The wildflowers had been popping and the birds had been singing as we labored our approach up the fixed cascades of Rose Creek as much as the beautiful, and nonetheless partially iced up Otokomi Lake in Glacier Nationwide Park.
As soon as once more we hit the path to do some citizen science work. Our mission was to do a Mountain Goat survey and have a look at a Golden Eagle nest on our solution to the lake. It was a cooler morning with {a partially} overcast sky and ideal for mountaineering. From Rising Solar, we hopped on the path alongside effervescent Rose Creek and ascended into the drainage.
Birds had been singing throughout from vireos to warblers, to flycatchers to buntings. Beargrass, lupine, and Indian paintbrush had been splashing shade and delicate magnificence amongst the outdated burn. The additional benefit of the burn was the good views of St. Mary Lake and the encircling peaks after a slight elevation achieve.
We labored up the bench with Rose Creek chattering under and heard an sudden Pika name from a rock pile simply out of web site. After spending a while away from the creek, we finally got here again up alongside it, coinciding with the return of the denser forest and with it, chattery Pacific Wrens livening up the understory.
I neglect what number of cascades there are with this creek and am completely satisfied for it because it looks like I’m discovering one thing magical anew. As we ascended cascade after cascade, we handed path crew and thanked them for his or her efforts which make our journey a lot simpler and faster.
Simply past them we arrange our recognizing scope and start the survey protocol for observing Mountain Goats and Bighorn Sheep. By means of the survey, we don’t spy any of our targets, however a few Golden Eagles are seen which will get us excited for additional up the drainage. After the timer went off, nonetheless, we packed up our gear and continued up the path.
It didn’t take lengthy from there to enter into the larger bowl the place the views trying up the drainage towards the lake and out towards St. Mary Lake the place we got here. The shorter shrubs and subalpine fir gave solution to the rocky slope that we traversed, passing over a few small snowfields on our solution to set as much as search for eagles.
A technical error on my half triggered us to not have the required data on the nest we had been in search of making our nest monitoring all however unattainable. Whereas in search of eagles, nonetheless, we spied one solitary Mountain Goat and, what turned out to be, two ewes, every with a child of their very own. We might at the least put them down as “exterior the survey”, however seeing the goats made us completely satisfied.
After a few hours of fruitless eagle-sky-scanning, we spied a method on the foot of the drainage, then one other one, however they could possibly be the pair presumably nesting nearer to the lake. Such is the lifetime of a wanna-be scientist.
As soon as once more, we packed up and labored our approach as much as the lake, passing the beautiful track of a Brewer’s Sparrow, then following up the creek to Otokomi Lake’s outlet. Scanning the water, we spied a handful of fish that all the time appear to be proper alongside the creek. On the lake (with it’s abysmal shoreline entry that requires a little bit of a bushwhack), we had been working out of time, so we simply form of leaned out over the lake a bit to admire the sweetness after which flip round.
Whereas trying on the lake, we heard an Osprey calling overhead and it promptly flew over the lake, spied a fish, then dove into the water. It emerged with a trout and flew proper over us which was tremendous enjoyable to see. Taking a look at our watches, we realized it was time to hustle again down, so we rotated and headed again to our vehicles.
