A Week with Dad

Well, tell us how your trip went. We all want to hear about your special experience.

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A Week with Dad

Post by NDjason »

With Tim already posting a trip report, I figure I should get started at some point! Although it will probably take me a while to get through it.

After a few years away, I finally got a chance to return to Glacier this summer. This time, I convinced my dad to join me. For him, this trip would mark a lot of firsts - including his first trip to Glacier and his first ever backpacking trip. I had originally gotten him to commit to a 4-5 day trip, but then when I started filling out advance permit applications I got a little greedy and kept adding days. We ended up with a pretty great itinerary (UPK-HOL-FRA-KOO-FIF-GRN), but it was definitely going to be a rough introduction to backpacking coming from East Texas. But since he is a college soccer referee and is much better shape than me, I figured we could make it.

Day 1: Sunday, Aug 13th
We were scheduled to fly from Houston to Kalispell on Sunday, August 13th - so needless to say the Spraugue fire (and the subsequent hold on issuing backcountry permits) caused some considerable stress, a flurry of last minute backup planning, and thoughts of cancelling the trip. But we decided to go for it and see what happened. Our flights from Houston to Seattle and Seattle to Kalispell were uneventful, save for some rough air due to a big storm system pushing through Washington and into the Kalispell area during our flight. Upon arriving, we had just enough time to pick up our luggage and throw it into the rental car before the rain started falling. Considering how dry it had been, we took it as a good sign. Our plan for the first evening was to stock up on some food and supplies, so we took a trip up to Whitefish and were delighted to discover a Huckleberry festival in progress. Despite the rain, we found some huckleberry treats and explored the downtown area. We were really lucky to catch Pete on a free evening and met up for dinner at Craggy Mountain for some good burgers and better conversation. I had the pleasure of meeting Pete several years ago (maybe 2010?), and love to see his posts on the page, so it was great to catch up in person. At dinner, he gave us some advice on the current road conditions heading up to Kintla. Dad and I decided we'd try to get a really early start (after staying in Kalispell that night) to head up to Kintla and grab a site before it filled up the next morning.

As a side note - I am a frequent Marriott user for business travel and have racked up a pretty impressive number of hotel points. A few weeks ago, my wife and I were planning a trip to Miami and looking at hotels. Online prices were in the $120-200/night range, but booking on points would take anywhere from 120,000-200,000 points! Spring Hill Suites in Kalispell, by contrast, was in the $250/night range, but cost only 7,000 points. That was an easy decision.

Day 2: Monday, August 14th
We had originally planned on staying on the east side at Johnson's to do some day hiking this first day, but as the date approached and Kintla was filling up EVERY day, we made a decision to try to get a site there as soon as possible. Since we were planning on Tim and Laura dropping us off on the trailhead the day before we were scheduled to start, we figured we really needed to have a site secured. So at 6am, we left our hotel and headed up to Kintla. Our trip was pretty uneventful and the road was actually in much much better shape than I had imagined. When we got to the Polebridge ranger station, we stopped and talked to the ranger. She shared the fantastic news that the park had resumed issuing permits that morning before we continued on up to Kintla. Along the way, we started thinking and made the decision we'd grab a site and then head back to the ranger station to try to modify our permit and add an extra night (on the front end) at Kintla Head. This way, we could get our permit today and not have to worry that the park would stop issuing permits again the next day.

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When we got to the lake at 8:30am, we were amazed to find that only one camp site was empty. We quickly snagged it, filled out the paper, and set up a tent. While we were setting things up, we did see a few other groups that were potentially packing up, but there was not going to be many more sites available. Glad we took Pete's advice and got there early! We loaded back up and headed back to Polebridge. IWe started counting cars going up to Kintla while we drove back down and lost count somewhere around 20. We made it to the ranger station by 10:30am and went to talk to the ranger. She was very helpful, but told us the only way we could change the start date would be to cancel the entire itinerary and try to rebook before the sites were taken. Given that the park hadn't given permits out for 5 days and that the ranger had at least 12 cars enter in the 10 minutes we were talking, I had visions of our permit being cancelled and being swooped up by someone else. So we decided to pass and instead head to Apgar. I've had luck there before with rangers working magic.

