Sorry, Travis

It's well known that I'm basically perfect and always right. I would NEVER misplace my phone or my wallet, leave our battery charger plugged in at the cafe, or fart in a zipped up tent. So it came as a great surprise when I messed up something pretty crucial. I was just doing laundry, and used one of our panniers to carry my clothes to the bathroom. I noticed a small flap of cloth with some screws in it at the bottom of the pannier, and I didn't think it was important and lost track of it. 

Welllll, turns out that was Travis' shoe insert that allowed him to screw his cleat back in to clip in to his pedals. We ride with our shoes attached to our pedals because you get the upstroke as well as the downstroke when you pedal, and it makes pedaling uphill much easier. Good thing we weren't climbing over two mountain passes that day!!

Travis was so mad. He spent the whole ride hunkering down on his handlebars cursing me, and let me know at every break how much easier it would be if he were clipped in. This road wound up and around this cliffside at a 30 degree angle for about 20 miles. This road climbed so high it was called Looking Glass Road. 

Fortunately for me, Travis has a much better attitude and a much worse memory, so he claimed that his anger dissipated as soon as we hit the descent, which was glorious and long enough to make the massive climb feel like it was worth it. 

And when it was over, we were in the Two Medicine campground at Glacier National Park. 

Grinnell Glacier

Learning from our Iceberg Lake experience, we started our hike the next day to Grinnell Glacier in the afternoon to avoid the morning crowds. This is probably the craziest hike I've ever been on.

The trail begins by following glacial lakes, then ascends dramatically along a cliffside, speckled with wildflower and mini waterfalls, overlooking the entire valley.

We saw ran into birds and ground squirrels the whole way, but then right before we reached the top we got a real wildlife encounter.

They were right there in the trail!!

After a 2500 ft climb, we reached the treasure waiting at the end: Grinnell Glacier. I've never even seen a Glacier before! 

The sight filled me with wonder and sadness. Glaciers are made when snow falls quicker than it can melt, packing into hard, permanent ice formations that stay frozen throughout the summer and provide fresh water to the valleys as their edges slowly melt. The lush valleys depend on the glacier melts for summer growth because there's hardly any rain here in the warm season. 

So when you look at Grinnell Glacier now and see that only a 40% of it remains compared to 50 years ago, you get sad.

1938

1981

2009

You realize that the streams that the glacier melt feeds will just get lower and lower every year, leading to drier vegetation, resulting in smaller huckleberry yields and hungrier bears. That the landscape will slowly become more and more of a tinderbox and devastating wildfires will become the norm. Probably the saddest thing is realizing that the same people who are actively campaigning against climate change legislation are becoming disgustingly rich by plundering oil and gas reserves, and claiming melting glaciers are not irrefutable proof of climate change but liberal propaganda. I felt lucky to see what's left of Grinnell because scientists predict that by 2030 none of the glaciers in this park will remain.  It's even on the FAQs posting outside the ranger station. Q: What will Many Glacier be called after all the glaciers have melted? A: Many Bear. 

Even though these vacations that Travis and I take might be fiscally irresponsible for people who make so little money, we're reminded over and over again that it's worth it to travel NOW while we still can, for many reasons. People remind us over and over again that responsibilities can prevent you from taking a month off, and aging bodies can dramatically change the nature of the trip you take. But we're also realizing that we need to see these wild places while they're still here, before climate change destroys the conditions that allow these ecosystems to exist in the first place.

As we rode out of Many Glacier to continue our journey, we saw a line of cars stopped dead in the road, and looked up at the cliffside. Grizzly Tour was living up to its name.

I've never seen a bear in the wild before, much less a Mama and two babies. The cubs followed her from huckleberry bush to huckleberry bush, employing themselves with the important work of fattening up for winter. And I'm sorry if this is a wussy East Coast thing, but before I knew it I was crying.

Here was Mama, a tremendously dangerous animal concerning herself with what all Mamas are worried about: the flourishing her children. It was the intersect of Mama's power, wildness, and tenderness that got me, as well as the playfulness and vulnerability of the cubs. We've made it so difficult for them to live yet they're surviving anyway, as precarious as that survival is. 

Many Glacier

When we hitchhiking up to Kokanee Glacier in Canada, we told our ride how we were going to Glacier National Park and he said, "Oh it's so beautiful there, you'll love it." We didn't understand, because we were already driving up a gorgeous mountain, embarking on the most beautiful hike we had been on so far. When we finally biked into the Many Glacier entrance to the park, we understood. 

The first real difference I noticed was the lack of fences and powerlines. They're so ubiquitous in our everyday lives, but even in the country they divide up the landscape into manmade straight lines. The lines long the road into Glacier were jagged and straight up, following craggy mountains that were bigger than any we had seen so far. And they were so close! They arose abruptly from shores of the lake, softer-looking at the bottom but transforming into hard, imposing cliff faces as the soil become too rocky for grassy carpets and trees. 

Because the campsite at Many Glacier is nondescript and surrounded by hiking trails, this area of the park attracts some intense outdoor enthusiasts. The campsite is already bustling at 6am as hikers prepare themselves for the day's adventure. Travis was awoken early by vacation energy, but he somehow contained himself like a child on Christmas morning waiting me to wake up at 9am. Even though he had already eaten some oatmeal he was manic with hunger, so I followed him to the lodge where he put a serious hurting on the breakfast buffet. The lady behind us in line commented that the bacon tasted like cardboard, but we were like, "Listen lady, we burned at least 5,000 calories riding up a mountain in a headwind yesterday. THIS BACON TASTES AMAZING." 

After we were sufficiently fueled we followed the signs to Iceberg Lake, a popular hike that lived up to its name.

Even though it is late July, Travis learned that Iceberg Lake is not a euphemism. Take a look in the bottom left corner.

You're Fired!

By the time we reached the the northern-most entry to Glacier National Park, the fire was burning 2,000 acres. We descended into the valley leading to the Many Glaciers part of the park, watching an apocalyptic cloud of smoke billow down into the next valley over. Travis of course was optimistic. Maybe it would just burn itself out! When we heard that it had doubled in size again, we knew that this 4,000 acre fire would probably burn till the first snow, which meant our route traveling Going-To-The-Sun Road was definitely off the table.

I was bummed. Our whole trip I had been hearing about this 50 mile scenic road built through the park specifically because it passed through beautiful country. We had bought a trail book with mountain summits that started in the section of the park that was closed. We had planned to spend ten full days in Glacier, riding over Logan's Pass over the continental divide, traveling from trailhead to trailhead along Going-To-The-Sun. And now this STUPID FIRE erupted literally exactly when we arrived.

Travis said it was super douchey to complain that a devastating wildfire was ruining vacation. I'm glad that someone in this relationship has a good attitude. But once I realized that the West entrance to Going-To-The-Sun was still open that there were other campsites in the Southeastern side of the park, that there were mountain summit guides for all parts of the park I started to feel better. In reality we'd be avoiding all the motor tourists who pull their RVs off on the scenic overlooks, snap photos and check the park off their list. We'd get to visit some of the out-of-the-way corners of the park, and we'd just add 80 miles onto our trip going the long way around the park instead of straight through it.