As I remember it, I said to Teapot, “If you ever get a permit for Belly River, I’m interested.” Fast-forward six months, and Teapot sent a message:
Mar 14, 2023, 9:37 pm
Hi Jay,
Wondering if you and Julie have thought about a Glacier trip this summer? And if so are you still interested in doing a backcountry trip?
Will be finalizing plans after permit day tomorrow, but I have a mid sized group permit for July 9-15 for GAB HEL ELF GLH GLH COS.
Let me know if you have any interest.
Well, I feel that old Glacier weakness coming on strong.
Let me set the stage. We were already on vacation and Mar 14 was a hot day, just like the day before and the day after. I did a 4 mile run at sunrise, and I lost 2 pounds of sweat. That evening, Julie and I had had a beer with a friend at an outside bar with a thatch roof.
Julie Joy’s version of “just one goat.”
Julie had leveled our group with a joke, after which we wandered back to our apartment through the dark alley arm-in-arm recounting the night. After getting to the room, I picked up Teapot’s message.
“The joke” started with an Aussie name Smoothy who wanted to do an America accent, so he asked me to do an Aussie accent. “Come on, let’s hear your Aussie accent. I said, “Ahh, I’ll have a 4X,” referring to a famous Australian beer.
He roars in laughter, “No one drinks 4X anymore.” Julie walks up to us and with the timing of a Swiss watch says, “What’s a 4X….a condom size?” Smoothy had to walk away to keep from peeing himself. I staggered around catching my breath. So where was I…..
After getting back to our room, I picked up the message. I didn’t really know all the campsite abbreviations, but I knew the trip was in the Belly River. I had a quick conversation with Julie and replied to Teapot:
Mar 15, 2023, 2:01 am
Thanks for thinking of me. I’d love to see belly River. We’re in Thailand now, Koh Samui. Julie would also like to come along which means finding a spot to park a camper. (She would not backpack.) finding a spot for the camper used to be easy but no more. Maybe on hwy 2? She could be a shuttle service. Let’s keep talking.
Jay and Julie
And so it began. Glacier 2023.
As it worked out, we ended up with reservations for a few nights in Many Glacier, a night in St. Mary, then 10 days up in Canada at a place called Beauvais Lake Provincial Park (while I backpacked), and finally a couple more nights at St. Mary. A big thanks to the reservation whisperer, Teapot. Without reservations, it’s like the old tuna commercial, sorry Charlie.
Slow boat to Montana
Our drives across Montana used to be a high speed “Dakota rally” affair, starting in central MN, blasting across North Dakota, and hotelling a single night in Havre. The following morning we were up early, eating cereal in the parking lot before more high speed driving to get a nice spot in MG at 8-9 am. Stress? Hell yes, but the stress was about getting a good campsite. Oh how times have changed. Now we’re pulling a camper at slow speed and making a three night affair.
Something Dakota this way comes, 6/30/23 (night 1)
Photo by Julie Joy
This was just a stop to shower, play some cribbage and stay overnight.
Photo by Julie Joy
The weather got interesting, but the rain didn’t last long.
I wasn’t told about the scrap metal along the highway
The slower approach also means I’m willing to stop, take some pictures and check out some small towns. In the past, we’ve stopped at sites like wheat fields, bridges, abandonned bars, and grain silos, but this time it started with a small town named Saco. A dragon sculpture got my foot off the gas,
and then we spent a half hour taking pictures around town. Julie Joy knows the drill, just wander around shooting, but also keep track of one another.
For more info on the dragon’s creator, Michael Wiederrich, see:
Midday in the cemetery of good and evil
The next stop was the Pink Church (Sacred Heart Church) on the Ft. Belknap reservation.
It’s interesting to walk around the churchyard cemetery and see the various momentos left on gravesites, but the evil mosquitoes were enough to drive us out of there.
Dam it Havre, 7/1/23 (night 2)
At the dam in Havre, we had some interesting interactions. We took the last camper spot on the July 4th weekend, so the locals were wondering, “Who the hell are you?” Minnesota? Do you fish?
A conversation with the wild child
After setting up the camper and some conversation, we swam and then made our way to the shelter to play cribbage. Two local girls were about to smoke pot at the other end of a long table and they asked if we were ok with them smoking. “Yeah, that’s fine.” This apparently prompted them to sit next to us and fire up a bong.
They were sometimes engaging, but also sometimes hilarious with a shake your head “they’re high” kind of humor. The talkative one didn’t seem to need anymore THC, but she lit up a hit and then coughed it directly in the face of her friend, who, incidentally, supplied the pot. “That’s no way to thank your friend,” I commented, which drew agreement from her friend and a smiles from Julie and I. Unphased by the criticism and smiles, she told us about the local pot shops, high school and travel hotels. Both of them clean rooms and apparently know which hotels are clean and which ones are not. After leaving, we wondered, “What the hell was that” and “why did they sit next to us anyway?”
