Hello, readers!

Hello, readers!

I am not currently on the road. Please check back periodically later this year as I have no idea when I'll be traveling! August? September? October? Who knows!

Cheers,
Kelly

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Our Northern Neighbors



7/21/2017

Friday, July 21st marked another first for me: a visit to our neighbors to the north! It may also mark another first for Jane, though I’m not sure if she's ever been to Canada. It seems unlikely, given her fairly pampered roots and Southern heritage, but you never know – one of her previous owners may have had a wandering streak just as bad as mine! Regardless, I’ve never been to Canada, so at least it was a first for one of us.

The border is really only 10 miles or so up the road from Glacier, so it comes up on you fast. It seems like Jane and I had just gotten on the road when suddenly we were in the bay of the border inspection building, being thoroughly inspected.



Yeah, I guess it’s pretty weird that a chick from Texas might decide to drive her half-century-old muscle car up to Canada because she wanted to “get cold”. But really, that’s what I wanted to do… customs was not amused. The guy repeatedly told me, “you are not under arrest, I just want to talk to you in this room over here” and I repeatedly went, “cool, whatever, I’ve got time” which may or may not have been the correct answer.

I ended up giving him the entire play-by-play of the trip thus far, as well as what seemed like my entire academic and work history for the past six years of my life. But finally, after some deliberation, he was as satisfied as he was going to be and Jane and I were released from our respective holding areas. Thankfully, they didn’t insist on unpacking her to go through all of my belongings – or we would have been there all day and they would have accused me of being in possession of a Mary Poppins’ handbag-esque vehicle.

From there, it was up into the great unknown – sometimes referred to as the “Great White North” among some of my friends. People measure things in silly units and say silly phrases up here, I’ve heard. First impressions verified that.

Is this entire country yellow?! Oh god, what if it is??

Well, that's a name for ya.

How I verified I was in Canada

Holy speed limits Batman!

 I was smart enough to take care of the unit conversions for speed limits prior to entering Canada, at least.



However, I was not smart enough to remember that gas is measured in liters (litres) rather than gallons here, and consequently I found myself at a gas station staring at the pump in great consternation, trying to figure out how much gas I’d need to fill the tank. This is embarrassing because I’m a scientist and should be able to do metric conversions easily. But I just don’t work with volumes of fluid, so… I kind of just mentally compared the volume of a 2-liter of Coke with the volume of a gallon of water, and figured that they were more or less equivalent.

I was very wrong.

A gallon is equivalent to 3.79 liters, not 2 liters.

Consequently, I was at gas stations constantly for the first couple of hours, trying to figure out why I was losing so much gas when really the problem was that I just wasn’t really putting any in.

Finally, some lady took pity on me and told me that I could just press a button on the screen to authorize a maximum fill of $200, which would let me fill my tank to the brim but would not actually charge me the full $200, instead charging me whatever the price of the gas was.

This was very helpful and I felt extremely stupid, so I stopped in at a nearby information center to ask a bunch of other random questions I had acquired by then. The very nice information lady got me all sorted, gave me a bunch of maps with ideas of places to visit in Banff and Jasper (my eventual destinations), and then informed me that pretty much all of Canada is on fire right now, so good luck actually seeing any of those things.

Oh.

Well, whatever. It’s the Rockies – it has to be awesome anyways! So I steamed full ahead into Banff National Park, trying not to look too stereotypically American (and failing – I mean, duh). The mountains looked like they would be spectacular, if they weren’t covered in a thick layer of haze and clouds and awfulness. At least these pictures make them look dramatic.




Now, since this whole post seems probably a bit disappointing, I should add in some details about what I’m doing up here in this place! This year is Canada’s 150th anniversary, and they’re celebrating it by making all of their national parks free to enter for the whole year! What a spectacular idea. I sent in for my parks pass months ago and they were kind enough to mail it to me down in the States for free.

