Disorganized notes on the Continental Divide Trail, part 21:  It’s always something

Day 141:  04 September, 10.9 miles today, 2299.4 miles total, Glacier NP

After a night of sporadic light rain and wind so violent it shook the small cabin I’d split with Elf, the acrid smell of the wildfires out west still blanketed the town of East Glacier.*  The air had cleared enough to grant a better view of the mountains bordering the park than the one that had greeted us on our arrival the day before, though, so it wasn’t as if we felt much in the position to complain.  We’d made it all the way to Northern Montana without getting derailed by a single fire since New Mexico; that in itself was a freaking miracle.

The main order of the day was securing the backcountry permit required to camp in the park, and to that end Unknown was on his way out of the hostel by 0800hrs to make it up and over the mountain to the Two Medicine ranger station in good time.  Trusting the matter to our Logistics Chief, PA, Elf, and I stayed behind to do laundry, write a few emails, and eat a late breakfast at the lodge, the offerings of whose buffet were mediocre but plentiful.  Around midday, we finally worked up the motivation for the giant climb and got underway.

The weather was good for hiking for the first few miles, but around the time I was finally making some headway on getting up the massive ridge guarding the park’s border, I was hit by a gust of wind so strong it not only blew my hat off my head—the fact that it got caught on my ponytail is the only reason I didn’t lose it completely—but blew my sunglasses right of my face and 100’ back down the mountain.  It was, apparently, going to be another one of those days.

Wind is basically the food poisoning of meteorological phenomena:  there is no upside to it.  Wind always sucks, the only difference is degree.  Maybe there is some useful function to wind that I’m ignoring here, but maybe there’s a usefulness to food poisoning as well.  I don’t care.  I don’t feel a need ever to experience either one ever, ever again.  Wind is just plain shit weather, and anyone who tries to tell you differently is probably an asshole.

So anyway, the wind got worse the higher I climbed, until I caught up with Elf a half mile or so from the top of the ridge.  We both struggled to remain upright as the gusts buffeted us from every direction.  As we crested the pass and took in the rugged, austere beauty of the mountains shrouded in a thin haze of smoke, Elf turned to me.  “DO YOU THINK WE’LL SEE ANY MOUNTAIN GOATS UP HERE?” he asked, shouting to be heard over the roar of the gale whipping past us.  “I DOUBT IT,” I replied, “THEY PROBABLY ALL BLEW AWAY.”

The wind dogged us all the way down the mountain, though it did slacken the lower we got.  We presented ourselves (unnecessarily, as it turned out) at the ranger station, which turned out to be closed despite all the rangers hanging out in front of it.  When we all finally understood that we didn’t need anything from them, they became a lot friendlier, and the ranger who’d helped Unknown with the permit earlier in the day was happy to chat about conditions ahead.  “It’s going to be windier tomorrow,” she said, “at least 10 to 15 mph worse, so be prepared for that.  You might need to go on your hands and knees up at the passes to keep from getting blown over.”  The CDT wasn’t going to let up finish without a fight.

We thanked her for the warning and proceeded to our very first campsite in a campground jam-packed with car campers.  It was an odd juxtaposition, sleeping in our backpacking tents around all these high-maintenance city folk.  On our way to the site, we could hear children screaming and laughing as they played in the ice-cold lake nearby.  A couple was coming the other way, the fella with his can of bear spray unsheathed and his finger through the loop adjacent to the tigger.  “Is it a bear?” he asked, “Is someone in trouble over there?”  “It’s just some kids playing in the water.  It’s fine.”  Wind or no wind, the sooner we could get out into the backcountry and away from these people, the safer we would be.

*described most accurately by PA, who called it “a tribal town with a big-ass lodge in the middle of it.”

