It was a late night alright, but it was really the screeching of the trains during the night that left me haggered and gritty feeling in the morning. Luckily there is coffee. Coffee and indoor plumbing at the Summit Lodge.

I packed up my camp, pitched in the forest by some of the cabins with the other thru hikers, and was ready to head back to the trail with Mountain Spice by 8 in the morning. We said our goodbyes to people we may not see ever again, or will run into randomly on a trail some where, and hopped into Beacon’s car, another hiker who had so generously offered to take us back to Many Glacier.

While Mountain Spice dozed in the back, I furtively tried to get a few last things done on my phone as the 4G connection went in and out with the curves and hills of the road. By 9:30 we were back where we had been just the day before and preparing for the last 2 days of the trail.

I had already gotten my permit to camp at Elisabeth Lake, and once Mountain Spice had her permit lined up (we would be finishing at different spots on the Canadian Border), we set off, saying our goodbyes and hiking up and out.

The wind is fierce today, and at times I couldn’t hear anything but the rushing of air as I climbed up towards Ptarmagin Tunnel. This was a popular trail and I passed many day hikers out to enjoy their version of Glacier. My hike would take me through a tunnel that had been blasted through a mountain. As it is closed some parts of the year due to snow, I counted myself among one of the lucky ones that got to walk underneath the rocky pass.

The far side

The other side showed a gently sloping trail leading to my camp at Elisabeth Lake. It would be a short day, and I am grateful for that. Still tired from my lack of sleep I envisioned getting to camp about 2pm, setting up my shelter, taking a nap, and reading the afternoon and evening away. And that’s just about exactly what happened.

I’m on the shores of the lake, but the wind is so strong I feel as though my tarp will be ripped to shreds. I’m enjoying this last night on the trail as a solo experience. It seems a fitting way to end the hike: I began solo, spent 90% of the trail hiking and camping by myself, and I’ll end this journey the same way.

I am hiding from the wind and imagining what it will be like to see Kirk tomorrow after 5 months, I’m so excited!

I’m glad I took the time to do this hike. I can’t imagine not backpacking, it has become as much a part of my identity and sense of purpose as anything else one is compelled to do again and again in their life. I am not sure what my next hike will be, but I will hike, and I have a feeling I’ll need it as much as I needed the CDT.

But now, life at home sounds so delicious!

It was a day of not walking. We made our way down to East Glacier through a series of hitches and found ourselves back at Brownies, the bakery/hostel.

We ran into Malarky who had finished the trail the week before and was hanging out waiting for the hiker hoopla party tonight. We all grabbed lunch and ran into Chimi, Chiltin, Hedgehog, Messed Up, and Dayglow…they were just getting in and had all of Glacier to look forward to.

We spent the afternoon on the porch of Brownies and soon Rick, HD Mama’s husband and CDT trail angel extraordinaire, picked us up for a ride to the hoopla.

The spread was awesome, the Montana Trails Association put on a great event with live bluegrass, great food, plenty of beverages, and a killer raffle (with some donated hikertrash swag!)

I spent the night telling story after story…a bunch of hikers had come from the border having finished today: Delightful, G, Funk, Sam, Picker, Day Man and La La had all made it back…it would have been cool to have been done in time for the big party too, but now I’m glad I still have another night on the trail.

I went to bed late…but it was worth it!

So yesterday my hike was officially longer than my PCT hike at 2,663 miles. I’ve never known how many miles I would end up hiking, there are so many alternates, long cuts, short cuts, and so forth, but it looks like I’ll make it just over 2,700. It’s all good; the AT took me 5 months and 2 days at 2,175 miles, the PCT 5 months exactly at 2,663 miles, and the CDT, 5 months and 6 days at 2,7XX miles…just wait and see!

But this is my last full day on the trail. Tomorrow I’ll head back to East Glacier and Summit Lodge for the Hiker Hoopla, a party given by the Montana Trails folks for CDT hikers and supporters (what a great way to finish a trail…with a party!), and then will get a ride back up to Many Glacier, where Mountain Spice and I are camped tonight) the next day to hike 2 half days to Canada and meet Kirk! I’m actually more excited to see Kirk than to finish the CDT, I guess that’s good, right?? 🙂

Morning

Today we woke to a clear sky and walked off the chill of the morning to St. Mary, a reroute to avoid some burned trail we heard wouldn’t be opened up at all again this season. Atlas, Mountain Spice and I hightailed it to a cafe my friend Sage had told me about, but it was closed, so we backtracked to another cafe we saw…closed! Went next door, closed (well at least for the next hour until it was lunch time) and finally walked up the hill to the one and only open cafe in the little berg. Everything is shutting down before our eyes for the season. Sucks for the hikers behind us, even less will be open!

