For our second day at Glacier, Zach and I wanted to take a big old hike. We wanted to take a one-way loop hike, since nothing is less interesting than turning around at a halfway point and taking the same walk again, only more sore and tired this time.
This meant taking the Highline Trail. It starts at Logan Pass and ends at The Loop, which is 12 miles in all. NBD.
So after dragging ourselves out of the tent once it got too hot to remain under the sleeping bag and brewing some Crabbiness Reduction Potion (aka Jayne’s tea) we drove up to Logan Pass.
The little synopsis in the newspaper they hand you whenever you drive into any National Park said that the hike would take 7-8 hours. Once we got to Logan Pass we realized that the last shuttle to bring us back to our car would be leaving in less than 8 hours. I am proud that this only made me fret incessantly, rather than cancel the entire hike.
The National Parks are interesting in the way they warn you of danger, i.e. that they just assume you’re not going to be an idiot. There are no fences around the Grand Canyon, and this Highline Trail had no guardrails to keep you from careening down the alpine meadows. There was a single sign reminding you to bring your own water, but that’s it. For many parts of this hike you walk a narrow path along a rock face, often crossing streams or loose rocks. It’s pretty rad.
The first leg is uphill, leading up to a little plain with boulders to sit on and summer snow to gawk at. It’s a good place to eat lunch and let the fat squirrels crawl over your boots and beg for scraps.
Wild animals begging for food drives me nuts because it is living proof of how dumb people are. They see a cute/majestic/noble wild animal, they feel a natural yearning to connect somehow with that animal, and so they…give it a treat. Just like tossing Greenies to Fido back home. Idiotic.
The middle part of the hike was truly amazing. I’m not exactly John Muir so I’ll let Zach’s photos show you how beautiful and exhilarating it was.
The last three miles are all downhill. “Great,” you think. “Going down, easy!” No. Going steeply downhill for three miles just basically destroys your knees and ankles. When I realized this I almost started crying. It was only the knowledge that Zach is (probably) not physically capable of carrying me down a mountain that kept me from just giving up right there.
Feeling extremely weary, we did make it down to shuttle in plenty of time (less than 6 hours). When I saw that bus I could have kissed the driver.
We crowded aboard only to see that it was crammed to the gills with old people seeing the park in air-conditioned style. The driver tried to tell Zach there was no room for him, but when he sat on my lap the driver made no objections.
When we got back to Logan Pass I waddled as fast as I could up to the visitor center, intent on buying about a gallon of Gatorade. Guess again, friends – the visitor center does not sell an ounce of liquid. I settled for drinking as much water as I physically could from the drinking fountain. As I staggered back to the car my entire abdomen sloshed ‘glorp glorp.’
Although the car was in sight, one physical challenge remained – a big horn sheep was patrolling the parking lot like a straight up player. I don’t know if he was looking for ladies or hoping to lap up some antifreeze but he definitely had that wicked devil-eyes thing going on that goats have.
Then we drove back to camp and I complained about being sore all the way to Canada.