Awaiting a Start
Today was a near dumpster fire. The itch to be on trail was strong. Samurai left early to the border with Costanza while Zoe and I waited around. I anxiously awaited a call from Burgs to know if he had landed in Kalispell. He had missed his flight the day before and was scrambling to find a non-delayed flight to Kalispell today. When I finally did see his name pop up on my phone, I felt relieved. It was short lived, however. While the Hamburglar had arrived in Montana, most of his hiking gear was stuck in Chicago.
My mind reeled while I digested the news. Do I even get to start today? Will we be able to get another permit? Is it wrong for me to just go and start? I was annoyed. Not with Burgs but with the situation. Everything was going perfectly, until it wasn’t.
Getting upset wasn’t going to help the situation so we conversed back and forth about different options, settling on sharing some gear until we could get back to East Glacier where, hopefully, his gear would be. Now, I’d just have to wait for him to make the 2 hour drive out to East Glacier so we could start. In the meantime, I saw Zoe and a few other hikers off to the border who caught a ride with Zoe’s dad. I knew we’d catch up to them by the end of the day, but it was still hard to watch them get to start their journey while I continued to wait.
To bide my time I grabbed different books and flipped through their pages trying to occupy my mind with something other than hiking. Eventually, two hours had passed and still no Burgs. But before I could spiral again, a large group of hikers walked through the hostel door. In just a few days, the hostel had gone from empty to filling quickly from hikers arriving via the Amtrak. I did my best to give a short tour and relay all of the rules and regulations I’d gathered over the past two days alongside Auto Pilot, who gave the final walk through.
Amidst the new hiker meet and greets, a little black car pulled up to the hostel and out popped my red-bearded friend. It was finally happening! Within the hour, we were on the road to the border thanks to the kindness of Hamburglar’s mom who had flown out with him to help us get to the terminus. When we finally arrived to the Chief Mountain border crossing, all the excitement to begin my journey south was blinding. In my haste to get on the trail, we’d snapped a few photos by the stone Waterton Glacier International Peace Park sign and hit the trail, Burgs’ mom in tow.
NOT the official CDT Chief Mountain start
I snapped a photo of the first CDT marker and began bobbing down the trail. Burgs’ mom lead the way. We chatted a bit before she mentioned she was excited to see the border sign. I paused briefly, confused, as I was sure the border sign was not along the trail. At the same moment, Burgs was checking his phone to see where the trail intersected the border. Quickly, he reported we’d missed the border marker because it was not on the trail at all, but rather up the road from where we’d parked.
So back up the trail we went. Thankfully we’d only hiked about 1/4 of a mile. We traversed up the road a little farther, got the nod of approval from the border patrol guards and finally found the border marker.
We said our final goodbyes and headed back down the trail towards Elizabeth Lake Head Campground. Despite starting around 4pm, we were to the campsite long before the sun went down. We hiked about 10 miles at what felt like a slow jaunt because we stopped a few times for photos, to take in the depth of the meadow-filled valleys, and to joke about swimming in a swirling pool just above a waterfall. All the while, we had a deep discussion about how much pee is reasonable within a normal sized backyard pool before the water is “nasty.”
We squeezed our tent in next to Samurai at the campground and I made a B-line for the cooking area. Day one on trail and I already felt hiker hunger (or at least the lack of lunch I had). I grabbed my fuel, pot and lighter from my Ursack and lit it up with some water for dehydrated Chili. Burgs used the pot after me and when he was done, I noticed that the bottom had become rounded and bulged out. I turned to Zoe and Hamburglar and asked, “do you think this is going to explode?” I realized in my indulgence of the REI anniversary sale, I grabbed a double walled pot by mistake. While Burgs and Zoe talked about whether or not it was vacuum sealed, I chastised myself for foolishly bringing along the wrong pot. The one time I don’t want to cold soak and I’m forced to for the next 5 days…
Before going to bed, I skipped rocks by the lake with Bergs and Zoe until a cloud of flying bug things (unsure if they were mosquitos because they didn’t bite) took over the sky. Fish in the lake slapped the surface of the water and jumped above the waters surface after the bugs.
