Saturday Hike

Our hike yesterday was very nice. We hiked on Mill Creek and hiked up to the water fall. It was a rather warm area to hike because it was the area that burned in 2000. If you remember when Montana was ablaze with fires at the time - well this is the area that was burning. It is recovering rather well now. There are lots of new trees and a large variety of plants as well. The first picture was taken while I was standing on a rock in the middle of the river. You can see that there is a lot of open space, but it is slowly gaining more and more trees.Laura spotted some moose tracks on our way into the falls, but as like last time we didn't have any encounter. Maybe the fact that there were five of us hiking along and talking gave away our stealth approach..? When we got to the falls we found a geocache and then sat next to the falls to eat some lunch or have a snack before hiking back out. Laura put her feet in the water, but didn't last long - the water is all snow melt right now so it is VERY cold. The falls were neat to see as well. The spring melt makes them very dangerous so it was a little tricky while stepping around and being sure not to fall in. I ventured out away from the falls and took a picture of them just as Laura was coming to look for me - she thought I had fallen into the falls because she couldn't find me. Opps. You can barely see Laura on the right side of the picture at the top of the falls.
The last picture I just took quickly as we were starting our way back to the trailhead. You can see the cliffs in the background but it is hard to see them as they really were. This area was carved out by glaciers which carves out valleys like this in the shape of a U - the sides are usually straight up and down - and there were areas that were well over 1,000 feet straight up. It was really neat to see the cliffs like that.Overall we had a nice hike, even thought it wasn't exactly our idea of a hike. We were able to find two more geocaches and we have hiked another trail around the Missoula area. Until again

-=Nolan=-