What the dickens, is this pigeon shit? (7/3/23)
I wanted to get rolling semi-early for some photos of the grain elevators along the highway, so we left about 7 am. It took about a mile to find abandoned elevators in a small town named Kremlin, MT. According to Wikipedia, it was named Kremlin because Russian immigrants founded the town in about 1910.
Yup, that sure is pigeon shit, and no, I didn’t go inside. In fact, I was trying not to breathe.
Runyard, Joplin, Chester, all funky old towns, but then we stopped at Lothair. It was an elevator I haven’t seen, but the pigeon shit remains the same.
This is a balance for weighing trucks, a key component of a grain elevator.
Many Glacier. An inquiry into the value of seeing Snow Moon Lake. (Still 7/3/23)
I had a list of the hikes I wanted to do in the MG area: Iceberg, Swiftcurrent and Grinnell. Very simple, actually, since I only had 3 days. Getting in “early” on the first day and without much setting up fanfare meant I could stuff in a short hike.
At first, I was going to hike to the Josephine outlet and take some pictures.
As I was getting ready, I decided to hike to Snow Moon since it “wasn’t that far.” This is how I get myself in trouble. What is it, a mile from the campground to Cracker Lake trailhead? And how many vertical feet? Details…
About halfway up the dry waterfall and in full body sweet with a wet backpack, I started to wonder about making it to Snow Moon and back before sunset. I continued up. I pushed the backpack in front of me up the “climby” section and trudged the insanely steep switchbacks that followed. Then I heard some voices, so I went off trail a bit to follow the voices. One guy was making a telephone call and the other saw me and said, “Why hello,” and I answered, “Why hello, how far is Cracker Lake.” He got a concerned look on his face and I was deadpan. He asked, “Are you headed towards Cracker?” I smiled and said, “No,” and we laughed. They worked at the MG bar and invited me down for a beer after the hike.
The “telephone” perch.
With about a third of a bottle of water, I decided to not push on and headed back to camp. As they say in the British motorcycle manuals, assembly is the reverse of disassembly. Or, I hiked back the same way I came except I went around north side of Swiftcurrent and refilled my bottle at the picnic area.
A panorama (two photos).
My Garmin watch data jumped from the waterfall to the turn around point, which usually means I turned off the watch and forgot to turn it back on when I started moving. But the watch said 7.7 miles and 1500 feet of climbing in 4 hours. That sounds about right but it could have been a bit longer.
The last lake on the left, 7/3/23
After semi-trashing my legs the first day, the obvious hiking choice on day two was Swiftcurrent Valley.
I usually stroll through Fischercap looking for moose, but there were none. I went up towards Shangri-La just a bit and took a stream photo, but it’s not worth showing.
As you can see, the weather was great.
The greens were great too.
It’s hard to come up with some new ideas for photos, so I decided to try some long exposures. I didn’t have the right filters, so photos involved holding a 62mm neutral density filter (for the 25mm lens) in front of the 50mm lens, which has a 55mm thread. I also brought a 105mm lens but didn’t use it. All are manual focus.
(50mm lens. I believe this “HDR” combined a 2.5 and 4.0 second exposure.)
(25mm lens and a 25 second exposure.)
(25mm lens at 1/25 of a second.)
(25mm lens and a 25 second exposure.)
(50mm lens, 20 second exposure.)
Back at the ranch. Our campsite from inside the camper. (Photo by Julie Joy.)
The zero tolerance approach to food theft (7/4/23)
There are a lot more photos on this hike, but they’re with the same idea: long exposures of water.
Back at camp, Julie let me know the rangers had been in camp all day looking for a grizzly bear. This one was wanted for food theft and was last seen in the area of the creek behind our site. One ranger was down at the water and another was in the neighboring site with radio equipment. Even though the bear was collared and they were picking up a signal, they never saw a bear. Oh, and each year we take the camper to Glacier, Julie Joy is vindicated on pushing to purchase a camper since again this year, Many Glacier was closed to tents and “hard sided camper only.”
Ranger on visual patrol. (Photo by Julie Joy.)
Later, the bear in question committed a strong arm burglary down at Swiftcurrent boat launch, was tried in a sham court by a bunch of charlatans, and was hung from the gallows as an example to other bears.
https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/news/aggressive-food-conditioned-grizzly-euthanized-in-gnp.htm
Ok, boring, let’s play some cribbage.
Hoser 1. (Photo by Julie Joy.)
And then cracking ourselves up trying to take a selfie.
Are you there Mr Bear. It’s me, Jay (7/5/23)
I got a fairly early start (7:45 am), but with the early crowds at the Grinnell parking lot, I figured it would be busy. It wasn’t. The boat on Josephine was sitting in a perfectly calm lake, so I quickly set up the tripod. About the time I got the camera attached, the captain fired up the engine. Sigh. I got off one photo as the mirror image started disappearing.
