Spiky Menace

Short Version:
Hot sauce, scared of the spikes, lost, a new stowaway, BEARS! (including a grizzly grizzly), a hike, some spikes, safe rubber

Long Version:
We were out of water, and fuel for the stove, so we went to town. We stopped for internetting, and were unable to resist the lure of dark beer and burritos, and the huge variety of hot sauces available to sample. Anal Agony was quite warm, as was the Texas Tail Torcher, but the Smokin Hot Chipotle was the most delicious.

Full to the brim, and pleasantly chillied, we set off south, towards the Bugaboo Septet campground, but changed course when we read the warning about the nocturnal activities of the porcupines in the Bugaboo area: they eat car parts. Visitors to the region are advised to wrap their vehicles in chicken wire overnight, lest they wake to find themselves immobilised for want of tyres, fan-belts, and brake hoses. Naughty porcupines!

We headed towards Cleland Lake instead, except for the bit where we headed away from Cleland Lake because we thought we'd gone the wrong way at the last intersection. We got there in the end, and ate delicious foods and read books, and looked at the pretty view. We went to bed early, where we slept appallingly; kept sleepless first by the sound of the rain smacking onto the roof of the Reaper, and then by the stowaway critter exploring our food storage containers, and us.

We were both tetchy in the morning, so decided to go to the Bugaboo area for a day's hiking up the Cobalt Lake Trail. On the road in we saw our first bear since Dunster, which was kind of nice - we'd been missing the furry wee beasties since our sixteen-day bear-spotting stretch was broken when we headed up the hill into the Rockies. Parked the van roadside at the trailhead, secured it (not much fun with that much mud under the sill), and then read the big sign that said:

NOTICE
Bear Warning
A problem Grizzly bear has been interfering with hikers on the Cobalt Lake Trail
Travel in this area is NOT RECOMMENDED

Oh. OK then.

So we unsecured the van and looped around the lodge towards the Silver Basin Trail instead. Found a parking spot, in an area where folks had camped in the past, and set off up the dirt road. Crossed the river, passed a cool-looking log cabin, and got picked up by a guy in a utility ATV. He was on his way to check on the progress of the pre-season brush-clearing crews whose chainsaws we'd been hearing; they were clearing the ski runs down which the lodge's patrons blast after being dropped at the top of the hill by a helicopter.

The hike from the trailhead to the basin and then up onto the Sextet Ridge between Mt Howser and Frenchman Mountain took a couple of hours, the views at the top were pretty awesome, and we doubled our week's bear-spotting tally on the way up with another shiny-coated healthy-looking beast. We smelled more of them than we saw, though, and whether that's because our tactic of singing and talking loudly whenever we got a whiff was working; or because we were smelling them from afar; or because we were wrongly identifying some plant as a bear, we'll probably never know. Misplaced the trail a few times on the way back down, but not seriously, and were almost to the trailhead when Nene spotted a porcupine, in all it's spiny glory. Crazy-looking critter. We were pleased and excited, until the ramifications of its pre-dusk out-and-aboutness hit us: Porcupine + unprotected Reaper = feast = stuck + expensive.

Argh! Quick! To the Reaper!

Except there was nothing quick about the rest of the hike: turns out the bloke with the ATV had actually saved us more than an hour of dirt road slog when he picked us up, based on how long it took us to get down. We were quite pleased to see the van, sitting unmolested where we'd left it, and we made it our first order of business to scamper down the road to the lodge gates, to the chicken wire repository our chauffeur had offered us the use of if we wanted to stay in the area. He'd told us the bear warning was an old one, and offered us the loan of some bear spray if we wanted to head up there with insurance. He'd also recommended a different hike, up to the alpine hut at the base of the impressive-looking craggy Spires, as worth doing, so we wrapped the van, parked the bikes on the roof, and settled in for the night, all rubbery possessions safe from spiky evil-doers.