Short Update
* Hot, humid, and so, so rainy
* I now have a stamp on my passport that says “Goat Haunt”
Long Update
In the normal day-to-day, there’s not too many people I encounter that hike more than me. But an overnight stay at Luna’s immediately shifts that norm.
Luna’s is the main thru-hiker stop in East Glacier before entering the park and starting (or ending) a trail — mostly the CDT or PNT. Luna used to run a restaurant some years ago, but having had enough of restaurant life, she was looking to wind down her operation. She would have succeeded had a CDT thru-hiker not stopped by and asked if he could pay some money to sleep on the floor of her restaurant. And like that, a hiker meca was born. The restaurant has not operated as a restaurant in some years, but the commercial kitchen available for use to all hikers has its charm! As do the private cabins one can book if they don’t feel like sleeping on the floor. I opted for the grassy backyard.
My arrival at Luna’s was similar to the past two times I was there. I dropped my stuff, and started talking to some hikers to get the lay of the land. As expected, there were numerous CDT hikers. But there was also Wombat, a beautiful and amazing German Shepherd (mix?) and his human companion Lucy. Lucy had just spent the last several months hiking North on the CDT. However, her actual hike started at the southern most point of the Americas, in Chile. She’s been on trail, full-time since 2017 and is around 13,000 miles in to her 18,000 mile thru-hike from Chile to Alaska (@tanglesandtail). She thinks she’ll be done in 2 more years, assuming she enjoys those two winters of snowshoeing through Canada and Alaska.
I soon found the other two PNT hikers at Luna’s that had been rumored to be there: Cache22 and WhyNot, who also happen to live in Sacramento (Woodland, actually).
Cache22 runs the similarly named water cache out of Hat Creek Rim on the PCT (my favorite part of the PCT!). He originally hiked the PCT in 1975, and then didn’t do too much more hiking until retirement. Him (68 M) and WhyNot (72 F) have now hiked the three long trails in the US twice, in addition to many thousands of miles of lesser-known trails, like the hayduke, the Florida trail, the PNT, etc.
But, more importantly, they were heading into Glacier in the morning, and I planned to shuttle up to the border with them!
—
My flight got into Kalispell without a hitch. I didn’t even need to hitch to East Glacier! While on a layover, I started texting with Wyatt, a member of the Blackfeet nation that runs a shuttle company in the area. He could pick me up from the airport, bring me to the permit office that day, and then take me up to the border to start at a future day for a very reasonable rate!
The permit office, however, was where dreams were shifted. There was no campsite availability in the usual PNT locations because some grizzly bears were hanging around a lake causing a ruckus. I guess you can’t just ask them to turn off their Bluetooth speaker? After some more discussion with the ranger, I had the option to wait 3 days for the campsite I wanted, hike ~30 miles the first day on trail, or go to Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, and hike 10 miles into Goat Haunt. And let’s just say I was glad I brought my passport.
After saying my goodbyes to Cache22 and WhyNot (who I’ll inevitably end up doing trail maintenance work with at a future date), I walked across the border and started thumbing a ride in Canada. In about 30 minutes I was on my way to Waterton and the start of my hike.
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I just got to the other side of Glacier. It’s been hot, humid, and very rainy. So rainy that the campsite host took pitty on me traversing through the rain and told me to just sleep in her large, already setup and dry tent for the night. I look forward to the thimble berries that may be available for foraging in the near future.
May you remain dry,
Jeff