Day 142:  05 September, 13.6 miles today, 2313.0 miles total, Glacier NP

The wind was indeed gnarly, as promised; even at the Two Medicine campground, nestled as it was at the bottom of a valley.  But we were lucky:  our Two Med campsite was well protected by trees, and as we got well into the day’s big climb, we found the mountains to the west blocked most of the wind.  Which just left us to do a bit of hiking and soak in some truly spectacular scenery—which was much easier to see today, as much of the smoke had blown out overnight.*

And a bit of hiking was all we had to do.  Our entire day was just 14 miles—after months of pushing 25-mile day after 25-mile day, it was both wonderful and strange to spend an entire day in the backcountry without hiking from dawn until dusk.  We took long breaks to admire the views, we stopped for an early lunch and lay against our packs in a meadow beside a turquoise lake for hours, and we still made it camp by mid-afternoon.

Part of it was the strictness of the park’s backcountry permit system.  When Unknown had gotten our permit, he’d had to choose ahead of time which sites we’d camp at which nights.  This, in order to create an itinerary that would get us to the end in a reasonable timeframe, we would have one brutally punishing day amidst a string of short, easy days.

Short and east by our current standards, at any rate.  Unknown had actually gone on a backpacking trip in Glacier several years before, with the exact same itinerary for the first three days.  Back then he’d found today’s 14 miles extremely difficult; but now, at the end of a months-long thru-hike, this bit of trail was a walk in the park.

*It’s important to keep in mind here that the smoke was only here in the first place because the wind had carried it here from California, and I don’t believe it deserves credit for fixing a problem that it created in the first place.

Day 143:  06 September, 10.4 miles today, 2323.4 miles total, Glacier NP

A some point in the night, the wind finally blew itself out, and the constant din of the trees whipping back and forth was replaced by an enveloping silence.  I woke up in the thin hours to the sound of wolves baying in the distance.  I’d never heard anything like it before, low and sonorous and instantly recognizable, their voices rolled and echoed off the surrounding mountains.  It was the sound of a lost American wilderness, and it was a blessing to be able to hear it.  The evening before, we’d met five middle-aged brothers from the Chicago area, who were very friendly, but whose conversational focus on football, fast cars, and women with comically-shaped fake breasts* I hadn’t found very engaging.  But in the morning, all anyone could talk about was the wolves.

We took our time getting out of camp, though it was surprisingly cold.  We were just in no rush to hurry up and wait at a campsite only tenish miles away.  Once we got started, though, we immediately began making the long climb up to Triple Divide Pass—from which we’d temporarily leave the continental divide and hike for a while in the Arctic Ocean’s watershed.

I love climbing passes, even if the climbing part can be something of a grind.  There is something exhilarating in watching the old world around you drop away as you gain elevation, until you find yourself looking down on birds of prey soaring hundreds of feet into the sky.  It’s marvelous, the way the perspective continues to change, all the way to the top, where the final few steps reveal the new world into which you’ll be headed after taking a break to look around and have yourself a snack.

The new world on the northwest side of Triple Divide Pass was indeed breathtaking as we lounged for an hour at the top, but it became something of a mixed blessing as we descended farther into the valley.  On the downside, the trail became increasingly overgrown, making the walking slower and less pleasant.  On the upside, it was overgrown with bushes of ripe thimble berries, making the walking slower and more pleasant.  On the whole, it was a wash as we came into the burn area in which our campsite lay.

This is what normal backpackers must feel like, taking breaks throughout the day whenever a spot seems like a worthwhile place to stop and getting to camp well before the looming threat of twilight.  We simply sat around and hung out after an unhurried dinner, watching a moose graze leisurely in the nearby lake, chatting first with a couple out for a few days of backpacking, and then with a thru-hiker named Venus—who’d been with the German couple Jumpsuit and Batwoman since forever, but who’d left them in the dust to finish before her nephew’s wedding.  The next day we’d start pushing miles in an attempt to get a midday ride to a restaurant on the east side of the park, and the day after that we’d be slogging our way through our last 25-miler.  We were still on the CDT, after all, and there was brutality out there that needed to be embraced.  But for the moment, we could just enjoy where we were, for a little while, together.