We got into Apgar and lucked out by walking into an empty backcountry office just before a line started forming. The rangers there were super helpful and said they could double book all of the sites (with an added night at Kintla Head) and then cancel our original itinerary AFTER we had the new permit in hand. This sounded much better. So yep, we did it and turned our 6 nighter into 7 nights. After watching the new video (much improved!) and grabbing our permit, we drove over to Fish Creek. I had made backup reservations for two nights on the chance we couldn't get into Kintla. While the cancellation policy didn't look too friendly, we felt with the crunch on available camp sites, they may be able to use it. The ranger at the gate was very happy to have an extra site and, amazingly, gave me a complete refund. Sometimes being a good Samaritan pays off! After that, we headed over to the picnic area and had a great lunch. Just before we finished, it started pouring so we had to make a mad dash to get to the car. We headed back around the lake and towards Avalanche. Knowing how rough parking has been, I wasn't anticipating much, but as we pulled up, a car pulled right out by the trailhead and we decided to park. We walked the Trail of the Cedars while it continued to rain, but decided to continue on up the road instead of heading up to the lake.

We ended up driving up as far as the Loop (while it continued to rain) where we again were lucky enough to pull right into another parking spot. While the Loop trail is certainly not too much to talk about, it has special meaning to me as the group here on this site was so generous in planting a memorial grove of trees after the passing of my first wife in 2008. As we headed toward the bridge, we passed a few hikers who said there was a black bear playing in the stream at the bridge (which was less than 100 feet away). By the time we got there, we couldn't find it anywhere. This would be the start of a theme as we were constantly passing people who had seen bears, but never had a sighting in 10 days. Anyways, when we planted the trees a few years ago, I had marked several with small orange (the ribbon color for leukemia) ribbons. In subsequent trips, I've always searched and managed to find at least one of the trees. But with the rapid growth of the forest in recent years, I wasn't able to locate any. It was kind of soothing, in an odd sort of way. Life goes on, I guess. I'll continue to return in the future and will remember planting her trees, but this will be the last time I ever try finding them.

After the Loop, we headed to Apgar and enjoyed a decent dinner at Eddies before driving back to Kintla just in time to try our luck with a little fishing and catch a sunset. With the wind picking up, we didn't manage any fish, but it was a good day.

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~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by Heff936 »

Love hearing the details of your trip and looking forward to more. I understand your feelings on not finding any of the trees. I'd love to hear more about your Dad's thoughts on the trip. I think my Dad would have loved the backcountry of GNP if he had started visiting the parks as a younger person.
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by NDjason »

Heff936 wrote:Love hearing the details of your trip and looking forward to more. I understand your feelings on not finding any of the trees. I'd love to hear more about your Dad's thoughts on the trip. I think my Dad would have loved the backcountry of GNP if he had started visiting the parks as a younger person.
Tim - He's got a lot of pictures, maybe I can convince him to add some commentary and pictures from the trip!
~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by davidwayne »

I'm looking forward to the rest of your report! I love father/son trips like this :)
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Re: A Week with Dad

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(I just hit submit a few minutes ago after spending over an hour typing up a post, but then it disappeared. So starting over....)

Day 3: Tuesday, August 15th

Our original plan for the day was to head to spend the morning dayhiking before heading to Columbia Falls to pick up Tim and Laura. Even though we'd modified our trip to start a day early (today), we decided we'd still like to head up to Logan Pass. So we woke up while it was still dark and hopped in the car for the drive. According to the Kia, it was 42 F at the campground, but it dropped to 32 F along the road to Polebridge. The heat was definitely on!