I’ve seen pictures of the incredible beauty of Banff National Park many times over the past few years, and it’s definitely piqued my interest. Soaring mountain vistas, wildflowers, lakes, bears, and moose – what’s not to love? So I vowed I’d see Banff on this year’s trip, since I’d be up at Glacier anyways. From there it was a simple matter of Googling to find out that its sister park to the north, Jasper, is also a park of incredible beauty. So I added that to the list too.


I’ll be in Banff and Jasper for a cumulative 7 days, enjoying the cool weather, new sights, and hopefully good scenery! Stay tuned. Until then… Kelly signing out.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Finally cold


7/20/2017

Another day in paradise! I awoke to a slight snap in the breeze, a freshness that I haven’t felt in… well, a long time. Colder weather!

When I left Texas, it was 108*F. Part of the goal of this trip – especially after the hellacious first day - was to find some cooler weather to hang out in for a while. And it only took 1,800 miles of driving north to find it!

My destination for the day was another long but popular hike: Grinnell Glacier. Yesterday, the top of the Highline Trail took me to an overlook looking down at Grinnell Glacier from above. At the time, I was sweaty and tired and hot, and it seemed to me that I looked down into a paradise where hikers ate lunch in the sun on the brink of a glacial lake, dabbling their feet in the refreshingly cool water. And I was over a thousand feet above them just wishing I could be there, even if the views from the top were incredible! So today I was very excited to go experience that part of the park up close and personal.

I headed into the Many Glaciers area, stopping to take a “family photo” with Jane when an appropriate vista spread out before us.




 At the entrance, the park attendant told me that there was no parking. I then parked in the empty parking spot right in front of the trailhead.



Feeling smug, I took off along the trail, which starts in a lovely shady forest. Bear bells abounded on all of the hikers around me. I wore Jane’s keys, which more or less make the same amount of noise.

It wasn’t long until the trail opened up and I ascended to sweeping views of the valley. While the Highline Trail was beautiful in its vastness, the Grinnell Glacier Trail is beautiful in its abundance. The valley is smaller and more closed off, which keeps it warmer and thus full of diverse lush vegetation. At the end of the valley, Grinnell Glacier feeds a lake, which feeds a roaring waterfall, which in turn feeds a system of creeks and connected glacial lakes that chain their way along the whole length of the valley floor. Each lake is a stunning aquamarine jewel, shining bright against the surrounding forest. The only thing to outshine them in beauty is the shocking array of colors displayed by thick carpets of flowers covering every surface. The trail is, in a word, stunning. Words can’t do it justice, so I’ll just post a lot of pictures instead.
 
You can take a boat across this lake, but it takes less time to walk so it's silly.


The water's so clear that you can see the structure of the lakebed itself - deeper in the center, with a shallow sediment-laden ring around the edges.


This tree has taken possession of this rock.






Looking back down the valley along the chain of lakes. 



So many flowers!


I hiked my way up through forests and meadows, passing across creeks and waterfalls (and even through one waterfall, which was a wet and chilly experience!) until I reached the base of Grinnell Glacier. There, flowers and trees gave way to spectacular views of a comparative wasteland, rocky and ice-covered. The glacier has eroded the sedimentary rocks into stepped benches that reveal some very interesting features (to a geologist, at least).
 
Awesome stepped sed beds

Some kind of weird result of metamorphism - not entirely sure what's happened here to create these "stretch marks"

Large ripple marks with cross-ripples in between them! Spectacular.

I found stromatolites! These dark circular mounds are essentially the fossilized remains of accumulated cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), similar to those seen in Shark Bay, Australia today.



And then, of course, there’s the glacier itself. It sits on a high bench about midway in elevation between that overlook I was at yesterday and the top of the Grinnell Glacier trail. Annoyingly inaccessible, but that’s okay – glaciers are not to be messed around with anyways, as they tend to contain yawning crevasses under thin skins of ice that may appear to be solid at first glance (that’s one thing that Hollywood actually gets right). The runoff from the melting of the upper glacier collects in a depression that used to house the lower portion of the glacier prior to climate warming. Now, it forms a lovely milky blue lake full of ice floes.







