Montana Treasures
We leave Great Falls, shaved and shitted, and make a bee-line to the nearest trailhead on the Continental Divide Trail, which Nick has dreams of thru-hiking. (They are only dreams, as this day would show.)
Hwy 200, still part of the L&C Trail, leads us to Flesher Pass where we spend the night. We make preliminary plans to shuttle a section of trail, where X drops Y up the trail and then drives back to a spot where Y will later get the van and pick up X, both having passed each other half-way thru said section of trail. Capeesh?
In the morning we manage to get maps for this portion of trail, trail #440 from Flesher to Stemple Passes, some 11.7 miles distant, and are feeling confident that we can handle this whole CDT thing. (Among the long-distance crowd, of which I am barely a member, having done only the baby Appalachian Trail, the word is that the CDT is the hardest to complete and easily the hardest to follow, as it still under development. This is called foreshadowing, btw.)
But here we were within the amazing Helena National Forest and trails seemed clearly well-managed. So, I dropped K and Frida off at Stemple Pass and headed back south to where we had spent last night: Flesher Pass. It seemed a straight-forward traverse, though I did notice signs for a ski-area and for snow-mobile trails as I was leaving the high and remote picnic area. I remember saying to K that her challenge would be getting past these intersections and crossings and staying on the CDT itself.
Well, in hindsight, this was definitely not the segment to try our first shuttle, and poor Karyssa got waylaid for an hour or more trying to escape the ski area, with a Frida that refuses to walk past 70 degrees. (It was close to 90, as MT is in the midst of a heat-wave, 15 degrees above normal on avg.)
Daisy and I head north feeling good, tho TBH the only mental state in Daisy’s repertoire is anxiety when absent from Mom, and as she has a 30 minute head start on us, I’m kinda in a hurry. A mile in I see fresh cow-shit on the trail, and sure as shit a minute later I see range cattle running through the ponderosa pine and norway spruce forest ahead of us. One hereford bull is leading 7 or 8 black angus cows up the dang trail ahead of us, and we have no way to pass. Not wanting to stress or scare them, Daisy slowed down until they finally departed trail left a couple of miles (!) later. So we were late, and K&F were late, and we didn’t connect up until about 2 in the afternoon. K still had 7-8 miles of trail to get to the van, so I took both of our children and headed north, moving as slow as mollasses in the late-afternoon sun.
The CDT here is beautiful, and we walk for most of the day through gentle slopes and flat terrain, not at all the AT’s up-and-down knife-edge. We were scared by a grouse, who let us get ten feet from his/her nest before violently leaving it, and tried to photo a western tanager, in all of its yellow and orange splendor, but no other megafauna to report.
[Karyssa Here:
Listennn… I just can’t. I got so frigging lost, y’all. So, there I was, following the wrong dang trail for like a half hour before I even started thinking that maybe I wasn’t going the right way. I take out my two maps. And do you know what either of these maps looked like?! Let me tell you!
One map had a solid, bold trail of the CDT with literally no intersections indicated. So, it looks like only a moron could get lost due to how obvious the trail was. And the other was of the ski and snow-mobile trails, which show three or four intersections, at most, with the CDT marked on one spot of the trail and then on another. Seemed simple enough.
But it wasn’t fool-proof enough! There were like eight different intersections with little to no signage. Meanwhile, my maps over here are like, “It’s fineee; you’ll be fineee. Don’t sweat it. You totallyyyy got this. Complete faith.” Fucking hell.
So, then we reach these two private roads, and I’m like, “Okay. We’re lost.” Before that I was just thinking, “Maybe I’m just doubting myself too much. I’ve been following the same blue diamond blazes since the beginning of the hike.” And then, “Well, those blue blazes were kinda everywhere… maybe I followed the wrong ones…”
It was when the blazes directed me to turn directly into the forest – like no footpath – that I should’ve been like, “Def on the wrong track.” Instead I thought, “Well that might be an old trail. I’ll just keep going.”
