PNC Days 57-59 – Rocky Mountains

These three days had us heading into the Rocky Mountains and Glacier National Park. We walked through Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis ancestral lands.

Day 57 – PNT Mile 1162.6 – Weasel Fire Detour

This morning my watch alarm went off at 5:45 am, and I woke up to a beautiful sunrise! (We turn our phones off overnight to save battery.) I grabbed my bear spray and went to retrieve our bear-proof food bags from the tree they were hanging in. I dropped the bags by Tim’s side of the tent, got back in my sleeping bag, and went back to bed for ~5 minutes while he made the coffee. This is our normal morning routine in grizzly bear country. The smoke we saw last night from the nearby wildfire had sunk down into the valley. A 14-mile section of the PNT today was closed due to the fire, so we had to detour around it. The detour took us on some alternate trails and forest roads and only ended up being about 8 miles. After the detour we saw 4 PNT thruhikers headed the opposite direction and had fun chatting with them for a bit. When we got up high again this evening, we could see the smoke from the fire. -R

Day 58 – PNT Mile 1182.5 – Sleeping in!

We got to sleep in today! We had an important phone call scheduled at 1:00, and there was only one mountain-top where we knew we’d definitely have service for the next 60 miles. It was only 7 miles from where we camped, so that meant there was no point in waking up early like we usually do and trying to “crush miles” in the morning. I slept until 7:30 and Renee slept until 8:00. We got up after the sun had risen and slowly enjoyed two coffees and granola for breakfast. Shortly after 9:00 we finally hit the trail, relaxed and ready for the day. We always say we should do more relaxing out here, but unless it’s forced relaxing like it was today, it’s hard to break the mentality of GO-GO-GO.

The trail gave us a lot of climbing and descending in the morning, but it became a steady and pleasant descent in the afternoon. Towards the end of the day we were rationing our snacks like always, and then we remembered we had an entire extra pack of Oreos Renee’s mom sent us that we had forgotten about. Woohoo! It didn’t last long. We are camped next to a dirt road about 10 miles from Glacier National Park. We’ll enter the park tomorrow and are hopeful that getting permits will not be difficult. For dinner we had sloppy lentil “sandwiches”. Yum! -T

Day 59 – Mile 1206.1 – Polebridge, MT

We woke up to clouds and smoke from the Weasel Fire. We had only ten miles to the “town” of Polebridge right outside of Glacier National Park. We got there at 9:30 am. We picked up our resupply box at the hostel in town and grabbed a partially used can of fuel and a tent stake from the hiker box (a box where hikers can leave things they don’t want for other hikers to take). Then we headed to the Mercantile for coffee and a vegan brownie! We also had to buy breakfast, lunch, and snacks from the Mercantile. We had to get a bit creative because their supply was limited. For example, we found no granola bars, but we found a can of refried beans (that we transferred into a ziplock bag) and crackers. We also charged our phones and power banks and had fun chatting with people. There was no cell service or Wi-Fi in town. We had lunch from the food truck and then headed to the Ranger Station a mile up the road to get permits for the park. The permit process went smoothly, and all the campsites we wanted had space for us! It is a bit weird having to camp in designated sites because for most of the trail we can camp wherever we want — national parks tend to be more strict than other public land. We continued on our way. We packed out Huckleberry Blonde Ales and a brownie each for our first snack, and a bag of chips for our second snack. We swam in Bowman Lake and had a few rain showers. Tim saw a black bear. We made it to camp and found a fun group of people having a campfire, which was nice because we never have campfires. We will finish the PNT in three days. This is also where we finished our CDT hike last year, so it was fun to reminisce today. -R