Remember how yesterday I thought it looked so nice and cool and refreshing to dabble ones feet in that lake? Yeah… it’s not. It is frigidly cold. Guess the ice floes floating around should have been my first clue, huh? I put my boots back on pretty quickly.

While it had been a bit hazy on the way out to the glacier, I stayed long enough for the weather to turn, bringing in little fluffy clouds and a clear deep blue sky. I really need to find a few more synonyms for the word beautiful. But I guess I can just show you a picture instead and let you draw your own conclusions.



I headed back down the trail late in the afternoon by design – that’s the best time to see wildlife, after all! I encountered a super friendly deer who wouldn’t get out of the trail (she was eating huckleberries, so I had some too), a momma grouse that repeatedly went, “MUH!” until her chick appeared on the other side of the trail, flapping and hopping, and a female moose grazing on the side of the road. I even saw a grizzly bear, though he was a good half mile away in the meadows up the mountain!
 
Okay, this is not an animal, this is just some cool flowers.

Hello, Ms. Deer.




All in all, a perfect day, but for one hitch: that dang knee of mine. I have declared it officially “mostly busted”, sacrificed to the Highline Trail. I am now very good at going up, and walking on level ground, but terrible at going down. For whatever reason, going down a rocky slope in a straight line makes it start hollering, but if I go down stepping sideways like a toddler going down stairs, it’s just fine. Don’t know what that means, but I guess I just go downwards sideways now. Could be worse. But definitely could be better, as being in the Rockies by definition means that you do a lot of going up and down. Bummer!


I retired to my hotel in St. Mary for the night with the hope that it would improve by the next morning – because the next item on the agenda is a foray into Canada! Can’t wait. Until then… Kelly signing out.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Taking the Highline

7/19/2017

Hello! Today I’ve got a special feature for the blog that I’m more than a little bit proud of: a video! More specifically, a video of me driving up Glacier’s most spectacular road, Going-to-the-Sun!

My plan for the day was to hike the Highline Trail, one of Glacier’s most popular hikes. It starts at the crest of Going-to-the-Sun at Logan Pass, and only heads further upwards from there. The trail skirts the mountains and culminates at a pass overlooking the Many Glaciers area – if you can make it.

But first, the video! I had the idea to take it as I was leaving St. Mary, and hastily jury-rigged a setup to hold the camera on the dash using my speaker, auxiliary cord, and bandana to position it. I know, I know, this would be better with a GoPro mounted on the windshield, but hey, I used what I had. Anyways, there’s no music (since I needed my aux cord to hold the camera), but it still does a pretty decent job of showing some of the extraordinary vistas that greet you around every corner of this extraordinary road. So here it is!



I reached Logan Pass with my heart full of the beauty of this place. The haze had been mostly swept away with the arrival of a cool, fresh breeze, and the newly unveiled mountains called. I made my way up the Highline Trail on a truly perfect day. Wildflowers were in full bloom, carpeting the flanks of the mountains with splashes of purple and red and gold. My favorite was the beargrass, tall white flowery stalks that thrust up through the meadow grasses to sway in the breeze.
















Plenty of wildlife was out and about, enjoying the nice day. I mostly saw ground squirrels, chipmunks, and marmots.
 
This guy looks particularly offended.



One marmot cheekily jaunted down the path, circumventing hikers as they exclaimed with delight. He stopped and licked my boot. I hope it tasted nice.




