Thr, Aug 29th
Hike: Fischercap Lake
-Distance: Hah, it’s in the backyard
The reason I needed to leave town on Friday, was so I could get a permit on Saturday, start a backpack trip on Sunday, exit the woods on Wednesday, and get in a campsite in Many Glacier on Thursday before Labor Day weekend. All week I had been hitting marks, and this was almost the last one for the trip.
I got to sleep after the band quit in St. Mark and woke up at 4:15. “Hell, why not.” I got up, threw both the sleeping bag and tent in the car (unpacked) and headed to MG at 4:30. At 5 am, I picked up a registration ticket and instead of lighting up the campground like a prison searchlight, I parked in the Swiftcurrent lot and walked to site 35. Wow, no one has taken site 35 yet. Cool. I registered, organized the car a bit and went to the showers to make coffee and have breakfast. It’s surprising that people are actually awake at this crazy early hour.
After breakfast, I had a conversation at the picnic table and then headed to the MG Hotel for pictures. The sunrise was cloudless, so the light was fairly boring, but still, it was a nice to be back in the Many Glacier valley.
After sunrise, I parked back at Swiftcurrent and headed to Moosercap Lake looking for fish…or eh Fishercap Lake looking for moose. None there. I knew I had some time to kill since the women in site 35 said they wouldn’t be out until 10 am or so. I strolled around like a kid on the way to the principal’s office, and shot pictures of a few trees, or maybe I should say, I tried to manufacture some interesting pictures of trees.
On the way back via the horse trail, I found a deer.
Are the women moving yet? Nope.
So, I backed up the trip pictures on an external hard drive and the computer. It takes quite a while to move around gigs of data, so I’m sure I killed an hour doing this (and used the car to power the computer).
Are the women moving yet? Nope. The process of me taking a peak down the road at the campsite (to see if there’s movement) and then me plunking down in the car continued for a few hours. I got the car organized, cleaned lens filters, read all three books in the Lord of the Rings series (just kidding) and finally, the site opened up sometime late morning. Of course I had already been up for six hours.
I got the site setup, took a nap, hung out in the hammock for a while and late in the afternoon, the ranger came through saying there was a storm coming in with 50 mph winds. I took down the three corner tent over the picnic table and the hammock, secured the tent (aka the Taj), threw the bike in the car, grabbed a beer and bagel and headed for the porch in a light rain.
I had been through two storms before at Many Glacier, and I’ve found that tons of people hike without any backup gear. I thought it might be fun to watch people without rain gear get chased out of the woods. True to the prediction, the rain came down sideways and people came out of the woods soaked. Later on, people strolled out of the woods I assume because their underwear was already wet (it didn’t matter if they hurried), or they were trying to look like this was no big deal. After the storm, I cooked up rice and bean burritos and hung out at the site.
Fri, Aug 30th
Hike: Snow Moon Basin
Distance: Not far (see Todd’s post details)
I headed for sunrise photos and four RV’s were parked at the entrance to the campground. It looked like they were creating a line to get campsites and I was getting “the eye” as I drove by going to and from the MG hotel.
After breakfast and packing up the photo gear, I was a little hesitant about starting the hike since it looked like rain. I handed off a note on where I was going to a neighbor in the campground, and I got look of horror. “Don’t worry, I’ll very likely come back from this hike, but if I don’t, I want someone to know where I am.”
At the horse stables, it was spitting a little rain, so I headed for the famous MG Employee drinking area. (As per hockey ref), I headed up a road behind the hotel and came across a sign that clearly informed me I should not continue further by order of Homeland Security or something like that. Maybe it was signed the Guatanamo Detention Committee, but it sounded like they didn’t want anyone back by the water source. This sounds exactly like where the employees would drink and I knew I was on the right path.
After a few photos up there, I started off on the hike along the Cracker Lake trail. The weather was probably the best I’ve seen for photography in quite a few trips to Glacier. Wait a minute and the light conditions changed. Once I found the right dry stream bed, the ascent was pretty straight forward. One little pitch was difficult with a backpack full of camera gear, but was actually easier coming down.
A selfie.
So, check off Snow Moon. BTW, my processor died on my laptop, so it’s hard for me to produce trip reports. I have to lock myself away in an office with a desktop rather than sit in the living room with a laptop (where I can interact like anyone else with a cell phone).
Jay