tip your housekeeper

it is my observation that guests who tip are also those who leave their rooms the cleanest. guests in the stained, the hairy, the beer-soaked rooms leave nothing for your trouble, no solace for your discomfort. sometimes, kneeling in front of those particularly gnarly toilets, I wonder, “What brought me here, to this crusty toilet bowl? I have a goddamn degree.”

but I am here because I love the mountains, and I love the people who choose to live in them. and because cleaning rooms is honest work. and right now it feels good to be doing this kind of work.

my fellow housekeepers are teachers and engineers and linguists in their home countries. they came to montana to work on their English and have learned such important words as washcloth, bath mat, disinfectant, ice bucket liner, maid service requested…

please friends, throw them a dollar.

the mountain that conquered me

on monday marc and i attempted to summit Mt. Gould, which is a badass peak at the back of our valley. we climbed it from the back side, cutting up off the highline trail, where the mountain looks a little tamer. it's a gnarly mountain though, and we kept getting cliffed-out...until we gave up.

we did achieve some sort of vista (from Gem Glaicer on the Garden Wall), and i ate my lunch on a cliff at the top of the world.

on the way down i tossed my pack down a cliff to make my descent easier. it landed wrong, rolled of the lower cliff, and rolled down the mountain. marc and i found it alright, but my camera did not survive the plummet, which is why i have no photos of yesterday's climb to Snowmoon Lake/Falling Leaf Lake.

new on my to-do list: buy new camera. and try Mt. Gould again.

when swiftcurrent gets bored

1) i made some mean sangria with fruit smuggled out from the restaurant. 2) canoeing or swimming or fishing in swiftcurrent lake every day of the week keeps us cool and clean and happy. 3) bluegrass band/costume party at the local watering hole. 4) Brian is a whore and i am a LiteBrite. 5) this is Rosemary. i found her in a motel room, added some embellishments, and now she circulates around camp.

shangri-la

this weekend i finally hiked over Shangri-La, the far superior bushwacking way to get to Iceberg Lake. my friends and i climbed a runoff up the shoulder of Mt. Wilbur, to alpine meadows and Shangri-la Lake (and also a massive grizzly bear). after one more section of uphill, there is a goattrail across the scree field over Iceberg Lake and the most beautiful view of the Ptarmigan wall imaginable. skied down the scree field, slid down a snowfield on my ass, drank some whiskey, jumped in the lake, hiked home on the trail. i love having a backyard full of trailheads.

cracker lake

the hike to Cracker Lake is mostly awful, but the payoff is out of this world. i will never swim in bluer water. i wish i could live on these shores.

fish story

very glad i brought a fishing pole this summer. my czech friend Ondrej and i have been trout fishing in Swiftcurrent Lake. i have yet to catch a fish, but the scenery doesn't suck.