Winter on Rock Creek

Extravagant Ones:

 

Greetings from Extravaganza Headquarters along docile Rock Creek, where, indeed, the deep freeze has set in for the long and chilly Montana winter.  Temperatures here are actually pretty decent for this time of year, however, with highs today expected to be in the low 40's yet evening lows in the 20's.  The attached photos tell the tale:  One of quiet respite from our bustling summer activities, providing a wonderful time for reflection on all of life's bounties that have become our blessings.

 

While California faces one of the most severe drought conditions in 150 years, as our outfitter John "The Magnificent" Gould recently reported to you, the upper elevation snow pack here in the western part of the Continental Divide holds steady, with the January reported snow pack for the Bitterroot Basin averaging 116% of normal.  That bodes well for Extravaganza 2009 as, just perhaps, we will have one of those truly "normal" years (whatever that is nowadays!) when, as we now have so many times in the past, the Spring runoff occurs in an orderly and timely manner thereby teeing up our Extravagant fishing opportunities in late June and early July--years when our numbers of native trout caught and released measure in the thousands.

 

Tomorrow evening your hostess with the mostess, Kocktail Kathy, and yours truly, Rock Creek Ron, are hosting a dinner party for our new guides and their families.  Among the crew will be several familiar names that have fished with us in the past (including, in addition to John The Magnificent,  Chris Stroup, David Heimes, Travis Walker and Evan Philippe) as well as several other faces new to us--each legendary, however, in their guiding prowess.  It is this team that will guide us each down one or more of our targeted summer rivers:  The Clark Fork of the Columbia River; The Bitterroot River and the fabled Big Blackfoot ("A River Runs Through It") River.  Joining us at that event will be International Wildlife Film Festival Executive Director Janet Rose (and her wonderful staff) to roll out the plans for a sequel to last year's teen-aged shot and edited movie Journey To The Soul (which has been placed into the competition for this year's 32nd annual IWFF festival), a movie to be called Montana Matters and to become an integral part of a major fundraising campaign that I am heading up for both IWFF and the Montana Wildlife Federation (more...much more...on that front later!).

 

Sunlight is gradually reappearing here in Extravaganzaland, as we are far enough north and eastward placed in the time zone(s) that extreme shortness of day marks winter's visage just as do our longer summer days (where it will be still light here at 10:30 p.m. at the time of the Summer Equinox), and that is good news, as that sundial indicates that it is just a matter of 5+ months now until we will are (re)convene here at the scene of it all!!

 

Best to all from that majestic scene!

 

RCR