Mushrooms along the Mt Headley trail

These were photographed on September 10th along the Mt Headley trail in the Cube Iron/Silcox Roadless Area at elevations between 6000 and 7000 feet. It had rained heavily several days before.

Yeah, I know, a couple don’t look very appetizing!

Rain and rivers

Autumn rain and rivers go well together;

so do rain jackets and wide-brimmed hats and waterproof boots…

and taking wet pictures under an umbrella sky.

Mountain Goat

While seeing mountain goats is a fairly typical part of a visit to Glacier National park, sightings of wild goats in their natural wild habitat outside of the park are not that common at all and so I was pleased to catch a far distant look at one while on a recent visit to Mt Headley in the Cabinet Mountains of western Montana.

While I was sitting at the site of the old fire lookout at the very top of the mountain enjoying the views and eating my lunch, a very tiny speck of white on another mountain about a mile and a half to the north caught my eye. The arrow in the first photo points to the exact spot. When I set my little P & S camera to maximum zoom, it caught some photos of a goat crossing the lower edge of a cliff on that mountain.

Big Hole ~ September 2013

The first snow of the season is now on the Mission Mountains.

Vermilion night

In the last rays of evening light,  far below at the base of a distant peak, elk began to bugle… soothed by the soft siren sounds of cool winds tumbling through the hemlocks… spellbound for hours by stars so bright and dense that a needle-wand of light could not fit between them, sleep came slowly to a soft bed of fir needles, on a high ridge, in a place called “Vermilion”.

Then morning came, gentle and easy, through a saddle to the east,

and within the hour, wolves sang.

Mount Headley ~ Cube Iron/Silcox roadless area

~ Just before noon today ~