08-23-2002, 08:52 PM
I was in Glacier August 3-12 backpacking with some good friends from college, the first time any of us had been to what I now feel is the most spectacular NP in the country. I finally got all my pictures developed and I uploaded the best of the best onto Yahoo! and provided the link at the bottom. Now, on to the trip report...
We arrived at Kalispell airport in a DH4 and in the bag. I met up with my midwest buddies in the Seattle airport, and from SEATAC we all were on the same flight to Kalispell. The flight was delayed, so we spent a couple hours in the airport bar draining Red Hooks and watching the Mariners beat up the Indians. Our belated departure was further eased by the fact that, once on the plane, Horizon Air treated everyone to an in-flight beer. By the time we hit the tarmac in Kalispell, I really had to pee. Being college buddies, we felt compelled to parlay our airline buzzes to a trip to the bars in Whitefish, where we encountered the first of the week's many glasses of Moose Drool. Not a big fan actually, it's too much like Newcastle for my taste. I'm more of a $12/case man, I guess.
Saturday morning was spent at the grocery store and WalMart loading up on food, film, white gas, and last minute items accidentally left at home. But by noon everything was set, and we drove into the park at the Apgar entrance. Our first backpacking route was for Sunday departure on the northeast side of the park, so we drove across Going to the Sun Road for our first real look at the park. It was beautiful, warm, bright and sunny on the west side of the Divide, but as we climbed toward Logan Pass we could see bright white whisps of clouds being blown west over the top of the pass, looking like a huge avalanche. We dubbed this phenomenon "the Schmidty Effect" after our buddy who offered up a half-assed meteorlogical explanation for the striking sight. When we finally got to the pass it was cold and grey on the east side of the divide, and all the evergreen trees were covered in ice! This was our introduction to the mercurial weather of the park, which we came to appreciate more and more as the trip went on.
We bisected the park on Going to the Sun Road, exiting at St. Mary and finding a public campsite just north on Rt. 89. The site wasn't much, but it was very close to the Park Cafe, which Ray Zee recommended to me when I posted for info here a couple months back. More importantly, the site was right behind a bar (I think it was called Kip's?), and we needed another night of ethanol-carbo-loading and pool-playing to see us off into the backcountry. We ate dinner at Two Sisters (they were out of chili) and had a subdued night of drinking at Kip's and playing pool with some firemen. We talked mostly about hiking and our past adventures; everyone was giddy to get on the trail.
Our first route was from the Chief Mountain trailhead at the Canadian border along the Belly River to Elizabeth Lake, then up to the Ptarmigan Tunnel, and back down to Many Glacier and out. We woke to rain on Sunday, packed up, and drove up to the border in a thick mist. It was so dense that we couldn't even see the Canadian border from the trailhead. Two days later, after we finished the route and he hitchiked back to the truck, Vaughn informed us that the border was only about 100 yards further up the road, plainly visible. We each took a nip from a bottle of Beam to warm us for the hike (it was about 45 degrees outside), and then hit the Belly River trail.
It rained on us steadily for the first 2 hours, but the meadows and wildflowers along the Belly River were absolutley beautiful. I wish we could have had some sunlight to get better pictures, but the low clouds hanging on the peaks around us had a muted, stately beauty of their own. We saw our first black bear just as we got down to the river bed. He was squatting in the middle of the trail 20 yards in front of us as we came around a bend, and took off into the brush as soon as he saw us. We got to the Gable Creek campground and set up camp, but it was too early in both the day and the trip to quit hiking. Full of energy and a desire to see as much as possible, we decided to day hike to Crosley Lake past a falls named after someone with an odd surname I don't remember. As we climbed out of the river valley we got a great view of the bucolic Belly River ranger station tucked in the corner of a meadow by the Gable Creek campground. We also saw our second black bear of the day, a bigger 250-pounder sitting about 20 yards off the trail. He was content to eat berries and watch us as we passed by.
We awoke Moday morning to clear blue skies, our first on the east side of the park. We had another short day of hiking, this time 6 miles to the head of Elizabeth lake. Other than the ranger station meadow and Mist Falls there wasn't a lot to see along the way because the trees were so thick. We got to Elizabeth Lake a little after noon, and got our first view of the crystal blue lakes surrounded by aretes that seem to be everywhere in the park. The lake was still being fed by a few smaller snow patches up in the rocks, and it seems like you can always hear the distant whisper of water cascading down the ridge faces wherever you go in Glacier. We set up camp and had enough daylight to hike to the Elizabeth Lake trail terminus at Helen Lake.
