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Adventures of the Spirit Eagle - Glacier NP - Day 4

  by Jim & Ginny Owen

Friday - July 31, Fifty Mountain to Granite Park Campground (11.9 miles)

Ginny: There is a thunderstorm approaching. We had a gully washer yesterday right after dinner. I slept well. It was a beautiful hike today, high on the side of a mountain, all side hill with a 180° view of snowy mountains. We ran into a work crew filling in rockslides from all the rain. (The Going to the Sun Road was closed when we drove north because of a rock slide. There were a lot of unhappy tourists as that is the only road across the park. They had it open the next day though.) There were lots of flowers - yellow columbine, pink paintbrush, purple fleabane, many others. We had two easy snow crossings. Saw lots of marmots and what may have been a wolverine (or a VERY big marmot.) We saw a strange track in the mud just before there - all claws. The trail curved in and out of stream basins, Cattle Queen Creek and Ahern Creek, with views of Longfellow and Heavens Peak and glaciers and waterfalls far across the way. We stopped at Granite Park Chalet, rather like an AMC hut, where you pay big money for a bunk bed and no running water. We bought a soda and saw lots of dayhikers hiking the Highline Trail. One said he saw a yellow grizzly in the meadow below, but it had gone into the trees by the time we arrived. We’ve been taking our time, lots of breaks to drink and look at the views, getting out the monocular to look at lumps and bumps in the landscape. No animals yet. This campsite is not as good as last night’s. The campsites are right next to each other. This time we’re near the food prep area. Last night it was a 200' climb from the "kitchen" to our campsite. Both campgrounds have nice streams to clean up in though. It was a cool cloudy day with a minute or two of sunshine. Nice hiking weather. There was a strange man at the campsite last night. He slept all day, had no pack, stove or tent, just a bedroll, saddlebags (no horse) and a bag of nuts. He waited out the rain in the outhouse, then left in the middle of the night. He said he was a "refugee" - from what? The campsites have anywhere from two to seven sites on them, and have all been filled each night. A whitetail deer just wandered into camp. There is a little bit of a view between the trees. Last night we looked up at Cathedral Peak or across to another snowy peak. It was beautiful.

Jim: Leaving Fifty Mountain Campground, the day started with a 700' climb right away. The trail goes up to a sidehill goat track that slabs across the mountain - narrow, but not particularly bad until you get to the washouts, of which there were several. It follows along the side of the mountains all day, in and out of several drainages. One of the drainages is Ahern Creek, which is fed by the Ahern Drift (a small glacier just above the trail). That’s where we saw the wolverine although we didn’t know what it was at the time - had to look it up later in a wildlife book. I knew about wolverines, but I’d never seen one live before. He was really put out at us because he was hunting the marmot we passed and we interfered with his meal. Then we added insult to injury by chasing him up the trail for a quarter mile before he could find a place to get off and hide.

All day on the trail and still no bears - and this is prime bear country. After we got to Granite Park there were rumors that someone had seen a bear in the meadow below the chalet (down close to the campground) but it was gone before we could see it. We were disappointed again. We had a couple Pepsis at the chalet and then moved on to the campground. Some of the people from Fifty Mountain came into Granite Park, too - the guys from New Jersey and the high school buddies from Minneapolis. Another group of three guys from LA will head toward Fifty Mountain tomorrow. After our nightly deer visitation, another thunderstorm sent us to bed early again.

Day 3 - Day 5

© Copyright 1998 Jim & Ginny Owen