Mark’s Photos- #28

The day started at 3:55 a.m. Cappuccino, The Professor, and I were staying in a motel in East Glacier, MT., and we needed to get up to St. Mary Lake before the road closed at 6 a.m. It was at least an hour’s drive on twisty mountain roads, and Cappuccino and I still needed to get breakfast and all our gear together before The Professor dropped us off at the trailhead.

This was all part of an elaborate scheme I had to complete my hike of the CDT. It was the year after the pandemic closed everything. Getting permits for campsites in the Glacier backcountry was very hard due to pent-up demand. But if you didn’t camp, then no permits were required. The 110 miles of the CDT through Glacier run roughly parallel to the roads along the east side of the park, and there are multiple small roads to trailheads all along the east side. I realized that if I had a ride, someone to drop me off at one trailhead and pick me up at another, that I could walk those 110 miles as a series of long day-hikes. The Professor came along as driver, and Cappy was willing to hike with me, so it all worked out.

On this day, we were hiking an 18-mile section mostly along the south side of St. Mary Lake. We made it to the Going-to-the-Sun Highway before they closed it to visitors without passes at 6. The Professor was able to drop us off at the trailhead and head back before the sun was even up.

Cappuccino and I dropped down 600 feet along Reynolds Creek, crossed the bridge, admired the loud and splashy St. Mary Falls, and then hiked up to the impressive Virginia Falls. After skirting Little Chief Mountain for a mile or two, we finally got our first view of St.Mary Lake, which you see below. It was stunning in person, and the sunrise colors seemed to be hanging around just for us.