But the wildlife and flowers were not the most spectacular aspect of this particular trail. No, that distinction was – is – reserved for the geology. It is seriously impressive. In Glacier National Park, the mountains are composed of a really odd assemblage of rocks that are odd mostly because of their progression. More basal rocks are Cretaceous in age (roughly 70-100 million years old), and sitting on top of them are Precambrian rocks (roughly 1.6 billion to 800 million years old). Now, how the heck did the older rocks get to be on top of the younger rocks? Faulting and tectonic processes during mountain building! Essentially, a giant sheet of these Precambrian rocks was thrust up and over the younger rocks during the building of the Rockies. The Precambrian rocks are harder and more difficult to weather than the younger rocks, which produced the tall cliffy mountains and gently rounded valleys we see today over time due to erosion.

If you look closely, you can still find clues to the original setting of these rocks before they were lithified. Ripples, just the same as you would see in shallow quiet waters of a bay today, are visible on the top surfaces of some rocks. Or you might see mud cracks – the remains of a body of water that dried up, just as you’d see in a dried up mud puddle.  The clues reveal that the rocks found here today at the top of the Rockies were once deposited in a shallow ocean environment, millions of years ago. Fascinating!
 
Check out those awesome ripples!

A bunch of fossilized mudcracks.

Crossbedding generated by currents and waves in a swash zone.


I admit that I tripped and almost went sprawling more than once, as I was so busy looking at everything that it was hard to keep an eye out for the trail! Not a bad problem to have, I guess. I finally reached the turn-off for the Glacier Overlook Trail, a little side trail that takes you to a notch in the top of the mountain to overlook Grinnell Glacier.

Unfortunately, this “little side trail” is not even a little bit “little”. It’s short, sure, clocking in at just over a half mile in length. But it makes up for the distance with elevation gain. This little, rocky path gains almost 1000 feet in elevation! And my god, is it BRUTAL. I tackled it before lunch – a huge mistake – and found myself wondering if this would be the first trail to ever break me. The grade is just incredibly steep.
 
Ok, it doesn't look that steep, but that's because I took this picture where it started leveling out...



Well, it didn’t break me, though it nearly did, and I reached the top all in one piece to be rewarded with a spectacular top-down view of the much-visited Grinnell Glacier! Totally worth it. I ate my lunch there at the top of the world, looking down on the glacier and the giant ice floes and all of the meltwater and the tiny specks that were hikers below. Awe-inspiring doesn’t even begin to cover it.





Less awe-inspiring was the realization that now I would have to hike the whole way down the mountain. The Highline Trail can be merged with the Loop trail for a change of scenery, provided that you’re willing to go further down the mountain to meet up with the shuttle to take you back up to Logan Pass. A little less than five miles of hiking down a ~3000 foot elevation drop gets you to the base of the trail. Let me tell you, that elevation drop is no joke on the knees, especially when you’re coming down from that overlook. I guess I must be getting old or something, because my lead knee started hollering about halfway down the Loop Trail. Mostly I ignored it, which turned out to maybe be a mistake later.

The Loop Trail hikes you through a heavily vegetated area that feels a lot wilder, for lack of a better word. Skeletal trees, long-dead from some fire, are festooned with vines and bushes that strive to erase their memory. Flowers sprout everywhere, weaving together haphazardly, seemingly less interested in stretching towards the sun than in creating as much visual chaos as possible. In places the trail narrows to a single track and the flowers press close, bathing you in perfume and almost succeeding in erasing from your mind the singular thought that probably will preoccupy you the whole way down: “This would be a great place for a bear to jump out and take a swipe at me.”




I jingle-jangled my way down the path, making as much noise as possible (much to my own irritation) and made it out to the bottom with no close bear encounters. In the distance, the glaciers of another mountain glistened wetly, sweating just as I was. The Highline Trail proved one of the greats – a little strenuous in spots, but overall an incredible hike. I'd highly recommend it to anyone visiting Glacier. 



Thoroughly exhausted and feeling great about it, I headed back down towards St. Mary with Jane. I'm the kind of person who likes being tired, you see. Being tired tells me that I've lived the most that I could in my day. Today, I sure did a lot of living. And I can't wait for more!

Til then, Kelly signing out.