The Lone Hiker

Logging Lake

Glacier National Park is often called the “Crown of the Continent.”   There are many picture postcard moments.  Glacier is known for its crystal clear high mountain alpine lakes, majestic glacier covered mountains, 700 miles of hiking trails and lot of Black and Grizzly bears.  In bear country, especially in Glacier National Park, it is never advisable to hike alone.  Always hike in groups of three or more.

On one perfect week in August,  with temperatures ranging in the high 80’s and low 90’s, John Baisden set out with a group of 8 young men and one staff for Logging Lake.  The group had spent the previous night at Apgar Camp ground on Lake McDonald.  From Lake McDonald, they made the 20 mile road trip to Logging Lake over some rugged and dust-ridden dirt roads.  The scenery was beautiful!  The road trip seemed quite lengthy due to the rough road conditions.  Slow seems to be the standard mode of travel whether you are driving on a wilderness dirt road or the main highway that spans across Logan Pass.
 
From the trail head to the Logging Lake camp ground, it is about 12.8 miles long.  The Logging Lake trail passes through thick forests for much of the time with the only real openings in the canopy occurring where the trails passes through a recent burn.  Once one arrives at Logging Lake campground the views are amazing.  Logging Lake is a Glacier fed lake with pristine water.  Logging Lake is surrounded by majestic mountain peaks that flow directly into the Lake.  The mountains peaks are rugged and covered with glaciers.  It is breathtaking to say the least.

The fishing at Logging Lake is fairly good filled with bull trout and Lake trout.  The first fish that I ever caught was so large that it snapped the my fishing line… a great day of fishing!  All of the back country camp sites are well situated with camp sites 200 feet away from cooking and food storage areas.  Our group took up all of the tent sites except for one.  We chose not to use that site because there sitting in the middle of the campsite was a large pile of bear scat.  As a matter of fact there were such scat piles along the entire trail that we used to hike into Logging Lake.   Although no bears were sighted during the day, it was obvious that they were not far away.

As we prepared for a nice peaceful night, a lone hiker arrived and pitched his tent on the only remaining tent site.  He cleared the scat away and joined our group at dinner.  We sat around the camp fire and shared stories of adventure that we had experienced throughout the years in Glacier National Park.  The lone hiker was from South Carolina and had taken a volunteer job in the North Cascade National Forest for the summer.  I asked him if he was planning on continuing his hike alone, he responded YES!  We then talked about the possible dangers of hiking alone in bear country.  By the time the evening was over he had decided to hike with us and to stay with our group.  Prior to retreating into our tents for the evening we took advantage of the available “bear hang.” 

We left all of our Nalgene water bottles all lined up on a row near the fire ring.  I went around to all the tents and said goodnight.  No sooner had I gotten in my tent then the night critters headed down the hill straight into camp.  As they moved into camp to look for “leftovers” where we had cooked, I heard them pass by my tent.  I sat quietly in my tent listening to every sound as it seemed our camping area had become the nighttime wonderland for the animals in the woods.  I soon realized that the critters were indeed bears.   The bears were having a great time with our Nalgene water bottles.  I heard a couple of them fly through the air and land in Logging Lake.  It was quite a night of adventure for our visitors and campers.  To my surprise we were able to find all of our water bottles!  Our new friend, the lone hiker said that he was glad he made the decision to hike and camp with us.

After breakfast, we broke down camp and headed back to the trailhead to try another lake trail, Bowman Lake.  On the hike out, surprise, surprise we turned the corner and there in front of us on the same trail was a large Grizzly bear walking in the same direction that we were headed in.  The bear  had not yet heard us or caught our scent.  We slowly and quietly backtracked around the corner and then headed back to the camp.  We stayed back at the campground for an additional hour before mustering up enough courage to try our luck on the trail again.   To my delight we did not see our furry friend but certainly could see the evidence of his trip down the trail by the piles of warm and steaming scat that he had left as a reminder of whose woods we were in!  Our lone hiker remarked that he never again would hike a trail by himself.  We then spent the rest of our week hiking along Bowman Lake and Quartz Lake...amazing destinations.   After three days of additional backpacking, we parted ways with the lone hiker having had a safe adventure into the backwoods of Glacier National Park!