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The CDT in Glacier National Park - 1998
Summary/Lessons learned -
Like the AT, each section of the CDT has it's own separate and totally different character.
Eleven days this year plus eleven days last year and we've done 10% of the CDT. Only 18 more years to go - or one. Average miles per day this year = 11.5.
Our experience with the Glacier Park personnel was somewhat at odds with what we expected because there have been a number of people who told us how uncooperative, hard to deal with, obstructionist, etc. Glacier Park personnel were toward them. In our case, we saw none of that and, in fact, encountered only the best of what the staff had to offer - they were unfailingly courteous, helpful, enthusiastic and cooperative. Specifically I'd like to extend my thanks Sue Bechtel (sp??) at Goat Haunt, to Dan Roy and Kim Peach at Two Medicine and to Diane Steele at Many Glacier. There were others whose names I didn't manage to remember and I apologize for that, but all of them exhibited attitudes that deserve only the highest praise.
Bears - there are a lot of horror stories - but 99% of those stories were precipitated by the people involved. Take precautions, don't panic, do it right and you won't be likely to become one of the horror stories. Having someone get killed in the park shortly before we arrived didn’t help with the pre-trip bear jitters, but once we were hiking, we just talked a lot, sang a bit, and kept our eyes and ears open. By the end of the first week, we had stopped expecting a bear around every bush. Instead we started wondering why we were the only ones in Glacier who hadn’t seen a bear. (One man said he saw eight, and he never left the roads!) Did we smell THAT bad?
The shelters at Goat Haunt were a surprise. We thought the only shelter on the CDT was in Colorado - if it can be called a shelter. We really didn’t like them much. It’s an efficient way of holding a lot of people, but noisy and sleeping on concrete floors is hopeless. That’s not why we came out here. Campsites are heavily used, hard, and close together, but they do concentrate the impact/damage and force people to follow the rules of separating sleeping from eating. In this situation, given the population, that’s probably a necessity.
The treadway is mostly stone and gravel - hard on the feet. Lots of long uphill and downhill runs - hard on the toes. But most of the time the grade is easy and the trail wide and fairly smooth. We did a lot of looking around while we hiked, which isn’t possible on the rougher trails we are used to. The problem was to keep from following your eyes and falling off a cliff as we walked, looking up for mountain goats or down the hills for bears.
Weather - The rainy season ended in mid to late July. Evidently June is the really wet month up here. We had two thunderstorms on consecutive nights, followed by one day of rain, but the rest of our trip was warm, sunny and mostly clear. Beautiful. The snowpack was (mostly) gone by late July, but not entirely. And this was a very light snow year. It was very warm while we were hiking - in the 80's some days.
The sun is hot and strong, and it'll dry your gear (and skin) really fast. Use sunscreen and a hat. Above treeline the sun can get really intense and burn you within a couple miles. The wind is also dry - and it'll dry you out too. Watch out for dehydration - we were filtering as much as 12 quarts per day for the two of us (plus what we boiled for meals) and we were still dehydrated. Filter ALL water except what you boil - there are no "good" water sources.
Even more than in Colorado last year, the only real choice for a guidebook is Jim Wolf's CDTS published book. The others are all questionable and lack either detail or accuracy.
Those with acrophobia need not apply. The trail is sometimes an 8 to 12 inch goat path with a 1000' or more drop on one side and sheer vertical cliffs or scree slopes rising on the other side. It can be "scary".
It may have been built for horses, but I wouldn’t want to ride a horse up there.
Cooking - sleeping - food storage ---- they're done in separate places. It ain't the AT where you cook from your sleeping bag and then sleep with your food. If you do that on the CDT, you become bear bait.
Wildlife - we saw few, if any, eagles and hawks, which was a surprise - especially considering the plethora of hawk and eagle food running around. Some of the locals were also surprised - there are usually more raptors during the summer. Other than bear (of which we saw only two - and those at very long range), we saw bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, marmots, mule deer, moose, a ptarmigan, ground squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and even a wolverine.
Livestock - we saw no cows or sheep this year - but this is a National Park so that wasn’t expected. But we did see a couple horses outside the Park and signs of horses inside the Park - and we saw the extensive damage that horses can do to a trail. I took pictures of that - and if they’re any good, those pictures will find their way into some of the horse arguments - especially in PA. I’m willing to live with horses on the trails - but I do want to know why horse people are so resistant to getting off their horses and repairing the trail damage that their horses cause.
Overall - hiking Glacier was tiring (a lot of elevation gain), but an absolutely fantastic and wonderful experience. I’d recommend it to anyone who really loves the mountains. The scenery was at least as good as Colorado last year, although the elevation was a lot lower. For us, it was also another part of our education about the CDT - and it’ll make next year a little bit easier for us.
Ginny (has to get in the last word): I am more determined than ever to come back next year and thruhike the CDT. We’ve done about 1/10 of it now - not the hardest parts, but not the easiest either. Definitely some of the most scenic sections, I think. And yet, I am looking forward to so many parts - the rest of Colorado, the Anaconda Pintlar Range, the Gila Wilderness, the Bob Marshalls, the Wind River Range, Yellowstone, etc. We were hurting when we got to East Glacier, and very glad to come to town for a shower, food and rest. But I could happily take off tomorrow for another 100 miles. (On the train ride out, we were really excited to see the trailhead at Marias Pass leading into the Bob Marshall/Scapegoat Wilderness section. Looking at the map I kept thinking, "Next year!") At the same time, I recognize that long distance hiking is very different from a two week vacation. I felt, a little, the push for miles that seems to take over a long hike, but that was restrained by the Glacier Reservation System. We could go no farther than our permits allowed, so we decided we might as well relax and enjoy the shorter mileage days. On a thruhike, the push is always to go a little bit farther. When we are back on unregulated trails, will I be able to resist pushing myself past exhaustion? Feet is the other question. My feet were in agony after two 15 mile days in a row, how will they take 20 mile days? It has been a long time since we’ve done more than 17. Also, Glacier trails have signs at the junctions and are easy to follow. The rest of the CDT will not be that easy, I know. Am I ready for that? I know that I need to brush up on my compass skills. We used map and compass from time to time, mostly to try to figure out which mountain was which, but I am very rusty. It needs to become second nature - and that will take awhile. Ten months to get ready - I can hardly wait!
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Created: Fri, 09 Jan 2004
Revised: 30 Sept 2016Copyright © 1998-2017 Spirit Eagle