Cabin Creek

Here in the photo it is late July and the lupines of spring are riding the crest. The Endless Spring is the analog for the botanist to the Endless Summer of the surfer.



Below this vantage point is the valley spreading out below Quake Lake (MT) which provides some perspective on the effectiveness of this choke point for stopping up the Madison River. A little lower and the effect would have been minor.




Turning upstream is Quake Lake with the visitor center and on the large boulder deposited by the quake is a plaque to those who perished in the night in 1959 unable to escape to safer ground.

Nearby, we camped at Cabin Creek with fewer than a dozen sites. People came and went daily while we stayed on hiking and exploring. The trail up the creek was most pleasant and I "invented" several new tunes to keep the grizzlies entertained and apprised of our location. We later learned from friends that Cabin Creek was, in their experience, a certain site to observe those of the large furry persuasion.



Here we learned of the bark beetles decimating the woods. Our guide found live ones for our observation and produced hormone patches the Forest is placing on the trees they want kept safe. I later noted there were several patches in trees in our campground. Our guide was impressed with the $50K being spent to protect a small number of high priority trees. I wonder how much is lost by not protecting more. Grizzlies will likely go to burrow less full this fall due to the beetle destroying the white pines they depend on for pine nuts gathered kindly by the squirrels. The broken web may be more powerful than those we weave.

Our neighbor camping for the weekend from Ennis, MT claims the rivers here are appallingly short on fish. He was here when it all was fairly teeming (isn't that how the phrase always goes?) and will never see such largess again. That same day, the Forest staff estimated there are 3,000 pounds of trout per mile in the Madison. They seemed impressed with the magnitude of fish flesh. Hard to know what it compared with 17 years ago when Ennis-man emerged on the river bank.

The recommended diner across the hiway was nearly our undoing. We made to turn in there when I spotted in the rearview mirror a truck and trailer bearing down on us with no place but ours to sweep through. I gave up on waiting my turn for a traffic break and sped up the road out of his wake as quickly as the turbo would take us. We escaped a crash and went back to find the cafe under seige from the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality. I suspect they didn't approve their water and the business was closed until further notice. Maybe we dodged a nasty bullet there too?