BUT we had a delicious breakfast and practically licked our plates. It was late when we finally got back to the trail, but the climb up to Piegon pass was incredible, and we heard reports of Grizzlies on the trail. Sure enough I saw my first grizzs! Ok, they were black dots on the mountainside, but still, it counts!

Can you see the black dots?

On the other side we encountered snow (always the snow) and made our way down a million switchbacks and came across a big horned sheep…what a day for animals! Waterfalls and lovely trail lay before us and our path to Many Glacier, another little development with lodge, restaurant, store, and developed campground.

Practicing moves against the grizzlies

Snow again???

OMG

We found a spot at the primarily car camping site for the hiker/bikers, and once we realized the italian restaurant was still open decided to wander over there just in case we found something interesting for dinner. Yep, pasta, wine, and cheesecake later, we navigated our way back to the campsite. Tomorrow: my last 0 day of the trail and the Hiker Hoopla, a Partay to celebrate the end of the hike!!!

We didn’t have any furry visitors during the night (thank goodness) and woke about 7am, packed up, and headed to the food area to make coffee and eat breakfast. We didn’t have that many miles to do today…two passes to climb…so really kind of just took our time throughout the day.

Cool was down there last night

Our first pass came less than 2 miles from camp; Pitamakan Pass proved to be a gentle climb and we were rewarded by patches of blue sky and sunlight! The forcast wasn’t so generous, so we felt very lucky. Snow still clung to the top peaks, and the views, well, pictures can’t do it justice, can’t do any of Glacier justice. It’s 360 magisty.

We took a break on the sunny north side of the pass and I made a mocha latte (hot drinks!) and we ate a considerable amount of our snacks. The trail wound 6 miles down into the next valley before climbing to our next pass, the Triple Divide Pass. What an amazing climb! Hanging valleys, huge waterfalls, glaciers…I could just go on. The top of the pass was calm, and a group of 5 guys came up from the other side, and Atlas joined us too; we all stood in awe of everything.

Next, down into another valley. More waterfalls, more lakes, more rivers and brillant fall colors and amazement.

Camp is at Red Eagle Lake in an old burn, and just as we were finishing dinner the rain that had threatened all day finally found us. We hurried to our shelters to stay dry; it’s still early, but our sleeping bags seem the best place to be.

It was warm and toasty last night in the hostel thanks to our space heater tucked right between Mountain Spice and me. The nights have been getting COLD and as we were going to sleep we heard the rain pounding outside, I was so happy to be inside.

In the morning I made coffee and we went over to the bakery first thing to see what was what. Then it was back to the room to pack up. We cant lollygag around East Glacier any more, time to make some miles to Canada!

We walked over to the other side of town to visit their bakery too and ran into G Funk, Banana Pants, and #2; I hadn’t seen Banana Pants and #2 since Colorado! They had just finished the day before and were both headed out on the Amtrak today. G Funk would be leaving town tomorrow, so would be about a day behind us.

#2, G Funk & Banana Pants

Then it was hiking. We had a few miles before we hit the park line, and had to take the requsit photos there. Suddenly we were walking in cliffs and high alpine meadows with reds, maroons, golds, and yellows carpeting the ground. So lovely, yet so bitterly cold. The wind felt like it was coming straight out of the artic, and we put on all our layers and hurried towards Two Medicine to seek shelter.

Got my sword and permit!

On the way down the mountain the snow caught up to us off and on, but by the time we reached tree line and were close to the ranger station we were much more protected and didn’t need to hide out in the bathrooms from the cold like we had planned.

We ate lunch before continuing on – just another 7 miles to our camp. We have to stay in designated spots here, and we may have gone more miles if it was up to us, but as it is the 17 mile day will be quite nice; we’ll get to camp early for once!

Mmm, chocolate covered potato chips from Brooke & Adryon!

The hike up was simply gorgous. The light would periodically spotlight a section of ridge, and windows of blue swirled by overhead, sometimes dropping snow, sometimes sun. We spied two mountain goats high over head, and watched them deftly move around on the nearly vertical rock.

Before getting to our camp we met two women who informed us a bunch of grizzlies had visited our camp today. Hmmm, not exactly the best news ever. We continued on and hoped we wouldn’t run into them.

