The day to dry gear while hiking

Day 142

CDT Mile: Mile 2'941.3

Miles hiked: 15.6 miles / 25 km

Elevations: 3'382 feet ascent (1'031 m Aufstieg) / 3'081 feet descent (Abstieg 939.7 m)

Camping at: Many Glacier Campsite, Glacier NP, 4'948 feet / 1'509.2 m

We slept in, like really slept in as I have never done so far while being on trail. Not even in a Hotel. I only started moving around 10am and we hiked out at 10.40am. It was rainy all night and our gear was soaked. My socks were soaked, my shoes, my pants, my rainjacket, my gloves, my sleepingbag and the tent. And it was cold! As we only have to hike 15 miles today, I stayed in the warm sleepingbag as long as I could! Our self made campsite however did great. We didn't get a lake below our tents.

We started with the climb up to Piegan Pass at 7'325 feet / 2'234 m. After the first 1.3 miles we crossed the Going-to-the-sun road, such a fantastic name for a road as I think, which is the main road through Glacier. And the next 2 miles were unusually steep for Glacier, and overgrown with soaking wet bushes. I struggled a little with that climb, but luckily once mastered, the rest of the climb was super easy and with epic views. We also passed some day hikers, telling us about a grizzly mom with two cubs about 3 miles ahead. Leaving the trees behind us, we stepped onto snow! The landscape around the treeline looked like sprinkled with powdered sugar, beautiful. We reach the top of the pass, but did not see any signs of the grizzly mum with her cubs. Also two dayhikers we met on top didn't get to see them anymore, only their footprints. I am so disappointed as I really would love to see at least one grizzly hiking the CDT. I am sure that many black bears, grizzlies and mountain lions have seen me, but I didn't see them. It was super windy and cold on the pass. We didn't stop for long, and started with the descend. The downhill hike was beautiful too, being very close to massive mountain walls surrounding us, with an absolutely beautiful waterfall over purple stones. We pulled out our wet sleepingbags once it stopped raining and the sun would come out sometimes, and wore them like big scarves above our backpacks and around our shoulders 🤣🙈

Once back in the forest, the trail was more overgrown again. We stooped for lunch as the sun came out a little next to a stream and took all our gear out to let it dry. However it was still too cold and the sun to weak, so the dyneema tent and sleepingbag didn't dry much. I took my wet socks out and put them on my hands like gloves, to dry the with my body warmth! And it worked quite well, but it did take a long time! I hiked nearly all afternoon with them🤣 As we hiked on down the valley as the weather became better and better. As we reached the Swiftcurrent Lake with the beautiful old Many Glacier Lodge the sky was blue and the sun was out. Now it is only 2 miles to our campsite at Many Glacier, but it is also getting late and about time we reach our campsite. We use the last heat of the sun to dry out all our gear along the road (Glacier visitors in their car sometimes looked a little weird at us, one car even stopped and asked if we need help!😄). This time it worked and our gear dried pretty well. We share our campsite tonight with Baby Grands, Rex, Channy, Just Mary, Shey and Marty. Only baby Grand and Rex could also dry out their gear, but all the other tents were still soaking wet from last night. It will be a very cold night and I am very happy we could dry out all our gear! Checking the weather forecast it looks like we gonna have a beautiful but cold day tomorrow, but the day after looks miserable - wet and cold. Our campsite for tomorrow is 20 miles away but we suggest to Baby Grand and Rex to hike to the next one, 7 miles up the trail, and camp there, so we can use the beautiful weather of tomorrow and have a shorter day to get to canada in bad weather. We don't have permits for the next campsite though. But we have only met other hikers, rather than CDT hikers, at this campsite which is right next to a paved road. Hence, we figured out that the chances to meet other hikers much further up the more remote part of the park, noone will be staying. In favour of hikng in nice weather we will take that risk and hike 27 miles tomorrow and hope that no ranger will check our permits. The rest of the evening we all spend together, cooking dinner and talking till it got too cold and dark to stay outside any longer.

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