In the beginning of August, 2002, Steve Amira, Vic Lerish, and Kent Wiley, college friends I hadn't seen for years, came for a short visit. We stayed up too late, and laughed so hard we cried.

The first day the weather wasn't particularly good. We hiked the seven miles to North Fork Falls anyway. It was beautiful as usual, and the guys enjoyed the shear cliffs and the falls in general.

The cliffs surrounding the falls are impressive, especially when you're standing at the top... But the guys kept smiling even when inching close to the edge.

Vic was calm enough to get a good look over the edge. And then scramble down to the pool the upper falls dumps into, which then roars over a lip as the main falls.

The second day things cleared up, and we headed east over Roger's Pass to the Rocky Mountain Front. The view was spectacular, but I forgot to take any pictures. This was a liesurely trip, with lots of time for just soaking up the feel of the place.

We then drove north to Glacier National Park. We drove up to the end of Swiftcurrent Lake. Glacier was being grand, and in addition to outstanding scenery, we saw two grizzly bears from fairly close. We had a picnic lunch and then headed down to St. Mary Lake.

St. Mary Lake gave us ample opportunities to jump up and down and scramble around, taking pictures of mountains and water and wildflowers.

As we slowly wound our way up the pass, things only got better.

We stopped at the box canyon and enjoyed poking around. Talk about a narrow slot!

We arrived at the top of the pass shortly before sunset. Like I said, this was a liesurely trip. A bicycle passed us low down on St. Mary Lake, and we never did regain our prominent lead position. We took a short hike up towards Hidden Lake, then began our ambling descent. Along the way, we saw a mountain goat; my picture didn't come out too well, unless you like to look at little white dots.

McDonald Creek and the surrounding mountains were spectacular in the fading light.

On our third day we went up to Morrell fire lookout. It has a great view of the Mission Mountains, the Blackfoot Valley, and Seeley Lake and the Clearwater River Valley. We could see east clear to Triple Divide in the Scapegoat Wilderness, north to near Holland Lake, and east to the Bitterroots. Once again, I forgot to take any pictures.