Helen Lake was indescribably picturesque. It sits in a cirque, so it is surrounded on 3 sides by sheer rock faces 3000 feet high, and its water, like all the water in the park, is clear and azure blue like the sky. None of us even took pictures of Helen Lake, it was just too big to take in with a camera. We sat at the edge of the lake, waited for the sun to slip behind the ridge catapulting above us, then headed back to Elizabeth Lake.
A friend we had made on the trail was a fly fisherman and also staying at Elizabeth Lake head. He pulled a couple rainbow trout out of the lake for us while we were day hiking. He told us he hooked about 60 fish in 3 hours, at one point catching a fish on 7 consecutive casts! We had to boil them, but the meat was sweet and tender; the taste of a fish taken from that cold blue water just an hour before is so superior to anything you get in a restaurant or at a supermarket that it's barely worth making the comparison. Anyway, it provided a nice counterpoint to our ramen noodles and mac'n'cheese.
Tuesday morning brought rain once again. It stopped long enough for us to break camp, but it continued to drizzle throughout the morning. This was our longest day of the trip. Thirteen miles, all with the packs on, up 2500 feet to the Ptarmigan tunnel and back down to Many Glacier. The brush was so wet that it was a welcome change to be on the exposed mountain side the last 2 miles to the tunnel. We ran into some day hikers from Many Glacier at the tunnel and one snapped a great shot of us, exhausted, with Elizabeth Lake behind us and a couple thousand feet below.
The view from the other side of the tunnel was almost as good, and the downhill trail was a lot better. We screamed back to Many Glacier, 6 miles in about 2.5 hours. As Vaughn hitched a ride back to the truck, the rest of us collapsed onto couches in the Many Glacier lodge and took in the alpine view of Swiftcurrent Lake through a row picture windows. We had done about 35 miles in 3 days.
Vaughn came back with the truck, and we headed straight to Two Sisters again and devoured dinner. This was naturally followed by a return to our drive-in campsite from Sunday, and more hard-earned Moose Drool at Kip's. We played poker-pool with some locals and more firemen, Vaughn won a $30 pot that had rolled over 3 times. The next day, Wednesday, we were scheduled to hit the trail again on the other side of the park.
Well, this has gotten very, very long, and I still have our second route along Bowman Lake up to Hole in the Wall to cover. Not to mention playing poker at the Bulldog bar in Whitefish after it was all done. That'll be saved for another post. First, I'll wait to see if anyone wades through this one, I suppose.
I'll do this again if/when I post the second half, but I have to thank Ray Zee and Ed I for their suggestions on backpacking routes, gear to bring, and local places to eat. You guys gave us an unforgettable trip. Neither words nor photographs do it justice...
We arrived at Kalispell airport in a DH4 and in the bag. I met up with my midwest buddies in the Seattle airport, and from SEATAC we all were on the same flight to Kalispell. The flight was delayed, so we spent a couple hours in the airport bar draining Red Hooks and watching the Mariners beat up the Indians. Our belated departure was further eased by the fact that, once on the plane, Horizon Air treated everyone to an in-flight beer. By the time we hit the tarmac in Kalispell, I really had to pee. Being college buddies, we felt compelled to parlay our airline buzzes to a trip to the bars in Whitefish, where we encountered the first of the week's many glasses of Moose Drool. Not a big fan actually, it's too much like Newcastle for my taste. I'm more of a $12/case man, I guess.
Saturday morning was spent at the grocery store and WalMart loading up on food, film, white gas, and last minute items accidentally left at home. But by noon everything was set, and we drove into the park at the Apgar entrance. Our first backpacking route was for Sunday departure on the northeast side of the park, so we drove across Going to the Sun Road for our first real look at the park. It was beautiful, warm, bright and sunny on the west side of the Divide, but as we climbed toward Logan Pass we could see bright white whisps of clouds being blown west over the top of the pass, looking like a huge avalanche. We dubbed this phenomenon "the Schmidty Effect" after our buddy who offered up a half-assed meteorlogical explanation for the striking sight. When we finally got to the pass it was cold and grey on the east side of the divide, and all the evergreen trees were covered in ice! This was our introduction to the mercurial weather of the park, which we came to appreciate more and more as the trip went on.
We bisected the park on Going to the Sun Road, exiting at St. Mary and finding a public campsite just north on Rt. 89. The site wasn't much, but it was very close to the Park Cafe, which Ray Zee recommended to me when I posted for info here a couple months back. More importantly, the site was right behind a bar (I think it was called Kip's?), and we needed another night of ethanol-carbo-loading and pool-playing to see us off into the backcountry. We ate dinner at Two Sisters (they were out of chili) and had a subdued night of drinking at Kip's and playing pool with some firemen. We talked mostly about hiking and our past adventures; everyone was giddy to get on the trail.