*Even Unknown, who has no interest in breast of any kind, was better than me at faking enthusiasm for the picture of the Barbie-doll blonde posing in front of a sports car that the brothers were passing around.

Day 144:  07 September, 14.4 miles today, 2337.8 miles total, Glacier NP

I was at the food hanging line almost a full hour before sunrise, fucking around with an overly complicated knot in the dark.  The previous afternoon, the weekender sharing an anchor point had pompously explained that he tied his food up that way because he was “raised on boats” and so was compelled to “do everything the right way.”  I’d tied a loop in my line specifically so I could easily be removed and replaced by human fingers—the method preferred by this dingus didn’t really work when sharing an anchor with other people.  I’m sure he was later appalled by the slipknot I used to retie his line after finally getting my food free, but really, if you’re going to be a self-righteous ass, you should at least be right.

We were back on our old schedule, packing up and eating breakfast in the dark so we could be walking at first light.  We didn’t have a particularly long day ahead of us—that would be the next day—but we would hit the only paved road through Glacier a mile before camp, and we were highly motivated by the prospect of a meal at one of the park’s restaurants.

After a frankly obnoxious morning of overgrown trail, we hit the road shortly after noon and almost as if on cue a shuttle pulled up in front of us.  We boarded happily and sped off toward the park’s east entrance, missing the stop for the nearest restaurant due to our collective failure to understand the shuttle’s route map.  At the visitors center, we first tried to find a soda, to no avail, then gathered what information we could.  We could leave the park and walk two miles to the town of St. Mary, which did indeed have at least one functioning restaurant, or we could get on a shuttle going back the way we’d come and go to the restaurant we’d originally intended to go to, which would only be open for one more day.  Not wanting to walk any more than was necessary, we opted for the later.

We should have walked to St. Mary.  The restaurant, we discovered upon walking up to it, had closed one day early, leaving us shit out of luck.  Maybe.  Or maybe another one of the park’s restaurants might still be open.  The next nearest one was on the west side, so we walked back to the shuttle stop and waited the better part of an hour for the next 30 minute shuttle.  When it finally came, we took it to the end of the line—about 1/3 of the way to our destination.

We had to change shuttles at Logan Pass, for reasons that would become obvious to us but were opaque at the time.  There we waited for the 30 minute shuttle for over an hour.  By the time we were riding down into the park’s west side in a tiny bus small enough to navigate the steep, narrow road, it was already pushing 1530hrs, and we were starting to realize even if the restaurant at McDonald Lake was actually open, we wouldn’t have time to eat there and catch a shuttle back to the CDT.  So we got off at the first stop and waited for a ride back to the east side, greedily eating snacks from our neglected food bags.

We got into camp around dinner time, ravenously hungry.  We hadn’t even found a single can of Coke for sale—but we had gotten our own small tour of Glacier, which, despite the hoards of unruly tourists, is still possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been.  We saw elegant, sweeping rock faces, and impossibly vast stone bowls cradling the remains of glaciers that had once been majestic sights on their own.  There is little I have seen with the breadth and scope of Glacier’s mammoth stony peaks and deep, yawning green valleys.  It was actually a pretty good day, all in all.

As we were finishing up dinner, who should come into camp but the German couple, Jumpsuit and Batwoman—Venus’s friends, only one day behind her.  We had a good meal, trading stories of the last few days and we almost convinced them to join us on our crazy, stupid, long, difficult day so they could finish the trail with Venus and us.  I think we almost had them, but something told me as we said goodnight that we wouldn’t be seeing them when we hiked out in the first light of day.

Day 145:  08 September, 25.3 miles today, 2363.1 miles total, Glacier NP

That something was wrong, as we were delighted to see Jumpsuit’s and Batwoman’s sleep-worn faces as we gathered for breakfast by red-filtered headlamp in the hour before dawn.  They were going to join us on our long day through Glacier, and finish with us and Venus the day after.  It felt like a good omen.