We are being very careful with our food and keeping it in the food zone, there is a seperate area for cooking and hanging food, and the hope is that all smelly stuff will stay far away from the camping areas. Lets hope they don’t need to visit twice in one day.

We made dinner and are back in our sleeping bags, it is so COLD out, all i want to do is curl up in my down buffer against the world.

I have successfully kept my stomach in a constant state of full, and it’s starting to not feel this good to be so full all the time. I guess I should walk it off.

Oh the things we do to our bodies. I’m really ready for a good dose of reasonable eating and moderate exercise. Just put me in the “normal” zone for a while please!

But until then…living it up!

We went over to the Rock and Roll bakery this morning for coffee and pastries, then learned a bunch of other hikers were eating breakfast across town at a cafe, so went over there for a second breakfast. I met Bigfoot who had turned his thru hike to a motorcycle adventure, and Malarky for the first time.

After second breakfast we hitched up to Two Medicine ranger station to get our backcountry permits for the rest of the hike. Apparently some of the trail is still closed along near St. Mary, so we would be rerouted through the little community of St. Mary, and back to the trail. It looks like Kirk’s passport hasn’t come in, some delay, so I will be finishing at Chief Mountain instead of at Waterton Lake (which requires entry into Canada), so I’ll be back another time to see Waterton anyway, and because Glacier is worth coming back for!

Anyway, as we were hitching to get back to East Glacier a whole family of big horned sheep crossed the road right in front of me! This place is so epic!!!!

Getting back to the hostel we resupplied, I picked up an awesome package from my girl NEMO complete with sword (my name is She-ra after all! Princess of Power…), a feather tattoo, purple glitter nail polish, and all sorts of goodies that we both enjoyed when we hiked the PCT together. She knows just what I need!!

Then the eating continued with a large pizza, and now I’m chilling in my bunk just relaxing and starting a new ebook (some of Ann Patchett’s essays…I really enjoy her writing).

Tomorrow, the mountains!!!

We woke a bit before 6am to get an early start on our day into town, I ate just about everything I had left, leaving myself just a few snacks for the 20+ mile day, it would suck, but you do what you gotta do!

The morning was still and our trail was a reformed old two-track. We soon came to a section that dipped in and out of the Two Medicine River; at first we tried to keep our shoes dry as the morning was cold and wet feet would make it that much colder, but soon we were out of options. The river was too wide to rock-hop, wet feet it is! And I was too lazy to put on my chacos. We were going to town! There would be time to dry out the shoes, so we just plowed through and kept on.

By late morning we crested the last little climb before a series of switchbacks would take us down to the highway that separated us from Glacier National Park. The sight of those mountains and the patches of snow lingering in the shadowy bits of rock made my heart soar. I felt the immensity of the CDT coming to a close, of the 7,000+ miles that make up a successful triple crown hike, of the years of my life I have spent walking across the country, and it all began to overflow. I gave in to the rising flood and let a few tears fall as I flew down the switchbacks to the end. It felt like flying.

Reaching the highway, Mountain Spice and I took a quick break and started hoofing it. We figured the road would be shorter, and being as hungry as we were, anything that would get us closer to filling our bellies was what we would do.

About 4 miles down the road a woman from a trailhead called to us; we made our way down and upon learning of our plight, offered us the rest of her lunch: 3+ pounds of turkey, 2 different kinds of cheeses, a bag of tortilla chips, and 4 cans of soda water. OMG, bliss!!! We sat down right there by their car and began our picnic lunch. Lunches of all lunches. We giggled as we stuffed our faces and our new trail angels surely thought we were strange.

Eating

Turkey eating

Once we had eaten so much we could barely move, we stood up to hike the remaining miles to town. The rush wasn’t so urgent anymore, but now the hunger was replaced with the need to sit down and not get up again.

We rolled into East Glacier and immediately spotted Sam outside a cafe. Hmmm, a cafe? Maybe I should have some pie….we went in to find Delightful and Funk waiting on their lunch, so promptly sat down and ordered some pie and ice cream. Much of our goal in the last town stop of the trail is to eat as much as possible. It’s our last week to eat with abandon, and after feeling that we were hungry most of the last stretch, this was a dream come true….literally.

We then lumbered over to the Backpackers Inn, a hostel behind a mexican restaurant (hmmm, dinner?) and got the bathing and laundering out of the way before meeting Sam, Picker and a few of Picker’s friends for dinner at said mexican restaurant.

NOW our bellies were unhappy with us and we retired to our bunks to horizontally digest what had been an epic day of eating.

Tomorrow: eat as much as we can.