Today, I took the Highline Trail to Granite Park Chalet. Along the trail, ran across a couple of bighorn sheep doing that head bumping thing they do to get the girl sheep. And to think us human males just tell them what a good job we have or car we drive - pretty lame.
Ran across this ptarmigan along the trail - I believe he tastes (and looks) like chicken.
The hike was pretty uneventful until we got close to the chalet at which point, there was a group of four people stopped on the trail, which usually means something good.
They had been walking on the trail and practically walked into three grizzlies - a momma bear and two cubs. The cubs were pretty big, so they had to be second year cubs, which probably explains why the momma bear did not feel too compelled to eat the four humans that walked in on their dining.
Since they were pretty much occupying the trail (left), the four wisely decided to wait for backup and take pictures instead. Myself and two others joined them for a dinner party of seven. We made sure of the essentials - four cans of bear pepper spray and at least one person with a bad leg in case we had to run for it.
The two cubs demonstrated quite a bit of inappropriate behavior, probably just showing off for the tourists. You might have thought we were in Arkansas, but no, we were in Montana. Hope I didn't offend anyone from Arkansas, but then again if you were, you probably couldn't read anyway - ooops, there's another one. Forgot Bill Clinton was from Arkansas - was Monica his sister? Oops, that's three digs, sorry.
This was about as close as the momma got. By now, they had worked their way down the hill from the path a bit and someone in our group made the suggestion that now might be a good time to go past them in a group.
So, we set out with of course the bum legged guy in the front and me behind him, ready to trip him if there was a problem. I was also thinking about what a great picture it would be walking by and started to reach for my camera, at which time one of the people at the back of the line suggested that we pick up the pace a little bit - at that point, we were probably only thirty feet away and I guess the tail end of the line felt just a little bit exposed.
The picture to the right is of the chalet. You can hike up there and spend the night as they have bunks. If you buy a coke there, don't be fooled by the refrigerator that they are in. Since they have no electricity, it is used only for storage.It was about here that some creepy ranger wannabe came down and chewed us out for not making noise and making the bears get off the trail. We told him we were too busy taking pictures and making jokes, but he left unimpressed and chased them away.
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