Anyway, so back to the point where I realized I was going the wrong way.
I took both maps out and tried to figure out where I went wrong. I saw, on the ski map, that the CDT followed the blue ski blazes to the right. And i had just passed the ones point to the right, that lead into the forest… so I was like, “Maybeeee there’s a footpath father into the forest???”
Y’all… Listen. I followed those blue blazes for at least a quarter mile, carrying Frida the whole way! Like, I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you right now. I WALKED THROUGH bush, fern, and tall grasses for A QUARTER MILE!!! before I was like, “…This can’t be it.” A QUARTER MILE!! Like what the – in what part of god’s green Earth would a NATIONAL TRAIL be that overgrown that there literally wasn’t even a trail. Like “trail” is in the fucking name.
*inhale…exhale…*
So, I turned around and followed the blue ski blazes back to the road I was on. Then I (finally) think to check the GPS on my dang phone. I was lucky enough to (at least) have signal.
One might think, after everything else that’s happened, I should just follow the solid line until it meets up again with the CDT. But LISTENNNN. I didn’t know how far that walk was gonna be.
Soo, I just walked from the little asterisks (Nick said it looked like I drew a spider) on the drawn map above to the CDT. And I’m thinking the whole time that I’m stepping over fallen trees and frigging forest shit with Frida in my arms, “This is how people die. I’m gonna slip and break my neck and they’ll never find my body because I went of the dang trail and who the frick does that. The bears or a mountain lion or a mountain goat are gonna be like, ‘Human off trail = fair game!’ Even though mountain goats are vegan… oh, right, herbivores. And they’ll blame it on Nick because no one ever believes the husband didn’t just kill his wife. And he’s gonna be so sad and blame himself…” and on and on.
It was kinda hilarious.
And I was thinking all of this like 10 feet into the trek through uncharted land, so I could’ve turned around pretty easily. But I kept saying, “Nahhh, you’ll be fineee.”
And I was, obviously. We met up with Nick. He took Frida. I ran like a third of the rest of the way because I didn’t want him to have to wait too long for me to retrieve the van.
End Karyssa’s POV]
Six long hours later, we end this 12-mile hike with the dogs near death, and the hoomans close behind them, and then notice two guys in two trashed pick-ups parked at a remote crossroads by the picnic area and trailhead who put the pipe down long enough to take in, stoner-perplexed like, Nick and the dogs walking out of the woods. “Where are you coming from?” asks Conner, a 20-25 year-old who just got out of a meth clean-up and is appropriately proud of 28 days clean.
“Florida,” I say, to which his boss, a 65-year old dyed-blond and wiry dude about five foot tall responds, “And WTF is a Covid-carrying Florida boy doing in my mountains?” And then immediately adds, after taking a huge puff on the biggest glass bowl I’ve ever seen: “That’s ok; it [covid 19] is a hoax. Them Cuomo brothers are making a fortune off it though. How do you feel about them Cuomo brothers?”
When I say that we don’t need to go there, he says it’s “the deciding factor” in whether he’ll say another word to me! He’s high as a kite, but jittery as a speed-freak, and way to literate for this scene. They offer me water, and then a beer, and as we’re waiting for Karyssa and the truck, I jump to at the chance to feel connected.
Five minutes into a crazed conversation having something to do with digging a portal to a mine-shaft and bulkheads, I’m asked whether I know who Kathy Ireland is?
Umm… he then shows me a nine-minute video of him being interviewed by FOX Business or whoever Ireland works for, where he’s pitching for investors into his gold mines, some 20 years ago. The video, which he kept interrupting and talking over, does include footage of his tunnel, a vein of quartz and I guess what might have been gold, so I’m starting to get a picture of this dude. He ends up offering me a job, starting today, making $20 an hour, and I’m oddly tempted, until Karyssa-the-Frontal-Lobe (who had pulled up shortly after being asked if I knew about Kathy Ireland) rolls her eyes at me.
