Mountain Whimsy

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.” — Robert M. Pirsig The Beartooth Highway is a real  Montana gem.  It is a crazy mountain road running 68 miles from Red Lodge, over Beartooth Pass (10,947′), to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park at Silvergate.  The Highway opened in 1936 after years of financial wrangling […]

Is it just me, or is the weather getting a little bit wacky?  Here is yesterday’s NOAA weather map from the Great Falls office.  An impressive patchwork quilt of colors representing just about every nasty bit of weather that spring time can throw out us.  What you don’t see is that every area actually has multiple warnings.  Only the most severe […]

You may be asking yourself, “Self, why does ‘Mountain Whimsy – Musings from Montana’ have a section about surfboards?”  Good question.  And one I ask myself from time to time.  It my be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of thing.  An alter ego or bi-polar personality.  I live in the mountains and call them home.  I spend my free time […]

Maybe not what you are thinking.  Today I went to Beartrap Canyon on the lower Madison River to see if I could hit the annual caddis fly hatch.  The caddis fly hatch is an annual right of spring for anglers in the area.  Known as the “Mother’s Day Caddis Hatch” on the Yellowstone River due to its tendency to hit […]

Every now and then my work allows me to create something both useful and beautiful.  A recent project in the Flathead River in northwest Montana was just one of those moments.  Our project team was performing a Channel Migration Zone (more information on CMZs at www.channelmigrationzone.com) study for the Flathead River from the Old Steel Bridge on the east side of Kalispell, […]