We made pretty good time on the way to to Logan Pass and managed to miss all of the road construction, but I was still surprised by the number of people already on the road. By the time we made it to Logan Pass, it was 8:15 and the lot was already filling up. We parked and hit the boardwalk to head up to the overlook. While Logan Pass is frequently crowded, I still think it's one of the most beautiful parts of the park. Especially with the wildflowers in bloom and the streams of water running down the hillsides. But it was easy to see it had been a dry summer. While there was still a blanket of flowers, it wasn't anything like I'd seen in the past.

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We were hoping to see some wildlife on the way up, but despite our best efforts we weren't having any luck. At the overlook, we did manage to spot a few goats a few hundreds yards down the slope, but the normal goat brigade was no where to be seen. So we continued on down the trail toward the lake to see if we could spot anything up on the slopes or down in the meadows. Again, no luck, so we decided to head back down to the visitor center. Along the way, we did finally spot a bighorn laying down in the rocks a hundred yards or so above the trail up towards Oberlin. After watching for a while and pointing him out to a few families with kids that were hiking with binoculars, we made our way back to the parking lot.

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As we still had some time before we needed to head out, we decided to hike out down the Highline trail for a bit. We crossed the road and worked down to the rimrock section of the trail. Along the way, we ran across another bighorn who was making some pretty good time heading west towards the bend in the road. It was pretty cool to watch him cross the road and head straight up the cliffs so effortlessly.

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By the time we made it back to the parking lot, it was getting close to the time we needed to head out. So on the way to the car, I saw an elderly gentleman in a minivan who had obviously dropped off his family and was circling for a spot. As there were what seemed like 50+ cars circling, it didn't look likely that he was going to have much luck, so I tapped on his window and told him where we were parked. He made his way over with his blinker on and then we headed to the car. Along the way, a few other cars started following me, so when I backed out, I made sure to block the others off so he could get in. Then it was back down the hill towards West Glacier. Along the way, we did get stuck in a long construction delay, but we still made pretty good time.

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On our way out of the park, Dad decided he wanted to look into upgrading my sleeping pad and pillow combination that he was using. I'm a pretty cheap guy, so most of my stuff I pick up when it hits clearance at REI or some other discount site. So my REI 1.5" Air Rail and Thermarest pillow were not what some would consider luxury equipment. Since we were slightly ahead of schedule, we headed to Sportman and Ski Haus in Whitefish. They had a pretty good selection which we spent way too much time looking at. Ultimately, dad made the decision to grab a second pillow and a pillow case. By stuffing both pillows in the pillow case, it would give the loft needed to be more comfortable. Since we were now running late, it was a quick stop by Subway for some sandwiches and then on to pick up Tim and Laura!

I've had the pleasure of knowing Tim and Laura for about 10 years now and have always loved spending time with them. So it was great to be stuck in a car for a few hours to catch up. I'm not sure there was more than a few seconds of silence the entire way back to Kintla. Our plan was for Tim and Laura to ride with us to Kintla, then hand over the keys and they would take the car for a few days and ultimately leave it at Many Glacier for us. As we'd both be backpacking into Many on the same day, we agreed to meet at 2pm on the steps of the camp store at Swiftcurrent in one week.

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We made it back to Kintla by 4pm and said some quick goodbyes and good lucks before Tim and Laura were off on their adventure. We proceeded to pack up our tent and make final preparations for our trip. By the way, before I forget, we had some real adventures with my tent. I've been using an REI Quarterdome T3 for years and it's always been great. But this year, it literally fell apart. It started the first time we set it up. It seemed like the rainfly had melted. We had to carefully peel it apart to spread it over the tent. Inside the tent, it also looked like all of the seam seals had dried out and were turning to dust. I suspect this is from storing it in my garage in the hot Texas sun. Believe me, the first thing I did when I got home was take the rest of my tents and gear out of the garage and into my house. The first night, one of the zippers failed. Later on our trip, the second zipper would go. Then all of the velcro on the fly that attaches to the poles came off. By the time we finished, my tent was barely holding on. I promptly threw out the rainfly (kept the tent for the kids to play with in the backyard). Anyways, back to the story.

