My Lake

(June 23rd)

During the night, Lucky said he heard a crunching sound.  We camped near a 30 foot snow field.  Some critter probably walked across.  In the morning, however, it was clear we had a new, temporary teammate.

 

An old mountain goat was hanging out within 15 feet of our camp, walking calmly back and forth.  As luck would have it, my camera battery had drained due to cold.  So I frantically tried to charge it while the goat was so close.  Eventually I got a couple pictures of the old guy.  The Bob Marshall Wilderness does deliver.

Our first challenge of the day was getting over Switchback Pass. This was supposed to me a smooth series of switchbacks that led easily over a high pass.  However, due to the snow fields it was precarious.  The trail was high on the steep snow fields.  Since I am naturally brilliant, I had reduced pack weight in East Glacier by getting rid of my micro-spikes and ice-ax.  We chose to go along the bottom of the snow field.  This was slightly more level and had less snow.  Of course, the trade-off was a sheer drop off of 100 feet if we slipped in the mud.

Thus far, Lucky has been our main pathfinder. I am pretty good with balance (that ballast I carry in the middle comes in handy) and open area routing.  As a result, I led us over to a point directly below where the pass was located.  The only thing between us and the pass was a steep snow field of about about 150 to 200 feet.  At that point, I decided the only logical thing to do was to yield the lead to Lucky.  He had microspikes and the Trail Name to make it all possible.  Eventually we got on top and were very relieved.

 

The rest of the day found me hiking alone.  Lucky’s injury was clearly hurting him.  There were a lot of blowdowns and I scraped the heck out of my shins. I arrived at the Forest Service back country cabin at Pentagon Creek.  Not only did my current group show up, but also the first team I started hiking with.  The Forest Service outhouse was unlocked and most of us took advantage of the opportunity and gave high marks to the quality of the privy.  We have been in the woods awhile.

 

As the afternoon wore on, I eventually found myself getting ahead of Lucky and STD, but trailing Grizzly and the others.  I enjoyed the time and really appreciated the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  It just has a feeling of being in the wild. I had read some comments about it being boring, but I truly felt like I was in remote wilderness.

 

While navigating the many blowdowns, I eventually came to the last hill.  It was a climb over Larch Hill to the day’s destination, My Lake.   I chugged up the hill, my thighs protesting, my lungs working overtime.  To take my mind off the challenge, I thought of what I would say when I reached the Grizzly group.  When I finally staggered into the campsite, I told them “Look, you can camp anywhere you want, but I just want you to know that this is My Lake.”  At first they thought I was insane, but quickly they realized the altitude had caused me to come up with corny humor.

 

Ironically, I fell sleep to the sound of jet engines as I was sleeping under some type of common flight path.