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blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

28 July 2006 - 00:10

a midday flight

Phone rang right at six-thirty.

Knew who it was, of course. The pilot.

He said it didn't even ring on his end before I picked up. But our flight needed to be postponed. Couple kids didn't get back to camp last night, and search-and-rescue needed him to fly.

Well, yeah, duh. Elk can wait.

We finally got up a little after 11 o'clock. It was hot. (The lost kids? They broke their 4-wheeler and spent the night with it. Walked into the search & rescue command post on their own around 8 o'clock.)

When the windsock looks limp like this

you tend to expect a smooth flight.

Today you'd'a been wrong.

We passed almost directly over the town's water supply.

Yum.

Was surprised when we approached the first five radio-collared elk along the Continental Divide. There was still a trace of snow along the Divide.

And here it's almost August. And speaking of the Continental Divide, here's another obvious piece of it. That flat-topped mesa wandering around out there is it.

Now, just exactly where on that flat-topped mesa is the actual Divide may not be so obvious.

As we headed towards elk 6, 7 and 8 of the morning, we passed over the county's newest reservoir. Which yielded a state record fish last weekend.

Pretty good since they were stocked less than two years ago. And the water itself hasn't been there much longer than that.

As we flew over the forest, we saw the usual, expanding bugkill.

Pilot figures we won't have a green tree left in four years.

He's wrong, of course, but yeah, unless we get some bitter cold winters, most of them are going to be dead and grey. What worried me more, though, was all the leafless aspen.

They're not affected by the same beetle-carried fungus, so I'm not sure what is going on with the aspen. It just looks like a bunch of them simply didn't leaf out this year.

Drought? I don't know. Aspen in mountains to the north got hit with a branch-killing blight years back, but they leafed out first and then turned brown before the tops all died. Really not sure what is happening here, but I'm worried for Aspen Alley.

We really shouldn't be able to see the road through the trees that well.

Had to head into the neighboring state for elk 9. And we finally got the right angle to see why folks down there call this Saddle Mountain.

This...

is what our interstate elk calls home in the summer. Lots of cool aspen, green hills and valleys with ponds scattered throughout.

Good place to raise a calf, I guess. A lot like the habitats her compadres choose in our state, but hers looks to have stayed greener than ours.

Pretty sure this park...

just a handful of miles away is where the Rainbow Family had their gathering of 15,000 campers earlier this month. Doesn't look like they set it on fire like they did in our state ten or twelve years ago.

It is curious to note the forest in their state (it's the same national forest) appears to have been logged just as heavily as ours, but there they use natural shaped cuts and contours.

Instead of the big square-cornered box cuts we get on our side of the line. You have to look really close in some places to even notice they'd logged. (And yeah, like ours, their young trees in the cut areas appear so far to be avoiding the bugkill.)

We found elk 10 up along the Divide again, and then slipped home on the eastern (Atlantic) side. Where the importance of water becomes abundantly clear.

Some are haying already, producing a fascinating landscape of patterns below.

But soon we're back out into the desert, where half the irrigated fields are brown this year, and the only true green is along the river.

Twenty-five miles out, another pilot gets on the radio, calling for anyone near our town.

Seems they've picked up an ELT signal.

From town, as they passed over.

It's interesting to note neither pilot is concerned over the signals from an Emergency Locater Transmitter. At least, not when it's in town. Both presume someone hit the ground on a landing just a little too hard, and set their beacon off.

Presumably, a real crash in town would be noticed...

As we continue on to town, pilot mentions the mechanic was affixing a new ELT antenna on one of his planes today.

Coincidence, we wonder?

Soon, we're back to town.

Yes, they actually got the golf greens to green up somewhat after poisoning them with alkaline water this spring. And yes, those are three tepees lined up out there again.

Nobody staying in 'em, though. Now that would be cool.

As we land, I hear a pilot announce he is taxiing to the runway. In an experimental plane (standard procedure calls for each pilot to announce his plane type).

Which the pilot points out is another likely candidate for the stray ELT signals.

And 1.2 hours after we started, we are done.

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