We finally hit the trail around 5:30pm to head to KIN. 6 miles, flat trail, no problem. Turns out we had drastically overestimated our hiking fitness. We quickly found ourselves struggling under the weight of our packs and spent a lot of time trying to get the load adjusted properly to be comfortable. Another aside - this was the first time hiking with these packs. I'd used an Arc'Teryx Acrux for years, but since my dad was joining me this year, I needed to get a second pack. While checking eBay, I saw that my old pack was selling used for over $400! I decided that was a decent exchange since I'd paid less than $140 almost 7 years earlier. So I sold it and bought two brand new Gregory Baltoro 65L packs. Being the first time I'd ever hiked with it, it definitely took a while to get it dialed in.

We made it about half way to the campground before we ran into our first wildlife - a skunk. It crossed our trail about 30 feet in front of us and, while I've had close encounters with bears and moose before, I don't know that I've ever been more nervous while hiking. I had visions of getting sprayed and smelling like a skunk for the next 8 days in the backcountry. Luckily, it didn't have much interest in us and the little guy scurried away down the trail and then disappeared down the hill towards the lake. It ended up taking us a long time to get to the campground. We hiked in just as it was getting dark and quickly hung our food while the other campers were finishing dinner and wine hour. We quickly set up camp in the dark before heading back to the food prep area. We managed to do dinner with headlamps, and then exhausted, headed straight to bed. I will admit I was already wondering if we'd bit off more than we could chew with the struggles we'd had that day on the trail.
~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

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Day 4: Wednesday, August 16th

This was originally going to be our first day on the permit. So we had planned on waking up at the Kintla frontcountry campground and hiking to UPK. It was a pretty good thing we added the extra night to split up the first day, because I think 11.6 miles would have been trouble on our first day. Luckily, we only had 5 miles to do today now.

So with how exhausted we were the previous night, we both had a pretty good nights sleep and woke up feeling pretty well. We had breakfast with the rest of the campers (the campground was full - half had kayaked in, the other half were moving on with the same first three nights as us (KIN, UPK, HOL). So it was great to get to know the different groups we'd be hanging out with for a few days. In the middle of breakfast, we saw some fish rising just offshore. So I grabbed a pole and threw a couple spinners from the shore. I managed to land 4 small (6-7") cutthroat in a few minutes, but couldn't cast out far enough to get into anything of any real size. After finishing breakfast, we took our time packing up. While loading up our food in the prep area, a volunteer ranger hiked in. He checked our permits and we talked for a bit. He had been sent in to look for some rouge hikers who had hiked in without a permit. The rumors were that they had vandalized some signs as well as some markers in the campground and he was there to investigate. After telling him we hadn't seen anything, we headed out towards UPK.

Again, we continued to struggle with our packs. I couldn't seem to get mine up high enough and it kept slipping down onto my butt which was quite painful. So we took our time and took a lot of breaks to enjoy the scenery, eat some snacks, and pull out the compass and map and sight peaks and mountains. Eventually, it took us a solid 5+ hours to get into camp at UPK and were again exhausted. We headed straight to the food prep area and ate some lunch. After a bit, we started feeling a little better and set up camp. After getting the tent set up, we walked down to the beach and enjoyed most of the afternoon by soaking up some sun and sighting glaciers and peaks.

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Since we at least beat the sun this time, we were able to enjoy dinner with the rest of the camp. This is always one of my favorite parts of backpacking - I don't know that I've ever met someone I didn't like while backpacking. Anyways, there were three groups in camp that night that were continuing on to HOL the next day, so we had a good time getting to know each other. One of the groups (from Florida) had planned a trip to Banff, but due to the fires had to make new plans on the fly. They lucked out with a 4 night KIN, UPK, HOL, BOW trip. They also had a 10L gravity filter that they were kind enough to hang in the food prep area and share with everyone. I've been using the same Hiker Pro for 10 years, and it works great while on the trail, but it can get annoying when you need to pump water before/after every meal. So thanks, guys!

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After dinner, we headed back down to the lake to watch the sunset. With the smoke to the west, we were consistently treated to some great sunsets. So this would only be the first of many.

