North Fork welcomes new district ranger

A little less than a month into her new job, Sharon Olson was dealing with not just one mountain lion, but two. One was dead along a trail and another had killed a deer in at the Bowman Lake campground right in front of some picnickers.

Of course, that's pretty much all in a day's work for Glacier National Park's new North Fork district ranger.

Olson replaces Scott Emmerich, who retired last year after a long career in the North Fork.

"I'm grateful that Scott's still around," Olson said in an interview last week. Emmerich has a place in the North Fork and Columbia Falls, if Olson has a question, she can give him a ring or send him an email, she noted.

The North Fork district is vast and popular and for the past couple of months, Olson has been getting acquainted with the landscape. She's already seen a grizzly, the above-mentioned lion, which hasn't been seen in several days and plenty of other flora and fauna.

Olson grew up in northern California and attended the University of Washington on a full swimming scholarship. Her mother was a school teacher and her father was a biologist in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

She began her Park Service career as a lifeguard at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. In 2005 the Park Service asked her if she would be interested in helping them with an undercover operation as a lifeguard and she said yes. After the operation they told her she should get into rangering. In 2006 she went through the training and then took a seasonal position in Yosemite, working the night shift in law enforcement and bear management.

"I hazed black bears out of picnic baskets," she said.

From there she went to Island in the Sky-Canyonlands in Utah, where she learned high angle search and rescue techniques - getting people off of cliffs.

She still was considering a career in teaching, but she liked the outdoors.

"I like water and trees and mountains and all that good stuff," she said.

So in 2010 she took a post in Denali National Park in Alaska, her first permanent job. She spent four years there dealing with crowds and grizzly bears, much like in Glacier.

When the post opened in Glacier, she applied and was thrilled to get it.

"Glacier's just one of those Parks you want to work in," she said.

She lives in a modest cabin at the station with her two black labs. Her goals this summer is hike all the trails in the district and really get a sense of the place.

Much of the seasoned support staff has returned, so Olson has plenty of institutional knowledge to help her.

"I'm really excited," she said.