September 10, 2017
With all the smoke the last few days, Lookout Dog hasn't had to do very much looking out ... but that seems to have been OK with him:
That finally started to change this weekend, though, when the winds picked up and a cold front made its way into northwestern Montana. The winds started picking up yesterday, the temperature dropped, and the relative humidity increased. By this morning, nearly all the smoke was gone, and the temp stayed in the 50s most of the day, with big banks of cumulous clouds moving across my valley to the east. Made it feel like fall.
The wind of course brought new worries for the area's firefighters, especially the folks down in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. A major fire advanced frighteningly close to one of their backcountry patrol cabins yesterday evening, forcing the guys stationed there to abandon the place, surrounded by gas-powered pumps and sprinklers, and hike down to the South Fork confluence for the night. Everyone was anxious this morning when they made the trek back, to see if the cabin survived ... but it did.
It's still cool and really blustery up here at Baptiste, but the weather's supposed to warm up again tomorrow. A larger cold front is supposedly heading this way late this week, though, and some folks are wondering if that one might actually signal the beginning of the end for the fire season.
We'll see. In the meantime, here are a couple of shots I took of my lookout this morning ... this first one is from the trail down to the outhouse:
And this shot is from the lookout helispot ... looks pretty autumn-like:
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Anyhow, I guess that's it for now. It's almost time for the afternoon radio check-in, and then I think Charlie and I might tackle the hike down to Silver Basin for water. It's a longer trek than before, since the little stream I'd been using for water finally dried up a few days ago, and I have to go to a larger one farther down. Autumn in the high country.
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