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Shortly after sunset, we headed off to bed for the night. Since I typically don't get great sleep on the trail, I brought along some Unisom and took one. This was a good idea and proved to be the routine for the rest of the trip.
~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by Heff936 »

Thoroughly enjoying your report. I think it's awesome that you got to share this experience with your Dad. I'm also impressed that he would agree to tackle the route on his first ever backpack trip. I'm still kind of amazed at how the logistics all worked out for us on this trip and how easily it came together.
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by Jay w »

It's good to see that someone else starts a trip without checking their gear. My one backpacking trip started with brand new boots, and I literally pulled my gear off the shelves and threw it on the floor (meaning--take it). Forget something? Probably.

It just seems like that's life sometimes.

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Re: A Week with Dad

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Jay w wrote:It's good to see that someone else starts a trip without checking their gear. My one backpacking trip started with brand new boots, and I literally pulled my gear off the shelves and threw it on the floor (meaning--take it). Forget something? Probably.

It just seems like that's life sometimes.

Jay
Jay - the funny part was I had checked everything! Except I had checked it all a month or two before leaving... I guess that's the problem with being so excited for a trip. I had gotten so antsy that I started packing up my gear at least 8 weeks early!

When I had checked the tent in June, I didn't see any of the issues that we ran into on the trail
~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

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Day 5: Thursday. August 17th

We woke up early knowing that we had our longest day yet. As we hadn't been averaging much more than 1.5 miles/hr on our relatively short/flat days, I think we both were a little worried about what today would look like. Knowing we had 10+ miles, +3000 feet, and -1000 feet, I took on the some extra weight (we'd been splitting the tent and a few other small items). After a packing up our site and eating a quick breakfast, we hit the trail around 8:30am. There was another group that started about 30 minutes before us, also headed to Hole in the Wall. We would later learn they spotted a black bear just a few hundred yards down the trail snacking on some of the wild raspberries. But again, we didn't see or hear anything.

We started out a little faster than we'd been going the two previous days. I think this was likely because we were starting to get our legs and had had a pretty good night of sleep. Also, I think this was about the time we finally started getting the packs dialed in. It doesn't take long after leaving UPK before the climb begins - and it doesn't stop until you hit Boulder Pass. But unlike the previous two days, this hike started getting above the trees and some beautiful views of Kinnerly, Kintla and Peabody start opening up.

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The great views gave us a lot of great opportunities for breaks (with the excuse of "I need to get a picture of that"). While I won't say we were making good time, we certainly seemed to be powering through much better than we had on either of our previous days. Somewhere around 1/2 to the pass, we passed two rangers headed down. One of the rangers was on duty and she asked to check our permits again. The other was off duty and out of uniform - I think she was just tagging along for the hike. I think they had said they had camped at Boulder the night before. I got the impression they were also looking for the same rouge hikers that we had heard about the day before.

As we got closer and closer to the pass, the berries started to disappear and were replaced with some beautiful wildflowers. When we thought we were getting close (only 100 more feet of elevation, we said over and over), we finally decided to stop for a lunch break. For the 20 minutes or so before this, we had kept thinking "the pass must be just over that next rise." It turned out, we really did stop about 100 yards before the pass. But it was a beautiful spot with some rocks in the warm sun, great views, and a carpet of wildflowers.

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After we reshouldered our packs and started hiking again, we reached the top in just a few minutes. This was my first time in this part of the park. So I've heard from many that the stretch from Boulder to Francis was the most beautiful trail in the park. It certainly didn't disappoint. We had been warned when picking our permits that there were several snowfields in the area that could be dangerous, but it seemed like everything had melted out by the time we got there. Now that the worst of the climb was over, we started feeling pretty good. We enjoyed the trail and the view as we passed the Boulder campground and circled around and under Boulder Glacier.

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When we finally switched drainages and started heading down towards the small lake/tarn above and to the west of Hole in the Wall, we decided to take another break and enjoy the sites. I really loved this part of the hike and we both found some flat rocks that made for great places to soak up the sun.

