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 Day 7 Many Glacier Campground, Glacier NP
After breakfast, Lorie and I catch the trailhead at Swiftcurrent and
hike up the creek to Red Rock Falls. Along the way we see several white
mountain goats high on the slopes and ledges of the surrounding
mountainsides, dining on lichen and merrily skipping from one deadly
precipice to another.
During
the last ice age, huge three-thousand-foot-thick glaciers
scoured away the mountains here to create the deep valleys we see
today, and when they and their meltwaters got done, there was virtually
no topsoil. The place was just a barren and rocky landscape. The lush
pine and aspen forests, meadows covered with grasses and wildflowers,
elk and cougar and raven we see today are all possible thanks only to
the tiniest of creatures: lichens.
Mysterious, symbiotic organisms, neither fungus
nor bacteria nor plant nor algae, yet often comprised of as many as
three of these, lichens are able to survive and thrive in the most
barren and hostile environments, from moist and dark river valleys to
high alpine slopes exposed to the most brutal of icy winds and blazing
sun. Where they
cling to rock faces, lichens excrete an acid which slowly deteriorates
the underlying stone, making it susceptible to wind and water erosion.
This eroded material, combined with a bit of scarce organic matter,
comprises all the soil seen today in Glacier, and which lies only 12
inches thick throughout the park.
Considering that lichens grow only a millimeter
each year, or a square inch per century, they have been steadily
working for thousands of years to create the rich and diverse habitat
we see here today. |
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On the hike back we make a short
side trip to a nearby lake where several people have reportedly seen a
moose. Lorie spots the moose and leads me a half-mile down the
lakeshore for a closer look, but all I
can see is a dark bush. "Well, he was
there," Lorie insists. I tromp back to the trail, mumbling something
about a "wild moose chase …"
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A
little ways off the trail we spot what looks like a tiny log cabin
built by trolls, but what we later learn is in fact a wolverine trap.
Why so sturdy and overbuilt? Because the wolverine is one mean SOB, and
doesn't take too kindly to being told he cannot come and go as he
pleases.
Imagine your nephew's ferret, but grown to a
foot-and-a-half tall at the shoulder and nearly four feet long, and
with a very poor attitude. Equipped with a mouthful of sharp teeth, and
five claws on each of his broad feet, the wolverine eats the Tasmanian
Devil for lunch. Capable
of bringing down a deer or caribou, he has been observed driving a
cougar from its kill, and even a pack of wolves will often slink away
from a carcass when confronted by the wolverine. His Latin name, Gulo gulo, is the root origin for
our words, glutton and gullet;
suffice it to say that he likes to eat, and eats what he likes. |
When
Captain Meriwether Lewis encountered his first wolverine, near
modern-day Great Falls, he called it a "tyger cat". The Native
Americans called him Devil Bear, Master of the Forest, or the
Trickster, and regarded him as the magical link between the natural and
the spirit worlds.
Glacier may be a final stronghold for the
wolverine, considered one of North America's rarest mammals, and one of
the carnivores about which we know the least. Tough as he is, some
believe
the wolverine may be endangered due to shrinking nesting habitat, so
the Park Service is conducting preliminary studies
using radio-tracking, hence the traps.
I dunno, clambering into a wooden box to slip a
radio collar around the neck of an enraged "tyger cat"? Sounds like a
job for an undergrad. |
Similar claw marks and frantic gnawings may sometimes be
seen on the interior front door posts in many of the park lodges, left
by guests who failed to observe the end-of-season checkout times.
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