We roll down to Lincoln for some take-out steak sammiches and a spot in the County Park, exhausted beyond description. The sight of Forest Service employees, kids really, partying at a local saloon–I was there only for take-out, I’ll have you know–remind me that the Mann Gulch fire went down near here many moons ago.
[Karyssa’s Turn!
The next day we checked out the local art park, Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild.
It’s pretty amazing. There’s artists from all over the world who use the land as part of their piece and they make sculptures that somehow connect the duality of industry and nature.
Above is a “TeePee burner.” They were used to burn left over timber and are evidence of a once thriving timber industry. The artist found this one elsewhere and moved it to the park in order to commemorate Blackfoot Valley’s history.
It used to burn so intensely (TeePee burners burned 24 hours) that at night it would light up the panels so they were a red color. To show this, the artist included red solar powered LED lights that recreate this effect.
This sculpture was found here and not made by an artist! This is what is called a barber chair. To quote the plaque, “A barber chair happens when a tree with an unexpected amount of tension on it delaminates midway through the felling cut and splits vertically. The butt end of the tree then flips up and out unexpectedly, in a manner reminiscent of old barber chairs that were tilted so far backward to allow a barber to shave a customer’s face.
“…Barber chairs were double dangerous in the days of the cross cut. ‘They didn’t cut near as fast as chainsaws today. So they were cutting this tree, (and) when it barber chaired, this whole slab flipped up here. If you’re any place in the way, you get wiped out.'”
The timber industry, back in the day, was wildly more dangerous than it is today, y’all. Can you imagine going to work, knowing this could happen at any given minute?
The artist here was trying to convey seeing things from different perspectives. The gateway (seen in the background) has several different quotes from Native American tribes in their languages. The piece is called “A Gateway to Change.”
This project was a community project done by volunteers from Lincoln and surrounding towns, which I think is adorable. I love when things are community related because I just love the idea of people coming together for a single common goal.
It’s meant to portray the landscape of the valley, with all of its hills and changing elevation. But it’s also made of newspapers, nails, and steel poles, which is meant to be a commentary of consumerism and maintaining a balance between nature and industry.
“The work… features a double wall with a series of ten chambers, five open to the sky, and five consolidated as towers that mimic the shape of the tops of the surround Ponderosa pines. Vistors can walk inside this double wall, but not feel confined because lots of doors and windows give visual relief.”
If you want to see the video on this, feel free to check out our IG @to_feel_connected or my Facebook; I’ll upload the video today (August 23).
[End Karyssa’s Turn! :D]
Wednesday, August 19th; van life commune by the middle fork of the Flathead River in Hungry Horse, just outside of West Glacier. There are at least twenty vans here, and apparently the party/fire/van-expo starts at eight.
Glacier International Peace Park, finally. Along with Yellowstone, it’s why we chose the highline west.
It’s all about the rocks here: red and green argilites (minerals) embedded in pale limestone are the park’s signature, and while they visually pop at the bottom of crystal-clear lakes and rivers, are technically 1.5B year-old sentiment that form the “Lewis Overthrust”; forced up and over Cretaceous rocks half their age by the Rocky Mtn range. They compose the glacial valleys and shark-tooth profile of the Rockies here, at the range’s narrowest point (at some 35 miles).
It’s all about the Going to the Sun Road, also, as the Eastern Blackfoot and Canadian entrances to the park are closed due to covid, and so while a ranger told us that the total number of visitors are down for the year, it is more congested, and we concur: this place feels like Zion on a weekend.
We had to get up at five a.m. in the morning (lol) to beat the rush to the parking spots at trailheads up the road, and are planning on a repeat tomorrow.
Glacier is also and finally about shrinking glaciers; the remaining ones, and the park has dozens of them we can only peek at–to reach them would require a longer hike than our children can handle–won’t be here for long. The pictures from a century ago when the park was named as an international peace park are a climate change slap-in-yo-mama’s-face.
