Norway Connections: Natahki Lake in Many Glacier

On Friday after school, Warren and I drove over to the east side of the Park where we met Lynn and Bob. They had been camping the past week, and we just joined them in their campsite and spent the night. The next day, Warren's friend Dell from Cut Bank drove over to join him on a climb up Mount Wilbur. If you look in the archived blog entry Waterfall Week, you'll see another photo of Wilbur when Dell and his wife Gail joined us on a hike to Shangri-La. John Reynolds was along too; he is the son of some other Cut Bank friends and former student when we taught there.

Warren, Dell and John on the summit of Mt. Wilbur

they had climbed up this crack in the cliff, but rappelled back down it.

Looking back at Mt. Wilbur at the end of the day.

Lynn and I decided to try to hike to Natahki Lake, another off-trail day above Apikuni Falls (see Waterfall Hike #3). Like Piegan, this involved some route-finding and working our way up through some cliffy areas. In the photo below we started on the green area on the right side of the picture, and ended up above the darker green stuff on the left side of the picture.

Once we got up into the high bowl below several high peaks, we could see Natahki Lake way below us, once again more than we wanted to do for a day. So we enjoyed our lunch up on a ridge above, enjoyed the view and soaked up the sunshine.

Natahki Lake; there is a smoky haze in the air from distant forest-fires.

The flowers are done and autumn is definitely approaching. We saw evidence of bears, but didn't actually sight any. Warren and Dell saw 3 grizzlies who were munching on huckleberries on their descent down Wilbur, but were able to stay away from them. My "flower shots" consisted mostly of all the berries that are around, but they were plentiful and almost as lovely. Another beautiful day in the mountains!