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We saw several other groups of hikers in this area. Most were up in the area on dayhikes from Bowman head. I think this was the first time we had run into anyone that had some strange permits/hikes. We would meet many people in the next 5 days that had even less luck on their permits, but everyone was in a good mood and enjoying the beautiful day. Eventually, we decided we needed to keep moving as we had no idea how far it was to HOL. It didn't take long before we could overlook the hanging valley and actually see the campground - but we could also see that we needed to go what looked like another 2 miles to get to the trail that dropped in.

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The hike around the cirque was breathtaking. In all of the years I've been to Glacier, I've never seen that much beargrass. Unfortunately, none of it was in bloom, but I can only imagine what it had looked like earlier in the year. But even with the drought, the flowers and Thunderbird were still impressive. We ran out of water around the north end of the cirque and again took a good break to pump/refill our bottles to last us until we made it to camp.

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After 10 hours, we made it into camp. We were the second to last group in for the day and ended up about an hour behind the group that left UPK before us. All in all, we did pretty well, considering the number and length of breaks we took. We again dropped of our food and then set up camp before exploring a bit and taking in the sights. At dinner that night, we met a fantastic couple from the Martin City/Hungry Horse area. They had come down to the food prep area when people started assembling. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a while while we cooked our dinner. After we finished cooking, they asked if they might ask a favor - they had left their backpacking stove at home by accident and had no way to cook their food. They had fuel, just no stove. We gladly let them borrow our Jetboil and they started cooking. This was actually the first time I had ever brought the Jetboil on a backcountry trip for me - I purchased it on a whim last year when I saw a good deal. Because I hate to trust anything I haven't used before (and apparently am a sucker for trusting things I have...), I had actually packed a second stove - my old Pocket Rocket, as a backup. I told them I had a backup stove (at which point I thought the wife may slap her husband for not bring even a primary stove!) and they were welcome to bring it. At first, they said no thanks, they could continue to borrow a stove each day as they continued their hike, but after a minute, they decided it would be much easier to be able to cook when they wanted and not depend on having another couple in their campsite (they were at Janet the next night). I happened to have a business card in my wallet, so I gave it to him and said to just mail it back when they got home.

I think they were a little surprised that I was willing to take a risk on them mailing it back, but in all the years I've backpacked (and particular in Glacier) I've found that the people you cross paths with on the trail seem to be of a certain caliber - the kind of people that I would be friends with, the kind I would trust, and the kind that respect others. So it never occurred to me that someone wouldn't mail it back. It turns out we would cross paths with this couple again on our adventure. At any rate, we again enjoyed a great dinner with great company before heading back to our tent for a great nights sleep.

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~ jason
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by missguinness »

I love all your pictures! Especially the ones with you and your dad. I agree that people you meet in the back country and by and large great people. Please do get your dad to add his pictures!
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by tibber »

but in all the years I've backpacked (and particular in Glacier) I've found that the people you cross paths with on the trail seem to be of a certain caliber - the kind of people that I would be friends with, the kind I would trust, and the kind that respect others.
Such a nice thing to say and based on my hiking and backpacking and chaleting in GNP, I'd say you were right. Anyway, it was very kind what you did.

Your pictures are great as is your storytelling. That was a long day you had and it sounds like you did just fine for such a tough hike.
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Re: A Week with Dad

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Day 6: Friday, August 18th

We were moving from HOL to FRA today, so knowing we had a very easy day we were not the first group to be up and about. Too bad, as one of the other groups reportedly saw a grizzly sow and cub coming down the slopes into the Hole in the Wall cirque. But again, by the time we were up, it was nowhere to be found. We weren't too late, however, to enjoy breakfast with everyone - including the couple I had lent my spare stove to. While we continued chatting over breakfast, they asked if we had brought any fishing equipment, to which we answered yes. They then proceeded to tell us how great the fishing at Francis had been the day before. This got us both excited as, while not avid fisherman, we really do enjoy it and had both packed in spinning rods and a few spinners and spoons.

