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Adventures of the Spirit Eagle - Glacier NP - Day 1

by Jim & Ginny Owen

Journals -

Tuesday - July 28, East Glacier, MT

Ginny: The first two days of our vacation have been very peaceful, but then, we’ve done little but wait. It’s really very restful when you have no place you have to be, nothing you have to do but wait. Monday we finished re-packing our gear (we had used everything on a weekend backpack on the AT and it needed to dry out before being re-packed), ran some last minute errands, waited for the airport shuttle (almost an hour late - was I in panic!), made it to the airport (a madhouse!) and waited for the plane. Despite the mob scene, we actually took off on time and arrived in Kalispell, MT early. Our airport shuttle was waiting to take us to Whitefish about 10 miles away for the night (the town only has 4 taxis) and everything moved smoothly. This is going too well, I thought. And sure enough there was one small glitch. The hotel had the wrong date for us and had us arriving a day earlier. They charged us for the night that we didn’t use. The hotel owner was quite adamant that he didn’t make mistakes, so the fault had to be mine. Right. Given the scarcity of rooms this time of year, and the fact that even doubled, it was less than some of the few rooms that were available, we couldn’t fight it, but it was still upsetting. Since the airline didn’t feed us dinner (I’m not sure if that was good or bad?) we went next door to Denny’s to soothe our woes with hot fudge/strawberry sundaes. Finally we crashed into late night oblivion. Excitement woke me up early - at 5:30. We were supposed to be shuttled to the train station at 7:00, so we went next door for a quick breakfast, then rode the short distance to the Amtrak station in plenty of time for the 7:30 train. It was late, of course. (Evidently you can count on Amtrak to be late, at least in Montana. It explains the weird timing of the bus schedule, which leaves East Glacier 10 minutes before the train is due to arrive, thus making connections impossible. I guess they don’t want to upset a lot of people by having them miss connections, so they make it impossible to make a connection regardless. This explains why we had 23 hours in East Glacier to wait for our bus north.) Anyhow, we read tourist brochures, admired the garden, wandered down to look at the "American Orient Express" a private luxury touring train that we saw featured on PBS a week ago and which was passing through Whitefish that morning. Finally the train arrived and we took off at 9:15. The train is a good introduction to the beauty of Glacier as it follows rivers along the Park’s southern edge. The immensity of the mountains is incredible - they are so vertical. They seem to rise straight up from the river in many places. No foothills. Big jagged blocks of stone. We arrived in East Glacier 1 ½ hours later. It was a slow ride, often only moving at about 30 mph, but pretty. East Glacier is not quite what I expected. I think I was expecting another Lake City, but East Glacier is smaller, and even more rustic. It sits on the edge of the Blackfeet Reservation and aside from the immense lodge and train station (built in the 20's) is very unpretentious. A few small motels, restaurants (good food) and gas stations and two small groceries, plus some nice houses make up the town. Dogs wander the streets, kids sit outside the grocery and say hi to strangers, there are lots of lovely flowers, and it feels like a normal small town rather than the gateway to a big National Park. We checked in at the Brown House Pottery, a nice motel, and went over to the Two Medicine Grill run by an AT friend of Jim’s. Mark co-owns another motel, the Whistling Swan, which was booked the night we arrived, a diner and a car rental agency. He is one busy man! Despite that, he was extremely helpful to us, taking time to make us feel welcome. We said hello, watched him cook for a while, were inspired to order lunch (huckleberry milkshakes and delicious homemade chili for me, and a buffalo burger for Jim). Mark gave us the keys to his truck and sent us off to the ranger station in Two Medicine about 10 miles away so that we could pick up our backcountry permits.

A problem with relying on public transportation is that you have to pick up your permit by 10:00 am, but the bus doesn’t even arrive at Waterton until 12:30, where there is a permit issuing station. If you don’t pick up your permit on time, the reservation is supposedly wiped from the system. The only way to get the permit was to pick it up early, which is difficult with no transportation. For some reason, the ranger station in East Glacier doesn’t issue permits. Getting use of the truck was a life saver. After the incredible luck in getting our permit on short notice, I would have been very upset to lose it like that. We spoke with the rangers at Two Medicine for a while, but wanted to wait for one who had done the backcountry off-trail route we were considering doing. He was out, so we ended up waiting for quite a while. This gave us time to wander to the lake, take pictures, admire the views, look at our map and play with the compass and check out the camp store. When we wandered back to the Ranger Station Dan Roy was there, but couldn’t help us with the first part of our planned hike, as he hadn’t done it. He was willing to help, but couldn’t tell us what we wanted to know. We got intrepid again. Our permit required two layover days right in the middle, at Red Eagle Lake. It is a nice spot, but that’s a long time to sit in one place when you don’t fish. Looking at the map, all the hiking in that area, besides our planned itinerary, is off trail. So we had picked up a climbers guide to Glacier which mentioned several non-technical climbs in the area. We got ambitious and decided to try a two day bushwhack from the lake and back, over what is known as the Norris Traverse. The ranger knew the traverse, but not about the unmaintained trail up Red Eagle Creek that was to be our means of access to Red Eagle Pass and the Divide. Supposedly Red Eagle Creek was once the most popular trail in the park. During WWII they stopped maintaining it. Anyhow, the rangers were quite willing to let us attempt it, and to give us an undesignated campsite in the backcountry. After all the insistence on staying only in reserved designated campsites, I was surprised. The thought of this part of the trip scares and excites me.

