Saturday, October 4, 2008

Backpack Trip

I had a chance to backpack in glacier finally (not counting packing food into Quartz Lake each week). The trip started out with me not getting on the trail till 6pm, on account of needing to bike 20 miles on dirt roads to drop my car at one trailhead and my bike at another. So by the time I hiked the 7 miles to my first campground, it was dark, and raining. Starting hikes at 6 is clearly a bad idea. Then, my stove didn't work, and I had to (sort of) cook my dinner on the coals of another camper's dying fire.

The next day, I was hiking alone when I see a party below me at Brown Pass waving. So I waved back. And then realized that they weren't getting my attention to say "hello", but to say "can you see the big grizzly bear on the trail ahead of you?"
But these interesting situations aside, it was a lovely trip, I got to camp in an amazing hanging glacial valley with views of this mountain, thunderbird peak, and met some nice hikers with a backpacking oven that made blueberry muffins on trail.

And I carried my sweater vest almost 30 miles so that I could wear it on sweater vest friday, while crossing Boulder Pass.

And of course, on the way out I stopped at Polebridge to get cookies. Just look at this sign they have... "slow down, people breathing?" it might as well say "notice: hippie commune ahead"

Polebridge has many stray dogs running around that try to steal your sandwiches. This sad one has three legs.

3 comments:

Michelle said...

I can't believe you forgot the cheese... The views look amazing though.

Unknown said...

Awesome pix!

Jewels said...

Wow Jan, you're really roughing it, yet you had the where-with-all to have yourself photographed on sweater vest Friday with a sweater vest on. That is no small accomplishment!