I visited Glacier National Park, where there are very few Glaciers remaining, but there are still a lot of bighorn sheep. At Logan Pass in the sunset, we met our first trio of resting bighorns, complete with an old visitor explicating to the camera-wielding crowd at the overlook that the one with the more robust set of horns was a ram and the others were ewes. He was as confident as he was incorrect—all three animals were rams, the one with the biggest horns being the eldest (picture #2). A few days later, my friend Emma and I observed some real ewes and lambs in Two Medicine Lake campground, making their rounds and eating scraps from fire pits (habituated, unfortunately). Ewes have thinner, straighter horns than rams and are frequently mistaken for mountain goats (picture #3).
Emma and I became friends a decade ago, when we were both seasonal park rangers at Yellowstone National Park. We reconvened this August in her home town of Missoula after I flew from overheated Florida. For our second day in Glacier National Park, we had a backcountry camping permit for Poia Lake in the Many Glacier district. I packed and repacked my backpack more fastidiously than I ever had before, trying to bring exactly what I needed for the overnight trip and not an ounce more. Final revisions took place at the trailhead. Despite all my efforts, the pack still weighed over 40 pounds. I used to be more cavalier about carrying heavy backpacks. But since March, I've had a herniated disc in my lower back, which causes sciatica in my right leg.
I had a tingling feeling in my right foot for the entire 6.5 mile hike to Poia Lake, which was mostly uphill. We hit the trail later than planned, at 2:30 PM, and took the hike at a manageable pace, which turned out to be about one mile per hour. The first third of the trail took us through thickets of thimbleberries and huckleberries, a bear's Garden of Eden (or Eatin'). And indeed, we stepped over plenty of bear skat, and I spotted a bear's claw-marking on a tree.
The trail wound and meandered, seemingly endlessly, mostly uphill and sometimes downhill, through conifer woods, talus slopes, past a hidden lake, and over the Swiftcurrent Ridge. We started at 5,000 feet above sea level, ascended 1,200 feet to the ridge, and descended a few hundred to Poia Lake. For the last two miles of the hike, it always seemed like our destination was just around the corner. I wish that I could say that this was all fun, but I became increasingly concerned about when or if we would reach our destination.
It was almost 8:30 PM, which is 10:30 PM in my home time zone. We stopped on a ridge, orange lichens dotting the rocks, the light fading and breeze blowing; the sun had already set. Downhill to the right, the sound of rushing water, a cascading stream.
“We can bivouac here,” I suggested.
Emma recalled the hike 734 map and guide we had been following, which said , “The trail then drops down quickly with a steep slope into the Kennedy Creek drainage where Poia Lake resides. The creek playfully exits the lake on your final approach.”...“That sounds like where we are now.”
“That could be anywhere,” I said. Emma encouraged me to keep hiking forward.
In less than fifty feet, as I reentered conifer woods, I said, “There's a sign up here.” Five paces closer. “It says that we have arrived at the backcountry campsites.”
The first task upon entering the backcountry camping area was to stop in the cooking area and raise the bear bags. Right after we took off our packs, a feeling of extreme fatigue came over me. My legs wavered and almost buckled. Luckily, I regained my footing. The hike was only one of many factors leading to this state of affairs. Traveling is a lot of work, from getting one's life in order prior to the trip, to packing and repacking, to looking for places to dispose of greywater at Avalanche Creek Campground, to taking too long to break down camp, to driving Going to the Sun Road behind a rental sedan operated by a European who probably hadn't driven a vehicle in years, to waiting for the backcountry safety orientation video at the Many Glacier Visitor Center to finish. Furthermore, I'm an early bird with an internal clock still on Eastern Time (whereas Emma is a night owl on Mountain Time). Fearing that I might drop on the spot from exhaustion, I scrambled to do all my camp tasks—tent, bear bag, etc—as efficiently as possible.
In the morning, Poia Lake had quite a bit of wave action for such a small body of water, bordered by barren peaks with patches of snow. I painted the scene in water color, the field medium of artist-explorers of yore. I had deliberated at the trailhead over whether to bring my field sketchbook and ultimately ruled in its favor. Emma, wearing pink flip flops, slipped and fell near the lake, acquiring a cut on her foot to add to blisters from hiking (in hiking boots). I felt like all the wilderness adventure camps I partook in as a youth had been validated, with their warnings against flip flops. Nevertheless, Emma is still bringing the pink flip flops next time she goes camping.
Our first encounter with a black bear occurred around noon. We were talking to a thru-hiker and eating PBJs in the backcountry cooking area, all packed up and soon to start the hike out. I saw something to the left out of the corner of my eye.
“There is a big animal there,” I said, looked again, and saw a big furry butt with a small tail walking away. “It's a bear.”
The adult black bear had walked in our direction down the trail past the backcountry campsites, reached the junction by the cooking area, apparently saw us three humans less than 25 feet away, and turned left (perpendicular to us). It casually walked away down the trail towards the lake, turned right, and disappeared into the bush, just before I could train my camera on it. Had this bear found food scraps here before, and was it returning to look for more at the very time of day when there were least likely to be people around? Or was the timing a coincidence? Wild animals commonly use human trails just to get around, so either explanation is plausible.
In the trek through the berry patches, Emma was especially consistent in talking to alert bears of our presence; you WANT them to know you're around, so you don't startle them and trigger a defensive reaction. Saying “Hey bear, bear, bear,” over and over quickly gets repetitive, so I sang “Downbound Train,” “Knockin' on Heavens Door,” the theme song from the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show, the theme song from the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon show, and recited as much of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as I could remember. I had the tingling feeling in my right foot on the downhill trek, too, and Emma walked on her foot injuries, and we were tired, but we were armed with bear spray.
One mile from the finish line, we stopped for a moment, and Emma, facing me, said, “There's a bear behind you.” I stood motionless, just in case the bruin was RIGHT behind me. I slowly looked over my shoulder, by which time the bear was gone. It had been a young black bear, perhaps 50 feet away, came out of the brush to give us a look, listen, and sniff, then continued through the brush.
Even without most of the glaciers, Glacier National Park is still a wonderland of mountains, valleys, lakes—I took a paddleboard out on Two Medicine Lake—conifers, and big mammals. The wolves of Glacier are elusive, and wildlife tours more often train their spotting scopes on bears and mountain goats. I wanted to see a mountain goat, but it was not to be.
Driving out of the park, one of our last stops was Goat Lick Overlook, where mountain goats come down from higher elevations to lick cliffs with deposits of salt and other minerals. (Electrolytes, it's what mountain goats crave!) Sadly, we saw no goats today. An interpretive sign explained that, built for snow and cold, the mountain goats may face heat stress on their quest for minerals at these lower, hotter, elevations, and they sprawl on patches of snow to cool down. Therefore, I'm not the only mammal pushing their limits in Glacier. I got some good photos of bighorn sheep on this trip, but no mountain goats and no bears. The bear encounters live on in memory, and the glaciers live on in historic photos.
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