Welp, after a long stretch I am finally in Lincoln Montana for what turned out to be an amazing rodeo. Before Lincoln however I still had to finish up the final miles I missed because of the storm. The first day of slackpacking was a nice and easy ten miles between Two Medicine and East Glacier. I ended up hiking that stretch with a trail family called the sprouts and if you look closely at my hat from here on out you can see why they have that name. The second day was a beautiful 19 miles over Pitamaken pass with a member of the sprouts Fruit Fly. It was a fun little day and I even ended up wading out into a lake and climbing up onto a snow berg to take a picture that you can find below. The last day I did alone was a 15 mile stretch from Marias Pass to East Glacier. Honestly, it was overgrown and muddy and some people just skipped it entirely. Especially after a lady, Foureyes, slipped in the overgrowth and sprained her ankle badly enough to need to get of trail for a couple of weeks.
Next up, was the 160 mile food carry that is the Bob Marshal Wilderness. I ended up taking a zero day before entering this because while beautiful and amazing, Glacier is not the friendliest place on one’s body to start a thru hike.
Anyway, the Bob, the place with the highest concentration of grizzly bears in the lower 48. So how many bears did I see? One. And how many were grizzlies? Zero. Not to say that there isn’t a chance, the next 800 miles until Lander, Wyoming are geizzly country but I’m feeling better about the bear situation. Now as for the Bob, generally really beautiful but with worse trails due to it being a designated wilderness zone where power tools are banned. However compared to previous years and their horror stories of blowdowns I think we got off really lightly. As for special moments, the Chinese Wall might be my favorite geological feature we have seen as of yet.
Then there was the trail magic we ended up receiving at the Benchmark trailhead. We ended up being vortexed in and staying for a stir fry dinner and pancakes and sausages for breakfast. Slowing us down by about a half day in all but what a joyous half day it was. Thank you Tripod and Sprinkles 🙂
Then there was still fifty miles to go. A fifty miles that I ended up hiking with Kate. She posting YouTube videos at “Kate the wild” if you want to give it a look. I’ll definitely be in some of her Bob videos. Another memorable person was smokebeard who you will see tending to his namesake.
And then we get to Lincoln. The last 30 miles were particularly rough with about 8k feet of ascent and just as much descent but we made it and I also had my first hitch!!!! 🙂
And in fact, I’ve hitched three times. All of which we in the back of a pickup truck which has to be one of the best experiences.
Now as for the rodeo, it was very enjoyable and while its not something I’d usually participate in I’m glad that I got to experience it with all the other hiker trash.
Next up a sixty mile stretch to Helena Montana where I will pick up a resupply box and then another sixty into Butte where we are trying to catch a folk singing festival 🙂
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