We took our time at breakfast before packing up camp and then headed on towards Francis. As we hiked out of the cirque, we took several short breaks to enjoy the views and watch for the bears that had been seen earlier that morning. But again, no luck on bear sightings. About the time we met up with the main trail and headed around the bend towards the section with the cliffs, we passed our first of a several groups of hikers. They had all heard of the bears near HOL, but we had to say we hadn't seen any. Several of them again mentioned the fishing after seeing the pole strapped to my pack. I have to say, the hike from HOL over to the Brown Pass junction was really beautiful too. We did find a large patch of huckleberries that hadn't really been touched, so we were moving pretty slowly as we ate berries by the handful. At one point, I was trying to reach a ways off the trail to get to a particularly loaded busch and, as I stood back up, the line on my fishing pole (which was lashed to the side of my pack) got tangled on a dried out stalk of beargrass. It pulled taught before snapping back and hitting me, which really surprised me for a minute and nearly caused me to fall down. But after cleaning up the broken line, we continued along, eating more berries.

Somewhere along the trail we sighted a rather large patch of beargrass that was still in bloom. As we literally had not seen more than one or two stalks in bloom near each other the entire trip, I was excited for my dad to get his glimpse of it. Thinking back, I still can't believe how many beargrass stalks we saw while hiking - just none of it was in bloom. I'm sure people who were fortunate enough to hike there earlier in the year were treated to some beautiful views. We finally reached the beargrass and took the time to take some photos and eat some more berries.

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Almost immediately after taking this last photo, we ran into our first trouble of the season. Dad had just started hiking along and was still working on the straps of his poles when his toe caught a rock sticking out from the edge of the trail. Without the poles to catch himself (and really just getting caught in the beargrass to prevent him from catching his balance more quickly), he took a pretty big tumble, hitting a few rocks as he rolled over. After landing pretty awkwardly on his hip, we were careful getting back up and took the pack off for a few minutes. His hip was bruised pretty well, but after stretching it out a bit, we loaded back up and started hiking. But heading downhill with the pack and the bruised hip was causing a bit of pain and we had a lot more downhill to do as we were getting really close to the trail junction. In general, I think downhill was the most problematic for him anyways. He had an ACL tear back in the early 90s (before the advent of arthroscopic surgery) which, combined with being 66, leads to it being difficult to really extend his leg too far. So going downhill meant a lot of short steps and a slow hike.

But we continued down the switchbacks, again eating a ton of berries as we went. With all of the berries, I really expected that there must be bears all over the place. But we didn't so much as see any scat. Eventually we reached Thunderbird pond and stopped to have some lunch. We'd carried in a block of cheddar which was not only getting heavy, but was also reaching its end of life, so we ate some cheese and crackers as a late morning snack. There was another solo hiker eating lunch there as well and we talked for a good 45 minutes while enjoying the sun and food. By the time we got started again, Dad was back to feeling pretty good and his hip stopped bothering him. So we hiked the rest of the way from the pond down to Francis at a pretty good clip. I'm not sure what I expected for this section of trail, but there wasn't a lot of great views and the trail was quite overgrown in places. We ended up getting into Francis around 1:00pm. I had heard great things about Francis and, of all the camps we had on our itinerary, it was the one I was most looking forward to. The news about the fishing certainly helped too.

We went straight to the food prep area to hang our food and make some Gatorade. While there, we met two young men who were on a quest to knock off all six 10 thousand footers in one backcountry trip. Paul and Tim have already mentioned them, but they were truly a humble group. They had just climbed Kintla (with two undesignated sites) and were on their way to Kootenai. We talked for a while and I found they would be in the Many Glacier backcountry site (after hitting Cleveland and Merritt) the day we were hiking out and the night Tim and Laura would be there, so I mentioned they should try to introduce themselves as I knew Tim would love to hear about their trip. After finishing off a Gatorade, I decided I really wanted to do some fishing, so we walked down and snagged one of the site and started setting up camp. While getting my fishing gear set up, I quickly noticed that I was somehow missing my reel. It had fallen off my rod and pack sometime between when my line had snagged and we'd gotten into our site. Really bummed, I walked back up to the food prep area to see if there was any chance it had fallen off there. Unfortunately, it hadn't. But the two climbers got really excited and said they had found it on the trail at the top of the switchbacks near the Brown Pass trail junction.

