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Adventures of the Spirit Eagle - Glacier NP - Day 2

  by Jim & Ginny Owen

Wednesday - July 29, Waterton to Goat Haunt Shelter (9.5 miles) -

Ginny: I am sitting at a picnic table next to the boat dock at the south end of Waterton Lake. It is a big one. Hiking it from one end to the other took about 8 ½ miles. I look up at a dozen massive peaks, some with small snow fields, but most are bare. It was a mad house here for a while, but everything seems to have calmed down for the moment.

We took the park shuttle, an old 1930's red bus, from East Glacier to Waterton, with stops along the way at Rising Sun on St. Mary’s Lake and at the Many Glacier Lodge. It was beautiful. We saw a moose in Swiftcurrent Lake at Many Glacier and a coyote near Rising Sun. My only complaint was that there were no stops for pictures. We arrived a little after 1:00, walked a mile or so into town from where the bus dropped us off -- the massive fantastic Prince of Wales Hotel, perched majestically on a hill overlooking the lake. Lunch at Zums with a delicious piece of wildberry pie (apples, raspberries, saskatoon berries, huckleberries and rhubarb!) got us ready for the search for the trailhead--not easy to find since the directions in the book are a bit vague. No mention of the Bertha Falls Trail which is the Canadian trailhead. We were warned via a sign at the trailhead to beware of black bears along that section as the berry season has started. Sure enough, there were thimbleberries, strawberries and a few huckleberries. The trail wanders up the lake with occasional views. No bears though. The trees are dense and covered with heavy moss, almost like Spanish moss. We saw some gulls, looked for mountain goats and saw a speck that might have been one. We stopped at the international border for a long break. It is a long wide cut swath that runs thousands of miles along the US/Canadian border. There were posts that listed all the border treaties between the two countries. Making noise to scare off grizzlies means we won’t see many animals, except at the high open areas, maybe. It was nice walking through pretty woods. There were a couple far off waterfalls. I enjoyed the swinging bridge across Boundary Creek. It wouldn’t be a fun crossing with the bridge pulled up for the winter though.

We arrived around 6:00 pm to find hiker shelters, and a boat dock with a fireplace and real bathrooms. Lots of tourists take the boat tour across the lake instead of hiking there. We were supposed to check in with the ranger, but she was having dinner with friends so we went to the shelter to set up. We had the place to ourselves for a while. Then group after group came in and now the 8 shelters are full. They built two concrete buildings, each divided into four separate shelters, each shelter facing a different direction. It gives an illusion of privacy anyway. We face the setting sun and the lake. They have a separate cooking area, well away from the sleeping area, so we were hidden away cooking dinner when the groups started to arrive. Then the last tour boat of the day arrived, and things really got chaotic. I stayed to guard the food and finish cleaning up while Jim went to make sure nobody got too nosy with our gear. The ranger said there was a black bear right down the shore when the boat came in. They had to destroy a mama black bear and cubs here last week who broke into the ranger dormitory and tore the place up. It made me a little nervous when I was sitting alone guarding the food. We had odds and ends to put in the bags before hanging them, like toothpaste and sunscreen, so I couldn’t just hang the bags and leave. We had a good day overall, but I’m tired. The late start meant that we ended up feeling in a rush. Clouds threatened all day. It rained most of last night from about 4 pm until 8:00 am. Today was warm - hot when we were hiking - so rain could cool things off. Then arriving we hurried to cook and hang our food and all the cooking gear before dark. The tour boat left and the groups of kids are up the hill cooking dinner. It is peaceful at last. The sun is setting behind a mountain, but it will stay light here until about 9:30 or 10:00. I saw a beaver swim out right beside me when I wandered down to the shore. I think it was hiding under the dock as I heard a splash from there about 10 minutes before the beaver swam by. He was only about ten feet away when I saw him.

Jim: As usual, there was the last minute rush to get out of town. A couple things to mail, make sure we’ve got everything, dump some things out of the pack cause it’s too heavy, leave the duffel bags with Mark, get breakfast, catch the shuttle to Waterton Lakes and then "Oh my God, what did we forget?"

Too late ---- stops at St Mary and Many Glacier, then across the border to Waterton Lakes. We met another backpacker on the shuttle - he was taking the boat to Goat Haunt and then heading west across the park to come out at Kintla Lake. Said this was the 13^th time he’d been in the park since 1977.

Also met a group from San Francisco - they were on a hiking-drinking tour. Hike during the day and drink wine at night. They carried a couple of cases of wine across the border with them knowing that they weren’t gonna be able to get them back into the States when they came back the next day. The intent was for the seven of them to finish all 18 bottles of wine that night. Hope they were happy with the results. ;-)

The Prince of Wales is one of the main attractions at Waterton - it’s a magnificent old hotel that was built by the Great Northern Railroad (as were Many Glacier, Two Medicine, East Glacier, Granite Park and the other facilities) to attract tourists — and provide business for the railroad. The shuttle let us off at the hotel in the midst of mass confusion and we were left to our own devices to find the trailhead. So we made a detour into Waterton Townsite to find lunch at Zum’s - where we again met our backpacking friend from the shuttle. Then out of town through the campground. Got some strange looks: we had backpacks, and everyone else in the campground was in trailers and huge family tents.

Finally found the trailhead and started south about 1445, got to the border at 1645 and to Goat Haunt Ranger Station about 1845. As we passed the border, the tour boat to Goat Haunt passed us and we once again got to wave at our backpacking friend from the shuttle. The border is marked by a straight-line strip that’s cut right through the forest, supposedly all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. The cost of keeping that strip open and cleared has to be enormous. The walk to Goat Haunt was fairly easy although a little overgrown in spots - especially on the US side.

The crowd at Goat Haunt was a surprise - when we first got there, we were the only ones in the shelter, but there was another food bag hung at the food storage area. Turned out it belonged to a group of guys who’d been out for 2 or 3 days and had gone into Waterton on the morning boat for food, laundry, beer, etc. They came back on the evening boat and joined the zoo - by that time about 20 other people had gotten there.

The ranger was more than a little upset when we got there - they’d had to destroy a family of black bears the day before because they broke into the staff dormitory, trashed it and eaten a lot of the food that was stored there. There’s still a lot of bad feeling among the Park personnel about the family of grizzlies that had to be destroyed at Two Medicine, too. Those were the ones which had eaten part of the body of a young man who was out alone. There wasn’t enough left of the body to determine whether the bears had killed him, but having eaten the body, they couldn’t be left alive. The Park staff takes that kind of thing very badly. Seems nearly all the attacks/deaths that have happened in the Park have involved single hikers. Is there a lesson here?

My usual aversion to shelters also kicked in - after we couldn’t sleep for a while - partly because of the noise from one of the groups and partly because the bugs were bothering me and partly because the concrete floor wasn’t comfortable - so I crawled out and put up the tent and we slept out there until some idiot started chopping wood at 0600. Not the best start for our trip, but it could have been worse.

Day 1 - Day 3

© Copyright 1998 Jim & Ginny Owen