On our third day in the wild, we awake early and gather water from an opening where Kintla Creek spills into Kintla Lake. Our goal for the day is several miles deeper into the park: Upper Kintla Lake.

There isn’t enough snow to ski, so we strap skis to packs and hike. No matter how deep the snow in the surrounding area, a strange snow shadow in this valley perennially limits depths to a few inches. It’s this consistent lack of snow that attracts deer, lots and lots of deer. This veritable venison buffet keeps the wolves here all winter and also explains the grizzlies — no need to hibernate when you can chase wolves off their kills and score free feasts all winter long. So when we find the bottom of this avalanche path packed with delectably skiable snow, it happily waylays us for much of the afternoon.

There are at least 40 deer feeding on the ground vegetation above and around us, while golden eagles soar through the air overhead. The tracks of my turns are visible on the left of this image.

This is where my 10th Mountains really shine. Light and efficient enough to ski the 20-plus valley-bottom miles to reach this spot, they’re still ridiculously fun carving turns down this glorious snowfield. I ski it over and over, whooping and catching air, while Ben and Travis ogle the glaciers and frozen waterfalls of the surrounding mountainscape. It’s the high point of our trip and no one wants to leave.

Eventually reaching Upper Kintla Lake shortly before sunset, we never stop looking for wolves. There tracks are always in view, but the creatures themselves stay out of sight.

Ignoring the impending onset of darkness, we ski farther and farther up the lake. We have no real reason for doing this other than to simply see.

Then we spy something in the middle of the lake-ice. Ben and Travis are nervous about straying too far from shore, so I ski out to investigate, then wave them out to see for themselves.

It’s at once gruesome and thrilling, the skull of a whitetail buck with antlers reaching skyward, its fallen majesty a testament to the dominance of the wolf. I imagine they knew exactly what they were doing, too — by leaving the skull of the deer king here in the dead center of the lake for all to see, they’re leaving no mistake who rules the Kintla Valley.

Though we don’t make it back to the cabin until hours after dark that night, we’re up early the next day, our last in the park. We have a 10-mile ski out with a river crossing ahead of us, and a storm system is looming. As we close up the cabin, Travis hears wolves — swears they’re wolves — in the forest behind us.

The nail-spiked outer door of the cabin is meant to discourage grizzlies from trying to break in. One look at the claw and teeth marks on the timber posts holding up the roof out front and you understand why this isn’t overkill.

We never do actually see the wolves on this trip, though a wildlife biologist who is in a few days before us — one of the valley’s few other human visitors this winter — sees ten howling in the center of the lake under a full moon. Besides some rain and a few moose, our ski out is uneventful.

Until we reach the North Fork of the Flathead River, that is. Fording here will save us almost ten miles of skiing. We have a car parked less than a mile away, so we’re not worried about getting wet. Still, Ben and I use a trick recommended by a friend — trash bags and rubber bands around our legs. The ghetto-waders work perfectly.

Travis on the other hand uses, er, a different strategy…

When we cross the river we leave the park and return to civilization. Or at least to our car, which will lead us down a 40-mile dirt road to civilization. This is not something we relish. We already miss the Kintla Valley and the world of the wolves. We might not have seen them, or the grizzlies, this time, but we know we’ll be back. And when we return, we know the wolves will be waiting.

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For the full gallery from Aaron’s trip, please visit his site here.

We set out for a remote corner of Glacier National Park on a sunny late winter morning, GPS and camera in hand, ready to record all of the wild and strange things we could find. Ben and I met here a few winters back working on a forest carnivore study; we spent that winter skiing and tracking together, and no place we explored harbored more odd and grisly findings than the area around Kintla Lake. When the opportunity came to ski back in and survey the area for park biologists, we jumped at the chance. Our friend Travis came along (who’s worked as a fire lookout in a tower on one of the peaks in the background — the same tower as Ed Abbey) and we set out for four days in the wilds to see what we could see.

We ski the sweeping valley-bottom meadows for hours, coming across deer carcasses every few miles. Few people ski into this area, leaving the resident wolf pack with the run of the place. There is also at least one grizzly bear, if not more, here that doesn’t hibernate. We’ve seen its winter tracks before, but found no sign of it on this day.

Travis is part of the new old school. He wears no synthetics and skis in oil-finished tin pants and leather boots. In keeping with the old-school mentality, he also carries a pack the size of a small humpback whale.

We ski along a bench over the North Fork of the Flathead River as the sun set, amid a procession of wolf, moose, and elk tracks. We reach the ranger cabin, our lodging for the night, by headlamp well after dark.

Like many national parks, Glacier has a network of nearly century-old backcountry ranger cabins that are used by rangers, biologists, and others working on wildlife studies. They’re nothing fancy, but they warm up fast and make for ideal rustic accommodations.

Shortly after finding the carcass of a deer that had been eviscerated by a lion, our second day of skiing brings us to the clear waters of Kintla Creek. Our goal for the day is the head of Kintla Lake, still a few miles distant.

The last time we’d skied in to Kintla Lake we arrived to see a pair of wolves running across the lake ice and found a freshly killed deer laying a hundred feet from the front door of the cabin. The wolves howled outside our cabin that night and in the morning the deer carcass was devoured, except for the deer’s head which we found about a mile away. We don’t see wolves on the lake this time, but their tracks are ever-present and bits of deer — legs, hides, ribcages —are always in view as we ski.

We stay quiet and frequently scan ahead with binoculars, hoping for a glimpse of the carnivores we know are watching us. We hear them yip in the lakeside forest more than once, but never catch sight of them.

The sun sets long before we reach the next cabin at the head of Kintla Lake, but twilight hangs on just long enough for us leave the headlamps in the pack. The last time we stayed in this cabin it was surrounded by grizzly tracks. There’s no bear sign this time, just the invisible presence of wolves and the ghostly hooting of owls as we unlock the door and fire up the wood stove for the night.

More to come later in the week…