80 Miles and 20,000 ft of Elevation

Here is the first installment of pictures from my "epic" backpacking trek through glacier national park. We entered the east side at Many Glacier and exited at Kintla Lake. It has been 10 days since our escape, and I am still healing physically. When people ask me how it was, my answer is "it was sort of like childbirth, a lot of pain and sacrifice but after it was all done I had something I was very proud of". Even now the memory of the pain is starting to fade, and I'm thinking about how nice the next one will be.

I will tell you upfront, that when the trip was over, our brains were so rattled by exertion and fatigue that we didn't think to take any pictures at the Polebridge Mercantile. If you are ever within a hundred miles of that place-GO EAT. Wow. I think I probably ate 5000 calories in one sitting and that was AFTER eating a big juicy buffalo burger (see following) and the road there isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be!

Next door to the Mercantile is the Northern Lights Cafe (something like that). It is everything you want a backcountry burger joint to be. We staggered in there to eat, but (oh no!) they were not open. The owner came out, saw our dejected expressions, took pity on us and said if we were willing to "settle" for some buffalo burgers, we could sit back, have a Coke, and she would fire up the grill. I have to preface the next statement with the fact that I was literally starving (shout out to you Tim), but that buffalo burger was flipping awesome and the Bob Marley on the stereo was too groovy by half for any other place, but perfect for the cafe.

Ok, now to the pictures.

Deer are how nature refutes the theory of evolution. No way these stupid creatures would ever make it through natural selection.

Glacier Park has something like 4 billion acres. Of course,we had to share this tiny camp site with two other parties.

I always that a dangerous ford was a 69 Mustang with a teenage driver

Arctic Grayling. No good to eat.