I have been flying high off and on all day. It hasn’t really seemed real - until we entered the park itself. All of a sudden the excitement and joy filled me to overflowing. I laughed and giggled and hugged Jim. Sitting by the lake looking at the mountains all around was also happiness. It was gray and hazy all day so colors were muted, but I saw flowers and sparkling waters and jumping fish and steep mountains everywhere we looked - happiness. Finally we drove around the campground, checking out the walk-in sites, gave a ride to two hikers heading there, and finally returned Mark’s car to him. We visited awhile, then went to Serranos, a Mexican restaurant, for dinner. It was surprisingly good. There is a grizzly bear conference in town. Jim recognized a few faces from books and articles he’s read on the subject. I am struck by how friendly the people we have met here have been. Excellent service and lots of smiles. Different from DC.

Jim: From the time the Glacier Backcountry Ranger called us on July 6, our lives turned into a zoo. First, we didn’t have the equipment to do the trip - we had sleeping bags for winter camping and some for summer in Eastern conditions, but we didn’t have the 20 deg sleeping bags that we thought we’d need for Glacier because those had fallen apart in Colorado last year. The pack I’d used last year also needed to be replaced. Then there were transportation arrangements, motel reservations, Amtrak reservations, airport shuttles, cleaning and assembling our pack equipment, breaking in new boots, assembling a mail drop, mailing the stove, reading about the Park and the route, arranging for someone to watch the house and collect the mail ---- all while trying to keep our minds on work and hoping we hadn’t hallucinated about that call from the Ranger. It was a little bit busy. ;-)

The trip to Glacier was long, but not really bad. With the exception of big city subways/Metro systems, this was my first train ride since I was about six years old - more room, more comfortable, more freedom and cheaper than airlines, although a lot slower. Tradeoffs. Turns out Amtrak only leases the line for their northern route and their schedule is subject to change on a daily basis. The main traffic on that line is grain - and it’s a money-maker so it gets priority. Amtrak gets whatever time isn’t required for moving the grain and freight trains. Means the Amtrak trains are ALWAYS late.

The only negative note on the trip out was the owner of the Chalet Motel in Whitefish telling us that he had us scheduled to be there Sunday night rather than Monday night - and he was going to charge us for it. Claims he never makes those kind of mistakes. But we all know that Ginny and I were in PA hiking with Pittsburgh and Solar Bear, et al. on Sunday - it would have been a real trick for us to get to Whitefish, MT to stay there Sunday night, wouldn’t it? Especially since our airline tickets were for Monday night - and that was part of the discussion when we made the motel reservations. I decided to let that one go for the moment - I wasn’t about to let that kind of nonsense ruin my attitude about what we were doing.

On a positive note, Mark Howser was really a tremendous asset in putting this thing together. He arranged motel reservations in East Glacier for us, helped us with transportation, storage, and a lot of other small details. The trip would have been much more difficult without him. Again - thank you, Mark.

Being able to change the permit was a surprise - and I don’t think we’d have been allowed to if we hadn’t talked the right talk when we were talking to the Ranger. His questions and objections were designed to find out if we were really capable of that kind of activity. I guess he thought we qualified. The Norris Traverse - it’s exciting - and scary. In part, because if anything bad happens, they won’t come looking for us. They tell you up front that they won’t look unless someone tells them you’re missing. My kids and Ginny’s mother and father knew we were in Glacier - but they knew nothing about our schedule or location. The only one who might have known we were missing was Mark - he knew where we were going and when we were to have been back at East Glacier. But that would have been a 4 or 5 day delay - and the bears wouldn’t leave much in that time. For better or worse, we survived — and that’s the way I wanted it to be.

Intro - Day 2