Our second day in Glacier was a speed race up to Logan Pass, again up the Going to the Sun Road for 30 miles or so, in order to grab a parking spot close enough to the Highline Trail.
It’s one of the premier trails in the country, but with the park bus shuttle system shut down due to covid, it’s less accessible than usual. We had to leave the dogs in the van and scurry up the Garden Wall trail for only a couple of miles before retreating. But what a walk!
These Pre-Cambrian rocks are rarely exposed on the surface of your favorite planet, but are at least 80 million years old, so no fossils except the algae one we will meet at the Kootenai Falls tomorrow. Instead, you get sedimentary rocks (think limestone, but older) made up of millions and millions of years of sea-floor stuff that was later compressed and folded into fairly homogenous types of rock, in appearance, unlike the chunky aggregate of appalachian granite, but continuously green, or red, and then these are folded into crazy patterns.
Glimpsed a black bear running alongside the GTTS road, but got to hang all casual like for a while with a mountain goat!
Then a depressing stop on how quickly the park’s eponymous glaciers are dissappearing! Fuck me sideways, but they are hardly here to be seen, except thru binoculars or at the end of an backpacking excursion, such as on the CDT.
They’ve certainly left their mark on the landscapes here, however; the wide and U-shaped valleys here are called “cirques” (which just means a glaciated valley) as if formed by a huge ice-cream scoop, with steep sides where the peaks are “back cut” by the retreating ice and ridgelines become sharp-edged “aretes” or rows of teeth. (This use of “arete” by the park service is new to me, and seems an odd extension of the greek word for virtue.)
Add to all of this the uniquely diverse flora and fauna of Glacier’s abrupt transition from prairie grassland to sheltering mountain forest, and the union of the last remaining great watershed, the Columbia, to the two we have already been tracking: the Missouri and Saskatchewan/Hudson, and you have the setup for an incredible array of critters and plants. From grizzlies and elk to marmot and pikas, from Engelmann spruce to massive red cedar and “larch” (or Tamarack, as we’d call them back east) and the innumerable flowers in bloom…it’s almost too much at once.
Back to reality meant back to the small grocery store in Hungry Horse for a few supplies, and to Breckenridge Bridge commune to actually connect with some peeps…and to clean up Daisy’s throw-up. It was really cool–inexpressibly so, to be real–to talk with homo sapiens who aren’t named Nick or Karyssa. We found this place because we’re following a few other vanlifers on the Gram and saw Unearthing_Fernweh (their IG handle – Bryan and Coddy) were in Glacier NP the same time we were.
So we did Laundry in the morning and then Rt 2 west to bourgeois ski resort of Whitefish. The Kootenai Nat Forest was our goal and in particular a suspension bridge over the Kootenai Falls that Coddy had mentioned. Mos def worth a peek!
We followed Koocanusa Lake/Reservoir for a long way, and it failed to clarify our ambivalence about dams. While we have seen how they have tamed the Mizzou, they have wreaked havoc on western fish populations, on ecosystems and even on the cultures that depend on them or in some cases even identify with them.
The govt’s recent and valiant efforts to regenerate not only salmon and trout but freakin’ cretaceous-era sturgeon are really impressive–Trump’s SECY of the interior chief is from Whitefish, after all–but it all seems to the pessimist in us, viz. Nick, too little too late.
On Friday the 21st we were stuck, as we drove until late deep into the bowels of a national forest here only to find out the campground was full. We’ve never stealth-camped to this degree, but tried to pay for a legit camping spot, OK? Wish us well.
Update: No one bothered us overnight, and we found a pretty waterfall in the forest to compensate us for the harrowing gravel road turns.
But now we’re ready for a shower in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We plan to see the parts of Montana that we’ve by-passed, like Missoula and Butte, but also are drawn to Yellowstone and Wyoming? Do we do it all? The freedom of the open road is an anxiety-inducing shackle, if you ruminate on it…which is why we try to avoid rumination, and instead roam across the nation!
