(Author’s note: Back from my backpacking adventure to the Wall. Will take awhile to write that up. In the meantime: backdated entries from Glacier!)

I’m learning to sleep in. 7:20 in this case, though still before sun-up. I drove west, from the campsite back into the heart of Glacier and the Logan Pass Visitor’s Center. I assembled my day-pack, grabbed my poles, and crossed the road to join the Highline Trail.

It’s best to appreciate this trail in Google Earth.

It parallels Going-to-the-Sun Road (yellow), gradually moving up and up and up and up along the ridge known as the Garden Wall. You walk along barren rockslides, cross babbling brooks, at one point navigate a cliff face narrow enough to require a chain handrail bolted into the rock.

After a few miles I reached a giant switchback that took me up and over a saddle next to Haystack Butte. A half-hour later, resting in the shadow of another cliff, I saw Granite Park chalet in the far distance. I’ll get to that in a moment.

A bit before the chalet, there was a turnoff to the Grinnell Glacier overlook. This is a 0.6-mile hike (I later learned it’s actually 0.9) that takes you up the Garden Wall to the Continental Divide itself, where you can look down on the glacier on the other side. Hey, only live once, right?

Mmm, yeah, I definitely woulda skipped this one if I’d known better. The trail climbs 800 feet in well less than a mile across a barren rock face. It’s about 25% worse than you’re imagining. At least once I thought about giving up and turning around, but decided to press on.

After an hour I reached the top. The view was of course beautiful. I lingered for 20 minutes, resting in the shade and enjoying the cool breeze. Posting this just so I have something to show for it:

Then—awww, shit, I gotta go back down. If you’ve never backpacked, going downhill is TOUGH. Your knees feel like an old person’s.

Weary, I made it to my original destination, the Granite Park chalet. Back in the 1920s, Glacier built a series of quaint little hotels throughout the park, each a day’s horseback ride from each other, so tourists could rough it by day and relax by night. It was an odd little paradox, and an impressive feat of engineering in and of itself; everything—construction materials, resupplies—had to be carried in by mule. And at least at this chalet, it’s been that way ever since. I talked to staff who were repainting, and every one of them had hiked the 7.6 miles from Logan Pass that morning, and would hike back that evening. Not to mention getting to Logan Pass from their homes. Makes your commute look kinda wussy, don’t it?

I still had five miles to go before I reached the end of my route at The Loop (Going-to-the-Sun Road’s only switchback). I was cranky and achey as I headed down, and those resupply mules I mentioned earlier had resupplied the trail itself with lots and lots of dung, which resupplied me with lots and lots of flies. Flies on this side of Glacier are some kind of weird subspecies that leaves you alone as long as you’re moving, but descend as a horde the moment you stop. No problem when hiking, but a freaking horror movie when you take breaks.

Onward I slogged. I hate switchbacks. Anything that involves two miles of hiking to travel 1500 feet down a hill can bite my butt. All I’m saying is a well-designed water slide would do a lot of good here, folks.

I passed through a section of forest that had burned in 2003—dead pine trunks standing tall, new undergrowth to a height of about five feet. I decided to call this the Haunted Forest, since I repeatedly thought I saw something—a person, a face, at one point even a snake—in the gnarled remnants of trees to either side. It was eerie there.

Way later than I wanted to, I arrived at the bottom of the trail where it meets The Loop. I walked to the shuttle station—Glacier has these cool-looking restored 1930 Ford buses on a constant rotation up and down Going-to-the-Sun Road. The sign said shuttles arrived every 15-30 minutes. So I sat.

And I waited.

And I waited.

Let me reiterate how hot, tired, and low on water I was at this point. The shuttle stop has no shade whatsoever; even 82 degrees can be miserable after hiking 12 miles.

After about an hour, a shuttle finally came winding up the road, and I rejoiced…then it kept right on going past me and I saw that it was full.

After 90 minutes, another shuttle came up the road, completely empty, and NEVER SLOWED DOWN as it cruised past the stop. I waved my hiking poles in exasperation as it left.

I was approaching desperation. I started asking people who stopped to take pictures if they were headed uphill, but at this late hour, they were all going down. Shameful at having run out of water, I begged half a bottle’s worth out of a very nice German couple.

Finally I resorted to something I’ve never done before in my life. I hitchhiked.

Hitchhiking is uniquely frustrating, especially in my situation. I totally understand not picking them up in the world at large; but I was a hiker standing with poles, backpack, and camera in the MIDDLE OF A NATIONAL PARK. What possible evil could I be planning? Car after car passed by, some responding to my thumb with a fake-polite smile and shake of the head. I started to take it personally.

At long last, two full hours after I arrived at The Loop, and over nine hours after I left the visitor center, a Native American family pulled up in their pickup truck and invited me to hop into the bed. Suck it, skittish white people.

They also picked up a couple from Minnesota who, I was annoyed to learn, had only been waiting for ten minutes. And so the three of us chatted and enjoyed the view and the breeze in the bed as the pickup wound its way back up towards Logan Pass. The 15-minute ride melted a lot of my bad mood away; we shared hiking stories and took pictures from our unimpeded view. Towards the top I got a good look back down and realized with no small amount of shock how much I’d hiked that day to get where I’d got. I was enormously proud of myself.

I was amused to note that I was so tired I could hardly shut the truck bed after getting out. I literally limped back to my car, pulled out of the parking lot, and took Going-to-the-Sun Road eastward, away from the sun. I realized with some sadness that it was the last time on this trip I’d be taking it. I thought to myself, “I’m so tired I don’t even care about taking pictures.” Then of course I saw something that changed my mind.

My first-choice campsite was full by now. I picked another against the eastern edge of the park, completely overrun by chipmunks. (The day they realize they outnumber us 10-to-1, we’re… well, we’re slightly inconvenienced.) I wolfed down the second of my two MREs like it was the best thing I’d ever eaten; I’d only taken two Clif bars on my adventure so I was also WAY behind on calories. A full moon rose in the pink twilight as I got in my tent. Full of MRE, worn out from my adventure, I was quickly asleep.

…Until I was awakened by drums and a bass line in the distance. I silently grumbled to myself about my fellow campers not respecting the 10 pm quiet time. As I laid trying to ignore it, I suddenly made out a line:

It’s not fair, to remind maaay, of the cross I bear that you gave to me…

That’s Alanis damn Morrissette! And it’s not Alanis singing!

I finally pieced it together. Just on the other side of the park border is the town of St. Mary’s. And apparently the bar there was having karaoke night. I may have been trying to sleep, but over the border it was S, A, T-U-R, D-A-Y, night!

For the first time on the trip, I reached for my earplugs.