73. Go to Glacier National Park.
And now the exciting conclusion of … our trip to Glacier National Park. Ok, maybe it isn’t all that exciting but it was a great trip and well if you’re reading this I assume that you’re at least somewhat interested. At the end of my last update you had just heard about our hike at Many Glaciers and our encounter with a black bear wandering around our campground. On Wednesday morning we got up early and did a very nice hike to see 2 beautiful waterfalls. The first set of falls, St. Mary Falls, was just a short hike. The second set of falls, Virginia Falls, was well worth the additional hike further down the trail. We like St, Mary Falls but we were really pleasantly surprised by Virginia Falls.
Cass in front of St. Mary Falls
Virginia Falls
Cass in front of Virginia Falls
After returning from the falls we got in another very short hike near St. Mary Lake before having lunch and taking the boat tour that we had hoped to take the night before. It was a nice tour although it was quick and we probably wouldn’t do it again now that we know exactly what they’re like. We did get some great pictures of some of the things around and in St. Mary Lake though. The first of the two pictures below is of Gunsight Mountain which is part of the back-packing trips we had originally hoped to do. The second is of Wild Goose Island in St. Mary Lake. The lake bed was carved out by glaciers and so the lake is 300 feet deep. Wild Goose Island is actually a 300 foot high pillar or rock that was harder than the surrounding rock and so this small island was left behind by the glaciers. All told we were still glad we went on the boat tour.
Gunsight Mountain
Wild Goose Island
After the boat tour we exited the east side of the park and drove down to the Two Medicine entrance of the Park. After a very brief visit there we continued on around the outside of the park and went into Kalispell. We came to the realization that Cass needed better footwear that provided better ankle support and I needed a thicker pad / air mattress. We did a little shopping, had dinner, and headed back into the park. For our last 2 nights in the park we went to Logging Creek Campground. This smaller campground is in the northwest corner of the park and is accessed via a one lane dirt road. The Avalanche Creek Campground where we stayed for our first 2 nights has approximately one hundred campsites; the Logging Creek Campground on the other hand only has seven. This campground also has no potable water source, so we had to filter and treat creek water.
Cass and I at the entrance to the Logging Creek Campground with our bearspray
On Thursday we went on our last big hike of the trip. We hiked 5.5 miles along Logging Creek to Logging Lake. Like all of hikes through the week we had to take precautions in case we encountered a bear. On all of our hikes we each carried bear spray, which is essentially extra strong pepper spray designed to deter aggressive bears. We also tried to make a point to make as much noise as possible while out hiking. This alerts bears to your presence so that you don’t accidentally sneak up on and surprise a bear. However, on this hike we were concerned that we weren’t making enough noise. We were especially concerned because this trail was not well-travelled like all of the other trails we had been on earlier in the week. We decided that we needed to come up with a way to keep ourselves talking and making noise. We played countless rounds of “Who am I?” and I think it helped quite a bit. It definitely kept us making noise. This was a good thing. Based on the track and the scat that we were seeing on that trail, we’re pretty sure that there was a grizzly bear not far from us.
Trail to Logging Lake through a burn area.
When we got to the back-country campsite at Logging Lake we encountered a group of 5 back-packers who had gotten there shortly before us. We quickly learned that they were all Russian and that they were going to spend two nights at the campsite. We also learned that they had only brought five Gatorade bottles of water for the five of them and that they had already drank all of it. They suspected that it was a bad idea to just re-fill their bottles from the lake but they weren’t sure what to do. We filtered some water for them and left our iodine water treatment tablets with them. We were a bit concerned that they had no bear spray either but we felt that there was only so much that we could do for them.
Logging Lake
When we got back to camp that night we were definitely sore but were definitely in better shape than we had been on Monday night despite having hiked about the same distance as we had hiked on Monday. After our last night in the park we packed up our camp for the last time on Friday morning. We spent most of the day on Friday picking wild berries. Not being from northwestern Montana I wasn’t sure what a huckleberry looks like so we were hoping that we were picking huckleberries. It turned out that we were actually picking service berries. They look sort of similar and are still perfectly safe to eat. However they aren’t quite as tasty as huckleberries. (We stopped at a stand just outside the park and picked up a bag of the real deal.)
We had a fabulous trip as I’ve already mentioned and we’re planning on going back again next year. Hopefully we’ll be in good enough shape to back-pack up and over gunsight pass.
7. Make it through an entire softball season without a major injury.
I get to cross another item off the list. The softball season officially ended for me on August 29th. The weekend of the 28th and 29th the Carbon County Co-ed softball league had their end of season tournament. Based on the regular season records the number one and number two seeds were the Grizzly and Link Construction respectively. These 2 teams are consistently the best teams in the league which this year had 8 teams. My team, Mignon’s, was the number 5 seed coming into the tourney.
The format for the tournament is a round robin set of 3 games on Saturday and then after those 3 games the teams are re-seeded based on their record in those 3 games. On Saturday we were scheduled to play the #4 team Beaumont Painting, the #2 team Link Construction, and the # 8 team the Snow Creek Saloon. The snow Creek Saloon team didn’t show up for the tournament so we won that game by forfeit. We also played well enough to win both of our other games. So after Saturday the Grizzly had also won all of their games so they maintained the #1 seed and we moved up to the #2 seed. The way things played out we ended up playing the same 2 teams on Sunday that we played on Saturday. We played Beaumont Painting and won and then faced Link Construction in the semi-finals. Despite having beaten Link in the regular season and on Saturday we were unable to beat them one more time. That sent us to the consolation game against the New Atlas Bar team (If you remember, New Atlas is the bar with all of the animals hanging on the walls that I mentioned as part of my trip to Whitefish back in March.) We played well and we came in third place which was much better than anyone would have predicted for our team this year. In the championship game Link beat out Grizzly to win the title for the first time in quite a while. Congrats to John Link and his whole team!
As for me personally. I played well in the tournament and while I scraped up my shin again sliding and I was very sore for several days after the tournament, (it turns out the 6 softball games in 2 days is more than my body was ready for) I made it through the season without any major injuries. I’m already looking forward to next season. Maybe I can make it through two seasons in a row without hurting myself.
