Outdoors

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Three women postholed through the wet, slushy snow — isothermal snow if they were to be technical about it. And they were.

They sank in, at times, up to their knees, holding their avalanche beacons in front of their bodies, tuned to search mode. They studied the numbers reading on the screen. As the numbers dropped — a sign a signal was being picked up underneath the snow — they fell onto their knees and stomachs, zeroing in on what was buried below.

For nearly 50 years the Sweet Grass County Recreational Association (SGCRA) has hosted an annual Poker Run fundraiser, a snowmobile ride down the Main Boulder Road ending at Million Dollar Basin. 

In 1971 Vic and Judy Rue started SGCRA and began the annual Poker Run tradition with the goal of supplementing the cost of grooming and maintaining the Main Boulder Road trail. 

BOZEMAN — Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Environmental Biology, a pair of Montana State University researchers are setting out to prove caddisflies are more than fish food.

“They play other really important roles, like processing nutrients, influencing streambed flow regimes and providing habitat for other things living in the streambed, like microbes or other invertebrates,” said Lindsey Albertson, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology in the College of Letters and Science at MSU.

While some animals slumber away through February or have fun in the sun down south, other species make the most of Saint Valentine’s month.

Like great horned owls, which are in the middle of their mating season and, soon, if not already, will be sitting on eggs. No other birds in Montana court and mate during the winter.