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Adventures of the Spirit Eagle - Glacier NP - Day 3

  by Jim & Ginny Owen

Thursday - July 30, Goat Haunt to Fifty Mountain Campsite (12 miles) -

Ginny: Last night’s groups were noisy. Two groups of kids running and yelling and three guys, old college buddies, who talked late. At midnight Jim asked them to be quiet, but then at 6:00 someone woke us up by chopping wood for the fire. GRRR. We had a leisurely hike today, stopping often to look for wildlife. The flowers are shoulder high in places. So are the weeds, which completely overwhelm the trail sometimes. We made a side trip to Kootenai Lakes to look for moose, but none were showing.

Although the miles were few today, it wasn’t an easy hike. Well, the first few miles were. We passed the ranger station and dormitory quite early (met a woman leaving the dormitory who said she was a grizzly researcher with USGS) and walked a few miles above the Waterton River through deep dark spruce forests. The trees are huge and covered with moss. It was an easy gentle uphill hike, to start. Then we started climbing - never steeply, but endlessly toward a ridge that kept receding as we approached. There were beautiful views of snowy Vulture Peak and other mountains in the Livingston Range. Now we are spread out at 50 Mountain campground. Glimpses of snow covered mountains to the right, flower filled meadows behind -- beautiful!

Jim: It was a long day for me and I was really glad to see the campground - and the stream that we managed to camp close to. The trail to Fifty Mountain was almost flat for the first five or six miles - and then it climbed for five or six miles. But the climb was worth it - if you climb up the trail a couple hundred yards from the campground, there’s a 180 degree expanse of mountains that’s just fantastic. This is part of the Highline Trail - and it’s one of the most beautiful sections of trail I’ve ever seen.

The trail is really beautiful and generally well marked although it can be overgrown at lower elevations. After dinner we had our first thunderstorm - a short one, not much rain but a lot of wind. Sounded like a good time and a good excuse to turn in, so we did.

People - there were a couple guys who were Army buddies who come out to hike together for a week every year. One of them lives in Washington (state) and the other lives in Florida now. Then there was the group from Goat Haunt (the ones who had taken the boat into Waterton for the day). They had been buddies in high school - now one still lives in Minneapolis, one in South Carolina and the third in San Francisco. And there was a group which was conducting a guided tour of the backcountry for a German friend and were supposed to catch the afternoon tour boat out of Goat Haunt the next day (they left early the next morning). There were also a couple of guys who’d been friends in college - both of them were from New Jersey, although one lives in Colorado now. Then there was our refugee - he was asleep when we got to the campground and apparently had nothing but a bedroll and saddlebags. Never did find his horse - but then I don’t think he had one.

Day 2 - Day 4

© Copyright 1998 Jim & Ginny Owen