wolverines. We also took a guided hike with a fire ecologist specialist who works for the park, and learned about the alpine zone and about regional geology with a park naturalist. We saw mountain goats and elk, but did not manage to catch site of any grizzlies or wolverines. We did see quite a bit of bear scat, including evidence that a black bear had become prey . . . perhaps for a grizzly.

It was a lot of fun to meet other teachers, to see the park from a new perspective, and to discover unexpected "small-world" connections. Many park facilities were closed for the season, and most others would close the day that we left. The weather was cool during the day and quite cold at night (and at Logan Pass, where wind chills were well below freezing), and some of the aspens were turning yellow. Peak fall colors won't hit DC for another 6 weeks, so that was quite a nice treat. I also met a ranger who had worked with my brother, and found out that the workshop leader had met one of my brother's friends when he worked as a seasonal naturalist many years ago. Any my roommate, a teacher from Indiana, vacations in northern Michigan and drives through my hometown of Grant on the way there.

I could go on, but I will stop there because anyone who has made it this far is probably not interested in any more details! Here are the rest of my pictures.

Running in 50 states

I was talking to a friend from church yesterday, and he mentioned that he keeps track of how many states he has gone running in. Being the sort of person who likes to make lists, that got my attention. I decided to count how many states I have run in, and came up with 34. Not too bad! My brother Mike has a goal of backpacking in every state, so I have been keeping track of the states I backpack in as well - the count there is 21 (half of them on the A.T.).

I decided to also count how many states I have hiked and camped in. The result: hiking 43, camping 47. I have visited 49 states (missing Hawaii), so the only two have I visited but not camped in are Missouri and Rhode Island.

I have also been keeping track of the state high points I have visited for a while now. I have been to the high point in 18 states, and in another 8 states I have seen the high point (Mt. Rainier and Denali, for example).

National Parks update

For about 10 years now, I have been keeping track of my visitation statistics for National Parks and related sites - Monuments, Historic Parks, Recreation Areas, etc. The National Park Service manages over 390 sites now, and a few new ones are added to the system periodically. The latest addition came as part of a large public lands bill in spring 2009, adding various historic sites including a battlefield in Monroe, MI.

This summer, on our epic California-and-back trip, we visited 34 NPS sites, 6 of which were National Parks: Grand Canyon, Zion, Channel Islands, Redwood, Joshua Tree, and Death Valley. I have now visited 310 out of the 391 sites on the official list. These range from little-known historic sites such as the small historic house in rural MD owned by Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to large iconic parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Many sites my visits lasted only a few hours, but I have spent more than a week backpacking through some of the larger parks. Most of the sites I have yet to visit are in the extreme southwest, or in remote areas beyond the contiguous 48 states. Highest on my list of parks to visit would probably be Katmai in Alaska.

Calista has her own National Parks passport book, and each time we would enter a new park she and I would stamp the book together.

2011 PCT Trip: Seiad Valley to Green Spring Summit

This summer I hiked from Seiad Valley to Green Springs Summit on the PCT. As he had done last summer, my brother Mike joined me for the trip. We hiked northbound, although in this section that meant we were mostly going east. The PCT winds its way westward from the Sierras to travel through the Trinity Alps and Marble and Klamath Mountains. In this stretch, it returns east to the Cascades, which are longitudinally (is that a word?) in line with the Sierras. This hike was beautiful and wild, in spite of the fact that it covered little in the way of official wilderness and many stretches of trail ran parallel to dirt forest roads. I have now hiked approximately 477 miles on the PCT - 18% of the total trail.

Here is a link to my trip report.