We spent the first 6 miles of the day climbing steadily into the sky.  I passed Batwoman a couple miles into the uphill slog.  “Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” she grunted in salutation as she stepped aside to let me by.  “We’re on the way!” I said (or something else equally cheerful and asinine), to which she replied, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.”  Fair enough, but the morning was shaping up beautifully, the clouds gathered among the peaks highlighting the dramatic scale of the monstrous rock faces rather than obscuring them.  It felt like we reached the top of the pass in a heartbeat; much as I wanted to sit back and enjoy the moment, it was freezing up among the clouds.  So after a celebratory snickers bar, I started down into the valley beyond.

It was terribly, wonderfully scenic, but downhills wear me out much faster than the ups, so by the time I reached the treeline and the slope evened out, I was already pooped, with a couple hours yet to walk to make it to Many Glacier.  By the time I reached the lake-front lodge in that part of the park, I was about ready to pack it in and take a three-day nap.  We’d covered almost 15 miles by midday.

But it was worth it.  The food at the lodge would have disappointing to anyone who hadn’t hiked hard all morning, but for those who had it was one of the best goddamned meals imaginable.  A hot convenience-store pizza, premade tuna salad on wheat, bag of jalapeño potato chips, an oversized donut, a cookie, a large cup of coffee.  Kings don’t eat so well.  Of course then we had to work up the motivation to leave the warmth of our communal table for the cold grey world outside.  The next climb would have none of the joy or energy of that morning’s ascent.  As we walked seeming straight into a cloud, it would also have none of the views.

What it did have, after a long, brutal slog up the side of the valley, was a tunnel beneath an impenetrable wall of spires crowning the pass above.  With the mist already giving the environment a ghostly aura, the tunnel was downright spooky—but that only made it fun.  It opened out on the far side to a steep catwalk cut into the north side of the mountain.  The view would have been impressive indeed of the clouds hadn’t erased most of it from sight, as the drop from the far side of the catwalk was sheer.  Wherever we were, we were high up.

Unknown, Elf, and PA were gathered on the catwalk, and started asking as soon as I came out of the tunnel whether I’d had a run in with a park ranger.  Once they described the man, I remembered him immediately—especially the way I’d thought the badge on his chest looked fake—but he and I hadn’t done more than exchange curt hellos.  He’d given the others the third degree about our permit, apparently, and had let me alone most likely because they’d explained there was a fourth member of the party behind them.  They were worried about Jumpsuit and Batwoman, whom we had cajoled into ignoring their own permit so they could hike with us—which had the potential of getting them ejected from the park if they were caught.  I knew they weren’t far behind me, so we waited.

When they arrived, Jumpsuit explained that the ranger had indeed stopped him and demanded to see his permit.  “So I just told him, we have had bad news from back home, and so we must finish the trail today and leave for Germany.”  With that, he’d wished them well and let them continue on, despite the fact that they were, technically, supposed to spend that night in Many Glacier.  “I lie to my boss all the time,” said Jumpsuit, “this was not a hard thing to me.”

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully, and a couple of hours later we were all at camp, eating ramen together in the woods for the last time.  We reminisced over the past five months and toasted each other with beers and canned wines we’d pack out from the lodge, but it still didn’t feel like the end.  We had one morning’s worth of hiking left to do, and that would be it; but this evening at camp still felt, well, normal.  This had been our lives for 145 days, and even the fact that we knew it was all coming to an end the next day did nothing to make the occasion feel as finite and fleeting as it truly was. This group of people would not share a meal in the woods again after this night.  Even as the sudden cold drove us all into our tents, each of struggled to accept that reality of the fact that we had reached the end.

Well, almost.  There was still the matter of the ten miles we’d have to cover come sunrise.

Day 146:  the last day.  09 September, 9.7 miles total, 2372.8 miles total, US/Canada international border

“It’s always something.”

It had become our mantra over the few weeks, a succinct summation of the CDT hiking experience. It was handy, short, pithy, and always entirely appropriate no matter the circumstance.

