Wow! Snow at the end of September has to be a good sign if you’re a snowmobiler. It started snowing about 5:00 a.m. today and has continued throughout the morning. We’ll see what happens this afternoon. I had heard earlier that El Nino was blowing in this year, which would normally be the harbinger of a “below average” snow year. But who knows when the first storm comes on the last day of Sept.
And it’s odd, in some ways. Yesterday was a beautiful native american summer day with temps in the low 70’s and severe clear blue skies. Everyone here said, “No, there’s now way it will snow tomorrow. It’s too warm.” But overnight the temperatures dropped into the 20’s and we’re headed for a high today only in the mid 30’s. My dad would tell you that even the brass monkeys are pulling out their long underwear.
Of course summer’s not over. There will be many beautiful days yet to come. But with the cold making its arrival so soon, there will start to be more and more cold days as well. What all this means to me is that fishing is going to be getting real good here in a couple of weeks. If you’re a fisherman, you don’t want to miss that. Of course, if you’re a snowmobiler, you’ll be praying for an early start to the season.
Whichever way you see it, this is a great time to be in Island Park. No crowds. No competition for the streams and trails. No overbearing heat. Just a quiet, pleasant, crisp and cool atmosphere in which to recharge your batteries. See you soon.
If you haven’t been in Harriman in the fall, you haven’t been to Harriman. The park is beautiful as the colors start to change and the elk start to bugle. It’s like stepping back in time about 3,000 years. The sounds are prehistoric.
As hunters take to the field, bears are near the top of their safety concerns — and for good reason. The number of grizzly bears has increased dramatically over the last 20 or so years, and bear encounters in the wild are occurring more and more frequently.
If you’ve always wanted to take a great bike ride in Yellowstone but were intimidated by the traffic, now is your chance to join a large group of cyclists riding from West to Old Faithful and back. There is no restrictions on what kind of bike you can use (except it can’t have a motor,) and you don’t have to be a certain age.
Yellowstone National Park had a banner year this year with over 2.3 million visitors. With the price of gas being down and people travelling closer to home, the park enjoyed a daily influx of roughly 26,000 people. If you propose an average of 3 people per vehicle, that’s about 8,600 cars per day (which didn’t have near the apparent impact on animals and the environment that 300 snowmobiles would.) Multiply that by $25 per car, and we’re talking over $200,000 per day in park entry fee revenues. That would be the reason they don’t dare limit the number of cars each day like they do snowmobiles.
With summer coming to a close and the fall chill in the air, an otherwise pretty bleak real estate season is drawing its last breaths as well. Sales were slow this summer as the economy put a damper on second homes, and people who really wanted to sell are faced with carrying their properties for another year.
The archery season elk hunt in Island Park is off to a fairly slow start this year. It’s been warm and the elk haven’t started bugling in earnest yet, making them difficult to find. There seems to have been more hunters this year than in years past, but that’s just my observation and not a scientific opinion. For the hunt to really take off, we’re going to need a three or four really hard freezes in a row to get things moving.
I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. The Ashton / Island Park ranger district is seeking public input on ATV and off-road-vehicle use in the Island Park area. I’m really torn on this one. I really like being free to go where I want on my four wheeler. I ride these trails virtually every day in the summer and I enjoy watching the wildlife and and wildflowers as I go.
You know, we always complain about bad service when someone doesn’t treat us right, but we don’t always talk about the good service we receive. So in the interest of keeping the playing field level, I want to report some examples of great service.
The fishing has slowed down quite a bit over the last few days. (Actually the fishing is as good as it ever was, but the catching hasn’t been that hot.) With daytime highs near 80 degrees for a couple of weeks now, and with thousands of people fishing over the holiday weekend, things aren’t what they were a few weeks ago.
If you love Island Park, and I know you do or you wouldn’t be reading this, consider volunteering for one of the many cleanup opportunities in the area. The Henry’s Fork Foundation just sponsored a cleanup of the stretch of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake that runs through Island Park and they did a tremendous work. Cleaning up both in and around the river made a better situation for everyone.
Hello. My name’s Allan and I’m an environmentalist. Wow! That was pretty easy. Now I’m out of the closet. As an environmentalist, I can honestly say I love this land. I’ve chosen to live here and I want to protect it. I want my children and grand children to enjoy things just like I have. But as a budding environmentalist I haven’t developed the full fervor of my eco-terrorist, plants and animals before people paradigm. But I do have a few good ideas of my own.
Island Park has been a winter playground for more years than snowmobiles have been around. It is a mecca for snowmobilers all around the country. In spite of the claims on the Utah license plates, Idaho has the best snowmobiling snow that ever fell on a mountain (hence all the Utah license plates here in the winter.)