Last year, when new pay period schedules were posted, everyone looked for the 9 shift next to their name. This year, it is the 8 shift. The alpine rove and bristlecone hike. I love this park!
I had my first rove of the season today. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. One of the new seasonals shadowed me and we started our rove by hiking the lakes loop, first Stella, then Teresa.
We got to the grove, I gave my talk to five people, and then we walked the short loop trail through the grove. We had lunch up there, then walked partway up to the glacier. Coming down, we saw this log. Horrid thing to do, never, ever deface the resources in a national park! (badge and uniform off, I thought it was kind of cool)
Hooray for bristlecones! I changed the theme of my talk this year and describe the bristlecones by relating their life and living conditions to lesson that can apply to people. It was a little rough today, first time, but I think I can make it work. They truly are magnificent trees. I know I promised a post on them last summer and it never happened; I'll try and remedy that this summer.
We were both feeling good after lunch and decided to head up to the glacier. We got a good ways past the first interpretive sign, and then it got a bit snowy, we lost the trail, and decided scrambling over a lot of talus was probably not the best thing to be doing in uniform. We headed down and got ice cream at the cafe. Huckleberry for me, of course. (As much as I love this place, there are days I really miss Montana.)
Looking up at Wheeler Peak from almost near the base of the glacier. As we were scrambling over the big pieces of quartzite, we could hear water flowing underneath us. Spring runoff. A river/stream we knew was there only because we could hear it. It was pretty awesome.
