Friday, July 6, 2001
Not even a week down and I'm already thinking about leaving Glacier to go into Canada to Waterton National Park . . . nawww its too soon to go north I think. But we will see what I decide tomorrow. Today however, I had only one goal in mind, to hike to a glacier and maybe do a "face plant snow angel" in it when I get there.
Well I decided early on where I would go. It was a glacier named Sperry on the Gunsight Mountain. The distance of the hike was marked as 13km's each way. Right from the start of this hike I noticed a trend! The path ONLY went up and up and up. It was needless to say a brutal climb up into the mountains. One important fact I forgot to do before leaving the car was to put some repellant on. But the bugs didn't seem bad so I didn't think to go back . . . well for the first 4 km's the bugs were none existent, then they just got brutal . Even though I was getting eaten alive I didn't consider going back as I was to far up already to turn around now. Not smart I know.
At roughly 10km's into the climb I came to the Sperry Chalet, a very nice set of cabins for the rich to stay at up in the mountains. Once there I took a little break and talked to the nice people working at the lodge as they sat for lunch. As well I took a look at how I was doing and well the judgment wasn't good. I had successfully made it 10km's but was still roughtly 3km's shy of my goal and in the process I had been eaten alive and exhausted. That and the fact that a storm was coming in to the mountain range prompted me to turn back. It would not be good to get stuck on mountain trails in a downpour. So I didn't get to complete my goal for the day in the end. On the upside I did at least get some repellant on the way down the mountain from a nice English couple who had been hiking in the highlands . . . even with the repellant I still got eaten a lot more, but it would have been no doubt worse without the repellant.
By the time I got back to civilization the day had cleared up! I had been gone upwards of 6 hours and though short of my goal; I did at least get some great pictures along the way. The rest of the night was spent "licking my wounds" and relaxing.
PS To give you an understanding of what I hiked today, IF the trail I did was all level ground with a vertical mountain climb at the end of it. It would have been equivalent to a 18km hike with a 1.03km vertical accent and rappel. This trail had a very impressive altitude change. | 