I awoke with the dim impressions that it was still the middle of the night, but that something had changed.  It was warmer, I noticed, and I was roasting in the base layer and sweater I’d put on when crawling into my sleeping bag in the freezing cold.  It was also pouring.  The 30% chance of light showers the park service had posted at the visitor’s center had become a 100% chance of getting shit on all night long.

There is no way to describe the misery of packing up in the rain, in the cold, and in the dark that truly communicates how badly the experience sucks.  All the excitement that might have been focused toward having a short, easy last day to the border was instead transformed into a haunting dread of doing anything other than burying your head in your sleeping bag and wishing desperately to be anywhere else.

We ate breakfast, as usual, before sunrise, but huddled shivering over our tiny backpacking stoves.  When the sky was finally light enough to see more than a couple feet in front of our faces, we started walking.  The deep, broad puddles on the trail soaked our feet almost at once, which became painful long before our feet went numb.  As we left camp, we crossed the aging suspension bridge with several planks missing (one of the park’s many “Indiana Jones bridges,” as a weekender referred to them), only to realize on the far side that the monument lay in the other direction.  We were off to a great start.

The morning was a slog, stomping through waterlogged, overgrown trail in the forests, and getting pelted by rain and sleet in the fields.  It could have been worse; while clouds masked the surrounding countryside, occasional breaks in the wall of mist an rain clearly revealed a fresh dusting of snow on the higher elevations.  I had largely zoned out after a few hours—my usual means of coping with prolonged bouts of miserable hiking—and so only gradually became aware that the weather had started to clear.  With only a couple of miles to go, the sun burst out of hiding, and the entire feel of the forest around me changed.  As I climbed upward, snow clinging to the upper branches of the pines began to melt in the sun, giving the impression of a downpour under a bright, cloudless blue sky.

As I walked suddenly out of the forest and into a parking lot, I saw everyone standing around in the sunshine:  Elf, Unknown, PA, Venus, Batwoman, and Jumpsuit.  “Everyone is now here!” Jumpsuit exclaimed, popping the cork on the full-sized bottle of champagne he’d carried all the way through Glacier, “und now we can celebrate!”  We spent a few minutes soaking up the sun and passing around the celebratory beverages we’d packed out—mine courtesy of a care package from my PCT hiking partner and much more manageably-sized.  Then we shouldered our packs for the last time as CDT thru-hikers, and walked the last 500’ down the road to the border and the obelisk marking the trail’s northern terminus.

The border crossing was closed—which was probably for the best, as it allowed us to just sort of slip across the international boundary and gather around the monument located technically on the Canadian side.  Venus hung around just long enough for a group selfie before running back up the road to meet her ride to Kalispell.  The rest of us took turns posing for victory shots for a few minutes before a Canadian Customs officer pulled up in an official-looking pickup.  He was fairly understanding as to our situation, that we’d spent the last five months walking thousands of miles just for this moment, and he was kind enough to take a few group pictures of us before making it clear we needed to get the hell out his country.

I’ve said it before, but it nonetheless remains true:  the end always happens suddenly, no matter how long you’ve had to prepare for it.  It would take a few days before it felt like the journey had come to end, but as of that moment, the hike was over.  2,372 miles over 5 long months, and in the time it took to pass through a gate, it was done.  I’d have to sit with a mix of varied emotions for a while before I’d be able to piece together what it meant, all the hardship and wonder and misery and beauty and loneliness and friendship and discomfort and joy of the past 146 days.  Maybe I wouldn’t ever come to any real conclusions; that was never the point.  The point was to walk the CDT, from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.  Regardless of whatever lofty purpose I might later ascribe to it, that was all it had ever boiled down to.  And now we had done it.  As we left the monument and returned to the parking lot to wait for our ride, we were no longer thru-hikers but simply a handful of bedraggled vagrants in desperate need of a shower and a cold drink.  Because we’d done what we’d set out to do:  we had hiked the CDT.