Realizations and Acclimations
As I was sitting on a log eating my cold mush (cold soaked oatmeal as named by Cheryl Strayed), I had the realization that this is going to be in my life for the next three months. It was a rather neutral realization. I was a bit sad my mush couldn’t be properly warmed. But I was happy to be accepting this uncomfortable and yet exciting way of life again.
I chose to start this morning with my sun hoodie donned under my frogg toggs jacket. Quickly, the jacket came off and I chastised myself for not being bold and starting cold. The whole of the morning was spent ascending Red Gap pass which wasn’t completely unpleasant. The familiar burn of my muscles was offset by sweeping views and a kindly graded trail (in most sections). 3 easy snow fields and 2 blowdowns slowed progress slightly, but despite the incline, I felt as if I was moving at a consistently moderate pace. As the gap grew nearer, I looked up the side of the mountain and was greeted by the overlooking eyes of two mountain goats. The switchbacks alternated between short and long, but it was hard to tell what was around each corner. I could hardly see the path etched out into the side of the steep slope. In the wake of each snowfield were lush green patches of yellow, blue, and purple flowers.
The wind whipped cold against me, but I wasn’t chilly. I was comfortably uncomfortable. I think there are things I forget from my previous thru-hike, like inclement weather and wet feet, but the good always outweighed the bad. I don’t remember when the acclimation for these things occurred then, but this day, I felt as though I was acclimating well, especially since having lived in Arizona for the last 3 years turned my body intolerant to any temperature below 70 degrees.
We got to our next campsite by noon. Lunch had already been eaten just before 11, so snacks were had and then I retired to the pebbly beach to write and nap in the sun. The bugs were swarming pretty much everything – the cooking site, the camp site, the privy (obviously) – but not the beach. So that’s where I stayed most of the afternoon. The sound of the waves lapped at the edges of my foam pad nestled closely.
It should have been peaceful, but I felt a slight undertone of agitation. I wanted to go on. There were still 8 hours of daylight left. What is there to do at a campground with only 2 other people? I alternated between napping and brushing various bugs off my legs. Eventually I headed into the tent and napped for another 3 hours. When I awoke, I realized I was not only still tired and in a bad mood, but now also hungry. I was hangry. I laid awake for another hour until I decided to read a paper letter my friend from back home wrote for me to read if I was having a bad day. I didn’t think I’d be having a bad day by day 2 , but what the heck. A bad day is a bad day.
The note caused me to realize that having a bad attitude wouldn’t fix anything and I certainly shouldn’t be sulking in such a beautiful place. So I readied myself for dinner and planned to come up with a post-meal adventure.
Following dinner, the three of us walked back to the junction of the campground and followed a game trail up to the ridge line. The wind was blowing so strongly that I turned my back to it and leaned into its billowing arms. We spent the rest of the evening standing along the wood bridge watching the sun ever-so slightly drop behind the mountains before running through the hoard of bugs back to our tents.
Hitch, Hitch, Hooray
I turned on my headphones at the start of the day to get my mind in the right place since we had another short day and the frustration I felt yesterday was not so easily switched off. I spent the morning walking alone, feeling more confident to be solo in these Bear-ridden woods. I passed a hidden lake surrounded by tall trees and then climbed up a small PUD (pointless up and down). On the other side of the hill was a deep valley, which was surprising to me being so close to the edge of a lake. I spent the next mile thinking about how lakes are formed so high up.
Every so often, I felt my internal warning senses heighten. So, I began singing out loud and constructing a short letter to REI about advertising their mugs better or placing camp cups farther away from cook pots.
I arrived at a road crossing and decided to sit on a rock to wait for Burgs. He needed a short resupply of food for the last few days through the park and there were enough cars flying by to get a hitch. He came out of the woods shortly after and without much convincing, we began walking towards Many Glacier against traffic with our thumbs out to the side – going for a hitch. A few cars blew by. Some waved, others gave a thumbs up back at us, and others still raised their hands in confusion. I’m not sure what there was to be confused about.
The atmosphere of national parks is vastly different from the small hiker towns who know about long trails and thru hikers.
A few minutes passed when an RV swerved off the side of the road just ahead of us. To our surprise, a French couple and their 3 daughters were all too happy to take us into St. Mary’s. They had been traveling around the U.S. for the past year and were about to head up to the border. Their daughters giggled and practiced their English greetings with us once we climbed into the RV. Off we went up the road briefly before one of the girls yelled something in French and the RV swerved off the road again and everyone jumped out of the vehicle.
