Day Thirty Nine, Glacier National Park Backcountry, MT: The Time When You Beat Nature

On Tuesday, I set 0ut for the second of four legs on my backcountry trip. While the first leg was a long, 13.8-mile hike, it was over mostly flat terrain. The second leg was much shorter – only about 5.6 miles – but climbed about 2,400 feet and descended about 1,200 feet. It’s important to remember here that what is true in normal walking is about 40lbs more true in backpacking – that is, going downhill is only slightly better than going uphill.

The other thing about going uphill is that, inevitably, you reach the top. And when you do, you are usually a good target for lightening strikes. This goes without saying and is fairly obvious. What complicates matters is that oftentimes weather within the mountains is impossible to predict, and lightening storms typically present themselves in the afternoon. And when I left camp at 9.30am, the sky looked great, as you can see to your left. This picture was taken at 10.00am, during what I will refer to as the “easy and relaxed” portion of the hike.

This next picture was taken a scant 45 minutes later. As you can see, the weather has now become decidedly less friendly and inviting. In those intervening minutes, I had gone from an almost cloudless sky to nearly being in a cloud – and the nearly wouldn’t last for long.

So at this point I had several less-than-ideal options. I had already hiked the first two miles of the hike, but these had been largely flat. I still had 1,900 vertical feet to go, which, fit into just the next couple miles, would be a little challenging, and it was definitely going to rain.  I decided that the best course of action was to keep going, as fast as I could. Which transformed the slow and relaxing hike into the race hike, and races uphill are almost never fun.

And, unfortunately, things were not getting better. As I ascended, the wind started to pick up immensely, the temperature plummeted, the trail got much thinner, and rain started falling. At this point, it couldn’t get any worse – save for a lightening strike. I reckoned that the peaks around me were taller than the high point of my hike – about 6,900 feet – and therefore decided that I could reasonably expect not to get hit by lightening. It was a dubious rationalization, but it worked. I continued to huff and puff up the switchbacks at an exhausting yet staggeringly slow rate of speed. And, following with this day’s theme, things did actually manage to get worse.

Well, at first glance this is a beautiful river. But there are a few things in the picture that you may not notice upon initial inspection. First, the stream is made of glacial runoff. It feeds the chalky blue lake you saw earlier, (Atsina). Glacial water tends to be cold. Second, you can (almost!) see the trail continue on the opposite side of the Mokowanis River. I was able to make it safely across in flip flops, but my feet have never been colder. Interestingly, they would, on multiple occasions this hike, get even wetter. I kept the flip flops on as I was too fed up to stop and put my shoes back on. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as I had to cross yet another water obstacle shortly.

Soon the weather began to improve; in fact, the rain had presented very few problems at all. It had never really progressed to full-blown torrential downpour, and the lightening had never materialized. After climbing some 2,000 feet in 2 miles, the trail leveled off (to your right), and finally began to descend at a rapid pace. It then wrapped around a glacial lake and stopped right in the middle of the camp. Fortunately, there were some other campers at this site with whom I could pass the time, as it was not even 1pm when I reached camp.

And this was certainly an interesting night. I met three hikers who were boyhood friends and taking a 7-night backpacking trip as a “vacation.” And, they told me that they had decided to carry extra weight in order to enjoy the hike as said vacation. They had coffee, freeze dried foods, etc. Of course, when all that weight – they still needed only one tent, one stove, etc – is divided into three packs, it comes out about even. Again, this is a good time to emphasize that this trip has been as much about people as it has been about places. (The picture above and to the left might give you a good context for the camp, especially if you click on it to enlarge it. This particular area was the path between the path to the food prep area and the path that led to the tent sites.)

Now back to the deer that I discussed briefly yesterday. Deer love sweat and other human excretions. These three guys were forced to leave most of their stuff out to dry outside their tent in the early part of the afternoon. And to their increasing consternation, Linda – the camp deer – would repeatedly come around to mess with their site. From the food prep area, it was a good 200 yards to their tent site, up some steep boulders and even a smooth rock face. Every few minutes, Linda would come around to check out the site, and one of them would be dispatched to deal with her. It got to the point where they were forced to throw rocks at her just to chase her away. Soon, we could watch one of them make his way up the rock face to their site while Linda would peer over the ledge, see him coming, and run away – only to return as soon as the person left.

But around 3.30pm it began to rain. And rain. And rain. The rain did not stop – straight, torrential downpour – until 5.30pm. At that time, everyone went to make their dinner – only for the rain to start up again around 6.30. And this time, it literally did not stop. I fell asleep around 10.00pm, and the rain was still tumbling  down from the sky and onto the sides of the tent in prodigious amounts. This would make for some crappy conditions on the next day’s hike. Also, at this point, I had experienced rain in five of my last six nights. Already, everything I owned was wet and dirty; remember, I had no towel or anything with which to dry off, other than a maddeningly hidden sun.

So that was Tuesday, Day Thirty Nine. It is currently Saturday night, Day Forty Three. I’m camping in another forest outside Salt Lake City. This was one of my more poorly planned days as I left Idaho and headed to Salt Lake City with no clear direction of what I would do when I arrived, much less where I would stay. I think I half-expected a solution to this “sleeping” problem to drop out of the sky. I ended up exploring the city by car for a couple hours before retreating back into the mountains, as is my custom.

And just because I don’t want to confuse everyone with a LOST-type timeline, let me just recap the past week really quick. Monday through Thursday I spent in the backcountry, Friday I drove a long way through Montana and into Idaho and camped outside Ashton, and Saturday I drove from there into Salt Lake City. Less confused? (And how many days till LOST comes back, by the way?)