I ran into a guy that was obviously very upset. He said that he saw a bear, got out his bear spray, the bear charged him and he deployed the spray. According to his story, he was doing everything correct, the bear charged and more alarmingly, didn’t seem very deterred by the spray. He was freaked out enough that he bailed on the hike and started to convincingly preach from the pulpit of Grizzly Ministries. The path is narrow and few shall leave.
Having not been charged by a bear, I continued.
The plan wasn’t to complete the full hike to the glacier (see Snow Moon basin report), but simply hike to “lunch rock.” The trail was closed beyond the cliff area (where the trail is often closed in the spring) due to “bear frequenting.”
I’ve seen this movie. Pass the popcorn. (Still 7/5/23)
The spot we got in St. Mary was the same one I had (with the camper) on a solo trip a few years ago. Ms. Teapot surprisingly had a site not far from our’s, but after a charcuterie board, cocktail, and fire, she pitched her tent on our tent pad. She also presented me (and our backpacking gang) with a T-shirt(s) she had made for the occasion of being one of the fortunate few.
Photo by Julie Joy.
A country for old men (7/6/23)
Not much to report except a move to Beauvais Lake, near Pincher Creek. Canada that is.
It was difficult, as you might imagine, to locate a campsite for the camper in Glacier for a week that didn’t involve moving the camper. The reservation whisperer found a week long site (really!) but it was in the shade and the camper needs some solar power for the battery. Beauvais offered a site with an electric plug-in at a reasonable price. Oh Canada it was.
St Mary before leaving.
On the road north. (Photos by Julie Joy.)
On the way to Beauvais, I said to Julie that I need a break from drinking. It wasn’t so much the quantity, but the frequency, i.e. daily drinking, that was the problem. Jay’s on the wagon…again.
Another night with fancy cocktails–A survival guide. (7/7/23)
If Beauvais Lake is not a birding sanctuary, it should be. Part of the lake was closed to boating because of “nesting season” or something like that. I wandered down to the lake an hour after sunrise to see what I’d find.
The geese were fine with me, but they weren’t so fine when someone walked up with a dog. Emergency exit stage right.
In the afternoon, I went for a short hike up into the hills above the lake.
The skies started to look threatening but I decided to continue down a faint path that looked like a powerline clearing. A bit later, the trail became more established and I tried to get Julie Joy on the walkie-talkie. No luck, too many trees.
After getting back, Julie wanted to play cribbage and I said, “Let’s finish the Aviations.”
An Aviation is a gin drink, but it depends on Hendric’s gin, which does not have much juniper or pine tree taste. An Aviation also includes creme de violet (which gives it a purple color), marashaino liquor and a cherry (for sweetness), and lemon (which makes your clothes fall off). Actually, cocktails often have spirits, something sweet, something bitter, and some type of fruit, so lemon might check a couple boxes here. After finishing the purple elixir, I said, “Let’s drink the Cosmos.” (Vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juice.)
And then, “We might as well finish the manhattans…” Jay’s off the wagon and Julie Joy is loving every minute of it.
Bark like a Chicken
As we kept drinking, playing cribbage and laughing, I started really laughing for no reason. Julie asked, “What?” I responded, “I was laughing at barking like a chicken.” She was still bewildered, and then I started making noises that didn’t really sound like a chicken, but were very loud. She immediately looked over my shoulder to the campground road, where a group of people turned and started looking at us. I continued making really loud, gawd awful noises and then laughing uncontrollably. This got Julie belly laughing too. After a few minutes of laughing, we started gasping, “No more,” “Just stop, and “My stomach hurts.” It took us a couple minutes to settle down and then I started laughing again. Thinking about barking chickens still gets me laughing, and I can’t explain why.
Sleeping with one eye open (7/8/23)
The next morning, I was again down at the lake early with the big lens. This time a woman I talked with the previous morning was with her man, who pointed out an osprey nest across the lake. It appears these two were van camping in the parking lot. He had a camera with a long lens and good knowledge of birds in general that were on the lake.
I noticed some of the geese were sleeping with one eye open. This normally wouldn’t have drawn my attention but I recently heard a podcast talking about geese and dolphins using hemispheric sleep. This is thought to allow half the brain to sleep while the other half can track predators.
I looked up geese standing on one leg, and this is unrelated to sleep. They do this to keep the other leg warm.
To paraphrase Paul Simon, everyone loves the sound of a loon in the distance. Everyone knows it’s true.
Check out the first 5 seconds of this video, and the loon call what I love about northern Minnesota lakes. In this case, the loons were close. In fact one surfaced quite close to me (on the dock) and furiously swam away vocalized fear.
The pair.
Showing off the plumage.
This was a nice show for the last day before the backpack. The plan for tomorrow was to meet at Chief Mountain trailhead at 10 am (as I recall), do 20 jumping jacks and start the hike. Ok, jumping jacks optional. Beers also optional, but boots are required.
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