There were two bears roaming the fields along the road. One dark black and the other brown, a young black bear. We watched with backs pressed against the RV and passed binoculars between the 7 of us, the family chattering excitedly in French.
Once back in the RV, they graciously dropped us off in St. Mary’s where we grabbed food in the grocery store and then enjoyed a sandwich and ice cream next door before it was back to the side of the road for a hitch back into the park. Again, we were met with various responses to our hitchhikers thumbs, but this time a few included flipping the bird. A kind lady who worked at the lodge said she could give us a ride if we were still in need after her shift ended, several hours later. Finally, a white van that had been sitting in the parking lot across the road zoomed across both lanes at the intersection and pulled into the dirt lot where we were standing.
A thru-hiker, Boom, rolled down his window asking if we needed a ride. He had been providing trail magic at another road in the park and said we could grab a drink out of the cooler if we wanted. We quickly said yes. He only had one seat up front but offered one of us to sit on the floor in the back of his windowless white van. Despite my mother’s voice in the background of my head telling me not to get into the white van offering sweets, I pulled open the door and hopped in. He got us as far as the Many Glacier entrance station where we began walking once more.
P.S. Berg’s got a message on his inReach from his mom that his gear had finally found its way to Kalispell and she had also stopped by REI to get me a new pot. Woohoo!
Since we had been successful already twice in hitching, we decided, why not round it out and got for a third hitch back to Many Glacier. We were not too far down the road when we heard a car approaching and stuck out our thumbs. A park ranger slowed as it passed by then came to a stop 100 yards away with its lights flashing. A young guy hopped out of the car and offered to take us to camp. Bergs was beyond excited, claiming his seat in the cage.
As we drove, the ranger told us about an impending snow storm starting Friday night/Saturday. This was news to us and I immediately began thinking of ways to get through the park before it hit. With this new information, we graciously thanked the ranger for the ride and set off to make a plan. We sat on the back porch of the Many Glacier lodge for a while scheming of what to do. I suggested hiking 30 miles to Red Eagle Lake Head campground then the last 25 miles to two medicine, cutting off a day from our itinerary and getting back to East Glacier before the weather came in. Bergs was far from thrilled. I tried to hide my excitement for crushing big miles so early on, but also justified my idea due to the fact that there was no clear timeline of when the weather would let up and that I didn’t have time to wait around in town to go back and make up sections. Especially with the influx of new hikers and the chaos that was the permit system.
He seemed to be gathering interest in my plan. But we still had to convince the other two on the permit – Zoe and Samurai. First, we decided to try and find the rangers station to see about rearranging our permits. We quickly learned, the Many Glacier rangers station was out of order. In fact, there were no rangers on site. How convenient. We ran into a parks employee who gave us vital insight into the ever-changing weather situation and advice about next moves. Her advice, get off trail tomorrow at St. Mary’s and wait it out. Not what I wanted to hear.
We headed back to cute campsite where we ran into Samurai. He said Zoe was at the lodge and so we relayed our plan to him then set out to find Zoe for convincing. We found Zoe on the bottom floor of the lodge (we hadn’t thought to check there previously). We presented the plan and Zoe was game.
Later that evening, after having dinner and talking about strategy with other hikers, we all returned to the lodge to steal battery power and to wait in the warmth inside for a ranger presentation starting at 8pm about Glaciers. While lounging, once again via gestures and translation apps, we learned that Samurai was a teacher for young children – his personality and big smile totally fit the job description – and that he would not be going forward with us. He had hurt his knee at some point that morning and wasn’t sure he’d make it all 30 miles. Of course I understood, but it was still hard to hear.
Samurai, if you read this, your smile was infectious, your patience was respectable, and your signed tent walls were totally awesome!
The presentation was as thrilling as you’d expect, but truthfully, it was interesting to hear about how the park was formed and how big the glaciers used to be. We saw pictures of the glaciers when people could walk on them and Mr. Bob even shared anecdotes of his expeditions on the ice.
At the closing of the presentation, he said something really beautiful. “I was born and raised in Wisconsin. Spent most of my time teaching in Oregon. But this is home.” Following the presentation, we spent time talking more about Bob’s experience at Glacier and before we left, I thanked him for sharing his home with us.
