Journal July 9 East Glacier to Marias Pass
The CDT travels along the foot of Glacier Park’s most southern peaks from East Glacier to Marias Pass. The distance, 14.4 miles makes it an easy day hike, but not if you are loaded down with 9 days of food to get through “The Bob”. Like many hikers we have opted to hike with packs and one day provisions and hitch back into town from Marias Pass to spend the night, pick up our other supplies and start south through “The Bob” tommorow.
The guide book states: “This section has none of the grandeur of the more northern portions of Glacier National Park. The trail gets relatively little use and in parts is badly overgrown. Still it provides a servicable connection between East Glacier and the Continental Divide to the south of highway 2.”
Damned by faint praise, as the saying goes, so we had low expectations for the day. We were pleasantly surprised by a delighful walk.
Leaving East Glacier, we found a confusing path of roads, trails, “third world” shacks, agressive junk yard dogs, junked cars, jeep trails and horsepaths. (Note to other hikers: do not follow the guidebook; DO follow Jonathon Ley’s description on his map set.)
After this initial confusion and delay, we found a good trail and had a lovely walk in the woods and meadows, with wildlfowers and mountain scenery that would surpass many days on the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trails.
Best of all, this was the first day of hiking where we could step across streams and keep our feet dry!
As we aproached Marias Pass, two coyotes crossed the trail not more than 60 yards ahead of us. Often on our trips we see coyotes in pairs. I take this as a sign of safe travels, as if these coyotes and their brethren are leading the way and watching out for us.
A few minutes later we arrived at Marias Pass. Usually we have good Karma with hitching a ride to town. It helps to have gray hair and to keep it short; it helps even more to have a long legged brunette Carrot…today was no exception. Within 5 minutes we had a ride that dropped us right to the door to our motel room in East Glacier!
Miles for the day – who knows, the guidebook calls it 14.4, the NPS signs say 15.2, Jonathan Leys maps put it at 14.8….it’s all about the same, and doesn’t really matter much. Another lesson of the CDT: don’t worry to much about being exact on such things, just worry about arriving at the destination safe and sound and let the numbers work themselves out….anyway, for the record I’m going with JL at 14.8
