By Michael Lanza
Within the second week of September, the cool air within the shade of the forest nips at our cheeks as we go away our first evening’s camp beside Glenns Lake within the backcountry of Glacier Nationwide Park, beginning at a fairly early hour for a day the place we’ll stroll practically 16 miles and 6,000 ft of mixed uphill and downhill. I’m mountaineering in a fleece hoodie, pants, and gloves and my pals Pam Solon and Jeff Wilhelm are equally layered up. As soon as the solar reaches us inside an hour, we’ll strip all the way down to shorts and T-shirts.
The place the path crosses a meadow, the expansive view west throughout a relaxed and insistently blue Cosley Lake reveals what seems like a protracted wall of overlapping stone shields jammed into the earth, every 2,000 or extra ft tall and tilting at completely different angles. On the lake’s outlet—now in heat sunshine—we ford the Stomach River, ankle- to calf-deep right here with just some tiny riffles and never very chilly. Extra mountaineering by quiet forest brings us to the refrigerated, cliff-shaded alcove under Daybreak Mist Falls, which spills thunderously over a sheer drop and crashes onto fallen boulders at its base, its drive releasing a perpetual mist. Moss wallpapers the alcove’s quick cliffs.
After a totally enjoyable lunch break on the pebbly seaside at Elizabeth Lake—the place the right mixture of photo voltaic heat and delicate breeze most likely converts in direct worth to a few thousand hours of counseling—we begin the lengthy climb to the Ptarmigan Tunnel. Reaching the open alpine terrain, I repeatedly cease to spin 180 levels and take huge bites of our view of the valley of Helen and Elizabeth lakes and the peaks on the opposite facet, which shelter what stays of a few glaciers within the shade of north-facing cliffs just under the mountaintops.
I’ve backpacked this path earlier than; this isn’t new to me. However time slowly renders a bit fuzzier the reminiscence of how consistently breathtaking it’s—which is, in a humorous manner, a present to us: We get to expertise that awe anew every time.
Everybody laughed when the legendary Yogi Berra stated, “It’s like déjà vu another time,” however I feel I knew what he meant.
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The path leads us upward throughout the cliff face of the lengthy rampart often called the Ptarmigan Wall, the trail rising broad as a metropolis sidewalk, with a stone wall simply in case its ample width isn’t sufficient to stop anybody tripping into the abyss. Then we stroll by the 250-foot-long Ptarmigan Tunnel, blasted by the Ptarmigan Wall and accomplished in 1930 to allow folks to trip horses between the Stomach River Valley and Many Glacier. Right now, it’s a novelty of a bygone period that occurs to create a stunning path for backpackers. The Ptarmigan Wall’s shadow falls over us as we descend previous Ptarmigan Lake, rippling within the gentle wind.
Afternoon slides into night as we stroll under peaks that resemble large chopping instruments trying to cube and chop the infinite sky. At nightfall, we stroll into the backpacker campsites within the campground at Many Glacier—wrapping up one other day of mountaineering that will obtain no true justice from overused superlatives as a result of the baseline for any day mountaineering in Glacier is already “nice.”
Being on this campground once more (I’ve misplaced monitor of what number of instances), I’m reminded of the one side of my planning for this journey that hardly missed the goal: Due largely to the frenzied means of reserving a Glacier backcountry allow (this story explains how to try this), I acquired a allow that had us arriving at Many Glacier the day after Nells Restaurant on the Swiftcurrent Motel, throughout the highway from the campground, closed for the season. Jeff and I, with two different pals, had camped right here one evening on a earlier backpacking trip and we have been wanting ahead to a different actual dinner and gut-packing breakfast at Nells; as a substitute, we’ll accept backpacking meals whereas sitting only a five-minute stroll from a closed restaurant. (Earlier than you query whether or not a restaurant compromises our wilderness expertise, perceive this: The Many Glacier campground is principally a small city, anyway. Nevertheless it’s additionally a strategically situated camp for backpackers. Nothing fallacious with profiting from good meals and trimming your pack’s meals weight by two meals. As they are saying, when in Rome…)
Life actually isn’t truthful.
However contemplating that the seven-day hike we began yesterday was, of necessity, the most effective various—and a rattling good one—to my authentic route, for which I had a allow, we’ve many causes to be pleased with the result of a scenario that might have turned out a lot worse.
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Bear Hassle Equals Allow Troubles
Right here’s a tough reality about backpacking in Glacier Nationwide Park: You may succeed at reserving a really hard-to-get backcountry permit, really feel the anticipation constructing for months as your journey approaches, after which arrive on the park to find that your deliberate route has been rendered unimaginable due to current bear exercise—that means your solely choice is to attempt to alter your allow on the spot, creating a brand new route primarily based on no matter backcountry campgrounds are nonetheless accessible.
And that’s precisely what occurred to us.
When Pam and I drove as much as the park backcountry workplace in Apgar Village within the darkness of 6:15 a.m. yesterday to choose up our allow, we stepped out of the automotive to our first huge shock of the morning. Anticipating to see 20 or extra folks ready for walk-in permits—the standard scenario, and a backcountry ranger had warned me on the telephone yesterday to count on a line forming two hours earlier than the workplace opened at 7:30 a.m.—I discovered only one man comprising all the “line” till I doubled its size. And only one couple joined us earlier than the workplace opened, the 5 of us attending to know one another whereas ready collectively. Pam took orders from everybody and made a run to the closest espresso store open that early on a Saturday.
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However the propitious spot second in line solely gained us a small benefit. As soon as inside, we encountered our second huge shock of the morning when a backcountry ranger knowledgeable us that my authentic allow reservation for a variation I’d custom-made of the traditional Northern Loop wouldn’t work as a result of two of our six camps—Fifty Mountain and Mokowanis Junction—have been closed because of bear exercise. (Disturbing element: A bear at Mokowanis had shredded a tent, thankfully whereas nobody was inside. The catalyst was meals inside it, a no-no that proved costly however might have gone a lot worse.)
And there have been no good various camp choices accessible for us on that loop or wherever close to it—one other bear-related backcountry campground closure west of the Waterton Valley prevented us from mountaineering a traverse over to Kintla or Bowman Lake.
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We scrambled to seek out an alternate route, hoping to protect a seven-day hike. This ranger, clearly keen to assist us, laid out our choices for campground availability on our dates. In the long run, we walked out of there with an virtually fully revamped itinerary, with our first two days unchanged however including 5 days following the Continental Divide Path (CDT) south to Two Medication. It’s practically equivalent to the route Jeff and I backpacked with two different pals 5 years in the past (after we additionally needed to change at some point on our itinerary due to bear exercise), with only one important variation.
It feels a bit of disappointing to overlook out on the Northern Loop. However we salvaged an ideal hike out of a tough scenario that, in actuality, can come up anytime in Glacier.
After driving round to the east facet of the park and arranging a shuttle to our beginning trailhead (see particulars on that within the trip-planning particulars on the backside of this story, accessible completely to subscribers), we lastly began mountaineering at 2 p.m. on a bluebird afternoon. It was even a bit scorching within the solar, which silhouetted the jagged peaks alongside the Continental Divide forward of us. We handed a couple of backpacker events, most doing the Northern Loop by banging out two consecutive days of about 20 miles to bypass the closed campgrounds. We stopped at Gros Ventre Falls, then reached our camp at Glenns Lake with a little bit of daylight remaining to pitch tents and prepare dinner.
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and “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”
Waterfalls and Lakes
The delicate patter of rain on my tent wakes me up round 5:30 a.m. on our fourth day. The showers pause lengthy sufficient for us to eat and pack up, after which the rain grows extra persistent and the wind gathers momentum simply as we hit the path. Low, darkish clouds cost throughout the sky, enshrouding mountaintops. The rain by no means comes too laborious as we around the west shore of St. Mary Lake, passing St. Mary Falls and taking the quick, steep spur path to face within the mixture of rain and waterfall mist on the base of tall Virginia Falls.
By late morning, the rain expends itself and patches of blue sky seem by breaks within the clouds. We hike up a broad valley by a really open, previous forest burn the place skeletal standing tree trunks sometimes hum softly within the wind—a ghost forest. On either side, inexperienced slopes rise to partitions of shattered rock.
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Within the cooking and food-hanging space at our camp at Pink Eagle Lake, we meet three guys of their early seventies who’ve been coming to Glacier for 35 years and have, by their estimates, climbed at the least half the peaks within the park. Now their journeys encompass backpacking right here for every week or so and so they wrestle to get a big portion of their previous group of pals to affix them every summer season. Then six extra guys collect with us. All 28, they’re pals from school and post-college, plus one man the remainder met in a brewery. I inform them I’m fairly certain that’s how Lewis and Clark stuffed their expedition: in a brewery. We sit round speaking, sharing tales, and laughing till nicely after darkish.
One other chilly begin on day 5 blossoms into one other sunny, nice day, welcome climate for our plan to hike greater than 14 miles. We cross Triple Divide Go at 7,397 ft, under 8,020-foot Triple Divide Peak, named for the topographical rarity of a mountain draining its waters to a few oceans: Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic. (The three creeks flowing off it are named for his or her locations: Pacific, Atlantic, and Hudson Bay.)
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On the campground at Morning Star Lake, Pam and I spot at the least a dozen mountain goats casually grazing the precipitous cliffs throughout the lake. Within the cooking and food-storage space, everybody zipped up inside heat puffy jackets, we discuss with three CDT thru-hikers very close to the tip of their lengthy journey. Whereas keen to complete, all of them admit that they may “miss it in every week.”
Later, full darkness falls on this moonless evening and the Milky Manner spreads itself thickly throughout the sky.
See my story a few earlier backpacking journey that adopted this route however with one variation, “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier,” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier National Park at The Massive Exterior.
The Gear I Used See my opinions of the excellent tents (this one and this one), boots, rain jacket, down jacket, air mattress, stove, and headlamps (this one and this one) I used on this journey.
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