The Many Glacier section in Glacier National Park is a great place to visit for beautiful hikes and plenty of bear viewing. We saw several bears while were there even though many trails were closed due to "heavy bear activity". You should also check out Piegan Pass Trail while you are there.

Just got back from the Himalaya.  I apologize greatly for my being MIA on the blog.  Onward and upward....really upward.

It has been a great year, climbing and raging up and down Mount Rainier and then crushing Mount Mckinley or as you may know it Denali.  Yeah, we got it in 13 days, what a great weather window and climb that was.  

Get on with it, I just got back from Kathmandu where we jumped off to Tibet and climbed Cho Oyu.

Called the Turquoise Goddess, she really is, and it is no less of an 8000 meter peak than you may think.  To be fair to my friends and clients who climbed, it is every bit of 8201 meters.

 It took us the better half of 50 days to get up and down, and after it was over, we appreciated every step we took.

 A couple hints for along the way.   Drink Coffee in the morning (Hazelnut was my choice)........

Oh yeah, don't forget to breathe as you go through the Yellow Band above 26,000 feet and keep the Oxygen mask open and don't let it freeze.

 Happy to be home.  All the fingers and toes intact!

The next big trip, off to Antarctica and Vinson Massif.

So, this Labor Day, we decided to go looking for some Rocky Mountain Elk. The alarm went off at 4:30 in our patched up backpacking tent and I think my words to Jeremy when he told me that my watch was going off were ‘What ….. what?’ To which he replied, ‘Remember that whole thing about getting up early to see some elk? Well, it’s early.’

That’s right, ELK, here in Arkansas. We camped overnight at Lost Valley (after tooling around the Upper Buffalo yesterday afternoon) and awoke early with high hopes of seeing some of the local elk. These elk are descendants of elk brought in in the 1980’s from Colorado and Nebraska as part of an effort to bring elk back to the area. So far, the elk have done very well and the area is becoming known for the elk, with some 15,000 coming every year to see the beautiful animals. Of course, I wanted to see some myself.

The first attempt was Boxley Valley just across from the Lost Valley area. To avoid the entire embarrasing story, we thought we were about to see some elk as the sun started to rise and (thanks to the heavy, heavy fog) it ended up being just cows. Disappointed but not ready to give up yet, we drove down to Steel Creek to see if any were grazing those pastures. Not a one, though we did see two very skiddish whitetail down there. Our last attempt was just to drive north through the Boxley Valley region keeping a close eye on the pastures. We were finally rewarded and managed to pull over next to some farmland and get to watch a small herd of the elk graze and jump quite effortlessly from pasture to pasture. While they were concerned about our presence and slowly moved away out of sight, we were able to see them for a bit and take some photos to ‘preserve the moment in pictures’. We then continued up the valley and took some pictures of Boxley Baptist Church and then got to see another small herd of elk just across from the BRT Trailhead at Boxley.

While we were out, we managed some other shots as well, inlcluding some fun night shots taken while driving down the road. I think I’m going to have to title those ‘Impaired Driving’. We enjoyed the elk enough that we just may have to schedule to come back during the rut in October and again in the winter, which is supposed to be the best time to see them. You can see some of our best photos from the weekend in the album link above.

While hiking in Dinosaur National Monument Emily and I came across several petroglyphs in the area. One of the lizard markings even measures up to 9 foot long. I highly recommend a visit.