For this hike I’m going to use the words I wrote after we completed our hike for the day. It captures the beginning of our Montana adventure:
20 Aug 08—Montana
We are sitting in a lounge at the Many Glacier Hotel, sitting in a comfortable chair for 2, looking out a rain storm rolls across the lake in front of us. The rain has been getting heavier as we watch. Penny has a cup of tea and I a cup of coffee. We are relaxing after a morning hike that fortunately did not go as planned. More on that later. First I will recount our trip out here.
19 Aug—Awakened at 3:20 AM by Brie. I’m beginning to believe Brie can sense when we have an alarm set and wake us 10 minutes before. Our bags were packed and already in Karen’s car (oh, we were in Jacksonville) so all we had to do was dress and go. Carrying nothing out to the car at the beginning of a trip was disconcerting for me—what was I forgetting? Karen drove us to the airport—such a nice daughter we have!
We already had our boarding passes so we went right to security and on to the gate. There is nothing eventful about the flight out. We had a 3-hour layover in Atlanta and since we would not be feed on the flight we took advantage of the airport to eat. Penny got a hot dog and I used the opportunity to have frozen yogurt (Hey, this IS vacation mode!).
We carried on all our bags and it worked well. Upon deplaning at Kalispell we found a woman holding a white board with our name on it. Dollar Rent-a-Car didn’t have a booth at the airport so they used this method. It reminded us of our trip to Italy. Unlike Italy where they misspelled Feagins, Dollar got the spelling correct.
A van took us to the little Dollar lot a couple of miles up the road. There check-in was relaxed and personal. The woman who handled our paperwork had only us to deal with. She was very forthcoming with local information pulling out maps and markers and outlining things we might want to see and do. She even offered to dig up some insect repellent “leftovers” for us to save us some money. I had to decide whether I wanted to add a window damage protection option on the car. She said 1 in 3 cars end up with some damage due to stones and pebbles. I declined.
We ate our real first meal of the day at a Pizza Hut in Columbia Falls, MT before entering the park. When we reached the entrance to the park there were about half-a-dozen tourist enterprises just outside the park feeding on the tourists and hikers. Each had the word glacier somewhere in their name.
Once inside the park we stopped at the first visitor center on the Going-to-the-Sun Road at Lake Mcdonald. There we got maps and talked with a ranger about the hiking trails. The visitor center provided our first good view of the mountains—a nice preview of things to come.
20 Aug 08—Montana
We are sitting in a lounge at the Many Glacier Hotel, sitting in a comfortable chair for 2, looking out a rain storm rolls across the lake in front of us. The rain has been getting heavier as we watch. Penny has a cup of tea and I a cup of coffee. We are relaxing after a morning hike that fortunately did not go as planned. More on that later. First I will recount our trip out here.
19 Aug—Awakened at 3:20 AM by Brie. I’m beginning to believe Brie can sense when we have an alarm set and wake us 10 minutes before. Our bags were packed and already in Karen’s car (oh, we were in Jacksonville) so all we had to do was dress and go. Carrying nothing out to the car at the beginning of a trip was disconcerting for me—what was I forgetting? Karen drove us to the airport—such a nice daughter we have!
We already had our boarding passes so we went right to security and on to the gate. There is nothing eventful about the flight out. We had a 3-hour layover in Atlanta and since we would not be feed on the flight we took advantage of the airport to eat. Penny got a hot dog and I used the opportunity to have frozen yogurt (Hey, this IS vacation mode!).
We carried on all our bags and it worked well. Upon deplaning at Kalispell we found a woman holding a white board with our name on it. Dollar Rent-a-Car didn’t have a booth at the airport so they used this method. It reminded us of our trip to Italy. Unlike Italy where they misspelled Feagins, Dollar got the spelling correct.
A van took us to the little Dollar lot a couple of miles up the road. There check-in was relaxed and personal. The woman who handled our paperwork had only us to deal with. She was very forthcoming with local information pulling out maps and markers and outlining things we might want to see and do. She even offered to dig up some insect repellent “leftovers” for us to save us some money. I had to decide whether I wanted to add a window damage protection option on the car. She said 1 in 3 cars end up with some damage due to stones and pebbles. I declined.
We ate our real first meal of the day at a Pizza Hut in Columbia Falls, MT before entering the park. When we reached the entrance to the park there were about half-a-dozen tourist enterprises just outside the park feeding on the tourists and hikers. Each had the word glacier somewhere in their name.
Once inside the park we stopped at the first visitor center on the Going-to-the-Sun Road at Lake Mcdonald. There we got maps and talked with a ranger about the hiking trails. The visitor center provided our first good view of the mountains—a nice preview of things to come.
The Going-to-the-Sun Road is full of wonderful scenic views. One area has a switchback with a steep drop-off. Penny was OK when the drop-off was on my side but not when it was on her side. She kept reminding me of the speed limit.
As I wrote in my last Montana blog the power was out when we arrived at the hotel. That meant the restaurants weren’t serving food. We were glad we ate before we got there.
We both had experienced a long day and went to bed at 8:30 Mountain Time—we both slept well.
Back to Aug 20th—so how did we end up here watching the rain sweep over the mountain and across the lake? The day looked promising at sunrise. It was mostly cloudy with the sun tinting the cloud bottoms pink.
We had cereal in the room for breakfast—breakfast in bed. We decided we felt good enough to try a longer hike today. We chose a ranger-lead hike up to Grinnel Glacier—2 miles of boat ride followed by 4 or so miles up to the glacier. At the end of the boat ride we saw our first wildlife—2 moose grazing in shallow water across the lake.
The hike began with relatively easy level trail around the end of Lake Josephine. Then came a killer switch back—steep and long. About ¾ of the way up Penny said “I can’t do this”, and sat down. I was quite winded myself. We hadn’t adjusted to the thinner air and since it had begun to rain we were in our rain gear and getting overheated. The rest of the group reached the point where the trail leveled out and they rested while the ranger gave a talk about the lakes we had crossed. Penny and I joined the group for the talk and the rest was good.
We continued about a ¼ mile more—going up at a lesser incline but it was just too much for us city slickers. We stopped—let the group go on and decided to turn around and make the mostly level 2-mile hike back to the hotel.
Just the 2 of us hiking at our own pace was much more enjoyable. We set our own pace, took pictures between rain showers, and made plenty of noise to prevent us from surprising any grizzlies. We were in prime grizzly country.
We found a nice rock just off the trail with a wonderful view of the lake to sit on, rest and have water and a snack.
Just up ahead on the trail we saw some hikers gathering and pointing up on the mountain. There was a grizzly slowly climbing over the mountain. It was quite distant and was basically a moving brown spot on the mountain.
The trail continued around the shores of the 2 lakes. It rained on and off. We even saw a little sunlight.
About ½ mile from the hotel the main storm caught up with us and we had a patch of heavy rain. We sheltered in a small building we happened upon just at the right time. We made it back to the hotel in pretty good shape. Our rain gear worked
Once back in the hotel we got some info on the red bus and went down to the lounge and grabbed the open sofa. That’s how we got here.
Now we’ve been sitting here for almost 3 hours watching the weather deteriorate. We can see the glacier we were supposed to be hiking too from here—well we could—the rain is so heavy now it has obliterated the view. It looks as if there are no mountains out there.
We made it back here just before the real heavy rain began. We are hunkered down for the day, enjoying watching the nasty weather and knowing that if we had continued with the glacier hike we might now have been 6 miles away in the wind-driven torrent of rain still having to make our way back. In other words instead of being dry and warm we would have been miserable.
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