I was pretty dejected, but then karma struck again as the campers I had lent my stove to walked into the food prep area for lunch. They had hiked down to Francis that morning (well in front of us) and had been fishing and swimming for a while. They had a couple of trout they had cleaned and packed away in some cold water and were going to grab a quick lunch before trying to make the afternoon boat to Waterton. As they had decided they were going to bail on their last night (Janet), they returned the stove and then - in an extraordinary act of kindness - offered to let me borrow his fishing pole. He said, no worries, I'll email you my address when I get home and I have no doubt you'll mail it back. More proof to me that the people who backpack really do share a special bond.

So after talking and laughing about it for a while, we said our farewells and they headed home and we headed down to do some fishing. Luckily for me, everyone who had mentioned the fishing was dead on. We cleaned up for the first hour or so, catching as many small rainbows (8-10") by the inlet as we cared. We eventually decided to take a bit of a bath and do some laundry. After nearly getting hypothermia in the water, we laid our clothes out to dry with some rocks and then started picking our way along the shore around towards the waterfall. As we made our way along, the water got deeper and deeper and we started catching bigger and bigger trout. I don't know much about identifying trout, but we started getting ones that more brownish than silver (like we were getting at the inlet) and in the 10-12" range. We got a couple in the 12-14" range and I got one that was close to 16". So for us, who are not big fisherman, it was a lot of fun. All in all, we ended up with somewhere around 30 we took off hooks and another 15-20 that we would let shake themselves off just off shore.

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(with my borrowed fishing pole)
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Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of the bigger ones as we had our second accident of the day. As we were working towards the waterfall, there were a couple of places we had to walk through the water as the shoreline was too steep. At one of those places, Dad stepped on a particularly slippery rock and again took a big fall. He had a couple of scrapes and bruises on his leg where he hit a rock, but was up pretty quickly. Unfortunately, he had my camera in his pocket. So after we made sure he was ok, I popped the battery out of the camera and that was the end of pictures for a while. The wind also started to really pick up around this time and the fishing just dropped off a cliff. We watched these crazy downdrafts for a while where a big wind burst would come straight down and hit the lake and waves would get pushed out in EVERY direction. Later that evening, I did try turning the camera on again and for the most part, it was working. The display on the back was a little flaky and it was doing some off things with the auto focus, but it was working again.

That night we had a good dinner by ourselves. There was another group that took the other site, but they were very private and ate early and went to bed even earlier. After dinner, we caught a few more fish before retiring to our site to try to repair one of our Mayfly chairs. I have to say - I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and the MacGuyver-ing we did to fix that chair was perhaps the most complex feat of engineering I've ever accomplished. I'd go into more detail, but it would pretty hard to describe. Suffice to say, we went to bed pretty proud.

FWIW - if anyone picked up an Abu Garcia Cardinal S10 spinning real near Brown Pass, I would love to have it back!
~ jason
teapot57
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by teapot57 »

I'm really enjoying your trip report. Injuries can happen so quickly and unexpectedly! Was your dad able to pop some Vitamin I? Hopefully the bruising and soreness doesn't cause trouble for him later in the trip.
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Re: A Week with Dad

Post by Heff936 »

The climbers we met at MAN told us they left Jason's reel on the large flat-topped boulder near the top of the switchbacks to Brown Pass. It's a prominent spot and we planned to try to to find it when we got there four days hence. Unfortunately our search revealed no reel. Thinking perhaps here was another flat topped boulder we searched as we reached the pass but again saw no reel.

Sorry to read about your Dad's falls but enjoying the detail in the trip report. The route between Brown Pass and FRA is better in the other direction, as Thunderbird becomes more prominent in your view.
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