So I haven't submitted an update for the last almost 4 months. I'm going to try to do a series of blogs that should have been done before to make amends. I'll start with Glacier National Park ...Once upon a time in the summer ...
My friends and I first started hiking when I was 18 years old. You could call it hiking - I guess - and our first experience was a near-death experience in Shenandoah National Park that involved 7 waterfalls, rain, ice, bears, a deer that looked like a sign and a 25+ mile hike that was supposed to be 5 miles long. And being rescued by a Virginia lesbian couple who had a "Virginia is for Lovers" bumper sticker on their car. Classic trip. Despite nearly dying, we were stupid enough to continue hiking and returned to Glacier National Park to risk death yet again.
I flew from Austin to Kalispell, Montana, where I rented a car and stayed with Tobin and Molly in their plush new house. It was odd sleeping and waking up without Anderson wandering around in the morning. We went to breakfast and Tobin and Molly (whom I know from Vermont ... Tobin and I did our internship, residency and fellowships together ... and I like to take credit for setting the two of them up.) After this, I bought some gear - including bear spray - to get ready for the hike. I then rushed to the Glacier Backcountry Office to make reservations for the hike before picking up my friend Matt from Houston. There is where the first mistake was realized ... I'd forgotten my passport and would be unable to cross the Canadian border, which was part of our planned itinerary. As the Canucks have been cracking down on Americans who wanted to steal their moose, I was left in a bit of a dilemma: Should I get a permit for the original itinerary and risk getting stuck at the border or should I paln a different route and ruin the plans of my friends? Hmmm ... me stuck in the cold or my friends inconvenienced ...
So the new route avoided crossing the border. I drove to the airport in Kalispell and picked up Matt, subsequently informing him that his leisurely vacation hike was about to be replaced by a significantly harder route. We called Mike, who was driving in from Calgary, where he'd flown into, and told him that we screwed him over. Oh ... and since I couldn't get into Canada, the first night of staying in a Canadian hotel was changed to a 3 mile climb to a random campsite in Glacier. Time to try out the gear ...
We started the uphill Bataan Death March (okay, it wasn't that bad) to the campsite and made it to a mosquito-infested site before the sun went completely down. Matt was cursing me out, saying that he missed watching Canadian ESPN, which likely had curling highlights in their "top 10 plays of the day". Still, most of the stuff worked and we managed to survive the night.
In the morning, we woke up and decided to only snack, as cooking would have involved effort. Knowing that we would be meeting Mike in a different part of the park, we were in a bit of a hurry ... we didn't want to keep the all-important CFO (Mike is the chief financial officer of a law firm and we endlessly make fun of him because of his title) waiting. So we started hiking down the trail to the car when a guy ahead of us casually mentions that he'd recently passed a bear ("I think it's a black bear", he claimed) on the trail.
Surprisingly, this didn't throw us off too much. We continued hiking and stopped at a trail junction for a break and snack.
"Crllack. Crllack."
Luckily, the aforementioned bear sauntered up and decided he was going to take a break as well and was headed directly toward us. We hastily put on our packs and wandered down the trail, me with my bear spray in hand and Matt, with his bear spray packed in his backpack. My philosphy on bear spray is that it's a nuiscence for the bear. To truly gain the upper hand in bear encounters, my idea is to grab the bear spray and turn it on myself. That way, the bear knows that if you're crazy enough to harm yourself, there's no telling what you'll do to them. And then they leave you alone.
Matt and I, at a different point in the hike.Mike was rested after spending the night in a Canadian hotel and had clearly spent his morning watching Canadian ESPN. He knew all of the Brett Favre updates (Brett Favre was mulling coming out of retirement) and seemed well versed in the finer details of the National Hockey League. We despised him for his night of good sleep and drove to the trailhead. Our 5 day hike would start at Packer's Roost and eventually take us to Stoney Indian Pass, Mokowanis Lake, Elizabeth Lake and eventually through Ptarmigan Tunnel and back to Many Glacier, where Mike's car would eventually take us the hell out of the park.
By the end of a hike - no matter how impressive the scenery - we always want to get the hell out of the park.
After backtracking in the car for about an hour and a half, we begrudgingly left the car and any hope of Brett Favre updates behind and started the hike.
The first day we saw a mother moose and her calves, but our nemesis was a group of rather aggressive deer, who decided that the campsite was theirs and that anything that was there was for the taking. This was one of them, and I unfortunately don't have a picture of the one that grabbed Matt's boot (and ran with it for about 75 feet with us in the chase group.
Evil deer.
Me and the CFO (oddly, none of his "people" are in the shot)
http://www.sonicuke.com/index1.php
Finally, a picture of the three of us ...
Next trip is likely Maui because Matt's a wuss ...
