Burn
The weather forecast for my fourth day in Glacier looked a little less dire. I had an 11-mile day, with one pass to climb over in the morning.
On the Appalachian Trail, Peter (Hobbes) and I used a metric for communicating steepness: 1 Steep (or 1 kilosteep) is an elevation change of 1000 vertical feet in 1 horizontal mile. If I refer to a section of trail as “1/2 Steep”, I mean it climbs roughly 500 feet in a mile.
Anyway, one thing I loved about all the climbs in Glacier is that the trails are maintained at a smooth, consistent grade of about 1/2 Steep. This contrasted with my hiking experience on the east coast, which was mostly on trail with wildly-variable grades.
The views on the climb up to Triple Divide Pass were just stunning.
I stopped for a while at the top of the pass, taking shelter from the wind behind a lone pine tree. I sat watching a cloud, caught against the curved side of the glacier bowl, drift around in circles before catching the wind stream that was blowing over the pass.
There were some snow traversal challenges coming over the other side of the pass, but nothing compared to what I had experienced on the previous day. Coming down the mountain, there was a stark change of scenery - instead of the lush, dark-green forests I was used to seeing, this valley was covered in ghostly-white lodgepole pine husks.
I understand that fire is like a natural part of the forest lifecycle or whatever, but hiking through burn areas just feels depressing. I quickly tired of walking through the thick undergrowth on the 6 or so miles to my campsite.
I camped at the head of Red Eagle Lake. A few other hikers got in later that night, and we spotted a mother and baby moose across the end of the lake:
