Surprise! A delightful Crawford Creek

Gordon Whirry stops to get a shot of the Lady Slippers orchids

A field of cow parsnips that the bear had been feeding on

Wayne Phillips regales us with tales of Yellowstone Park 

Best I could do at a distance with my Smart Phone camera:  a honey colored black bear

Katie and her Glacier Girls regularly go into Crawford Creek on Trail 329 behind the Belt Creek Ranger Station in the Little Belts.
I've been there a couple of times and wasn't impressed:  to closed in and overgrown with a trail that was difficult to follow.
When Wayne Phillips suggested it as a substitute for the exposed Pioneer Ridge on a very windy day last week, I was not enthused and did not even bother to bring a camera, other than the one my Smart Phone had.
What a mistake!
Yes, it was still rough and overgrown and the trail a bit tough to follow.
But the creek was running high, the vegetation lush and the old-growth trees tall and round as you might find on the west side of the divide, flowers galore, and a cinnamon colored bear that had been lazily lounging in a field of cow parsnip, probably for days before we disturbed it across the creek and up a hillside.
That was exciting enough, but we also found big clusters of lady slipper orchids blooming and I discovered that I, and Katie's group had been traveling upstream beyond the barbed wire fence off-trail because the trail travels steeply uphill from there to a ridge top.
Because of my assumption I missed what would have been one of the better bear photos of the season as he didn't hear us approaching and he got up on his hind legs to take a look at us.
We could tell he had been there for a while because there were at least nine large piles of bear scat in the vicinity.
The trail isn't a long one, but from this point at about 1.2 miles, we hiked and climbed another 500 feet in elevation and another mile in distance to the top, where we stopped for lunch, and a chance to hear Wayne regale us with tales from Yellowstone Park.
The only possible downside of the hike were the numerous dead trees across the trail that impeded our hike.