Our first route was from the Chief Mountain trailhead at the Canadian border along the Belly River to Elizabeth Lake, then up to the Ptarmigan Tunnel, and back down to Many Glacier and out. We woke to rain on Sunday, packed up, and drove up to the border in a thick mist. It was so dense that we couldn't even see the Canadian border from the trailhead. Two days later, after we finished the route and he hitchiked back to the truck, Vaughn informed us that the border was only about 100 yards further up the road, plainly visible. We each took a nip from a bottle of Beam to warm us for the hike (it was about 45 degrees outside), and then hit the Belly River trail.
It rained on us steadily for the first 2 hours, but the meadows and wildflowers along the Belly River were absolutley beautiful. I wish we could have had some sunlight to get better pictures, but the low clouds hanging on the peaks around us had a muted, stately beauty of their own. We saw our first black bear just as we got down to the river bed. He was squatting in the middle of the trail 20 yards in front of us as we came around a bend, and took off into the brush as soon as he saw us. We got to the Gable Creek campground and set up camp, but it was too early in both the day and the trip to quit hiking. Full of energy and a desire to see as much as possible, we decided to day hike to Crosley Lake past a falls named after someone with an odd surname I don't remember. As we climbed out of the river valley we got a great view of the bucolic Belly River ranger station tucked in the corner of a meadow by the Gable Creek campground. We also saw our second black bear of the day, a bigger 250-pounder sitting about 20 yards off the trail. He was content to eat berries and watch us as we passed by.
We awoke Moday morning to clear blue skies, our first on the east side of the park. We had another short day of hiking, this time 6 miles to the head of Elizabeth lake. Other than the ranger station meadow and Mist Falls there wasn't a lot to see along the way because the trees were so thick. We got to Elizabeth Lake a little after noon, and got our first view of the crystal blue lakes surrounded by aretes that seem to be everywhere in the park. The lake was still being fed by a few smaller snow patches up in the rocks, and it seems like you can always hear the distant whisper of water cascading down the ridge faces wherever you go in Glacier. We set up camp and had enough daylight to hike to the Elizabeth Lake trail terminus at Helen Lake.
Helen Lake was indescribably picturesque. It sits in a cirque, so it is surrounded on 3 sides by sheer rock faces 3000 feet high, and its water, like all the water in the park, is clear and azure blue like the sky. None of us even took pictures of Helen Lake, it was just too big to take in with a camera. We sat at the edge of the lake, waited for the sun to slip behind the ridge catapulting above us, then headed back to Elizabeth Lake.
A friend we had made on the trail was a fly fisherman and also staying at Elizabeth Lake head. He pulled a couple rainbow trout out of the lake for us while we were day hiking. He told us he hooked about 60 fish in 3 hours, at one point catching a fish on 7 consecutive casts! We had to boil them, but the meat was sweet and tender; the taste of a fish taken from that cold blue water just an hour before is so superior to anything you get in a restaurant or at a supermarket that it's barely worth making the comparison. Anyway, it provided a nice counterpoint to our ramen noodles and mac'n'cheese.
Tuesday morning brought rain once again. It stopped long enough for us to break camp, but it continued to drizzle throughout the morning. This was our longest day of the trip. Thirteen miles, all with the packs on, up 2500 feet to the Ptarmigan tunnel and back down to Many Glacier. The brush was so wet that it was a welcome change to be on the exposed mountain side the last 2 miles to the tunnel. We ran into some day hikers from Many Glacier at the tunnel and one snapped a great shot of us, exhausted, with Elizabeth Lake behind us and a couple thousand feet below.
The view from the other side of the tunnel was almost as good, and the downhill trail was a lot better. We screamed back to Many Glacier, 6 miles in about 2.5 hours. As Vaughn hitched a ride back to the truck, the rest of us collapsed onto couches in the Many Glacier lodge and took in the alpine view of Swiftcurrent Lake through a row picture windows. We had done about 35 miles in 3 days.
Vaughn came back with the truck, and we headed straight to Two Sisters again and devoured dinner. This was naturally followed by a return to our drive-in campsite from Sunday, and more hard-earned Moose Drool at Kip's. We played poker-pool with some locals and more firemen, Vaughn won a $30 pot that had rolled over 3 times. The next day, Wednesday, we were scheduled to hit the trail again on the other side of the park.
Well, this has gotten very, very long, and I still have our second route along Bowman Lake up to Hole in the Wall to cover. Not to mention playing poker at the Bulldog bar in Whitefish after it was all done. That'll be saved for another post. First, I'll wait to see if anyone wades through this one, I suppose.
I'll do this again if/when I post the second half, but I have to thank Ray Zee and Ed I for their suggestions on backpacking routes, gear to bring, and local places to eat. You guys gave us an unforgettable trip. Neither words nor photographs do it justice...