The road to Glacier NP was nice, but Alex and I were not too interested in the scenery. We were ready for some mountain backpacking. We arrived at the park a little late to enter and decided to camp a night outside of the park. While buying some food at the local supermarket, the cashier led us to Flathead Lake, a beautiful, large, recreational lake southwest of the park. The only problem was that everyone else found it nice as well and had taken all of the vacant campsites by the time we arrived. In a situation that felt frighteningly similar to our drive up Oregon's coast, we took some advice from a lucky camper and headed east towards Swan Lake.
We arrived after dark and found a site next to two fellow bikers. They were out from Denver on a two week trip off-road through British Colombia and were now on their way home. We shared our food with them: hot soup (the generic, chunky-in-a-can kind), baked beans (the expensive smothered-in-savory-brown-sugary-sauce-and-BBQ kind), and bread (the normal-needs-no-explanation-found-in-every-kitchen-in-America-sliced kind)... a new favorite. One was a physician's assistant and the other a fifth grade teacher, they had some wild stories. It made me wonder what my teachers and doctors were doing when they weren't molding my young mind or operating on my delicate body. Hmmm?
The next morning, with the trip odometer reading 10525 miles, we rode into the park, went to the backcountry office, and acquired permits for Otokomi Lake. The six mile hike in was mild and mostly tree covered but it did allow us to christen our new sandals on the trail and is an ice cold waterfall.
We arrived at the lake a few hours before sunset and quickly set up camp. It was immediately realized that we would be dealing with mosquitoes as long as we were within a mile of the lake. Memories, or nightmares rather, from Yosemite began to run through our heads.
With the tent set up we wasted no time in setting up our poles and walking down to the lake. Expectations were high as we had been told that the fish were spawning. What we had heard was true, and the big fish were in the clear, shallow water. They were rising all over and Alex and I hammered them as they ate almost anything we threw at them. We caught about 20 beautiful, big Yellowstone Hybrids.
This would have been fish heaven, but the mosquitoes nearly carried us off. We left the lake and returned to the tent to escape the fighting beasts. We even skipped diner after an unsuccessful attempt at cooking a meal in a cloud of buzzing bloodsuckers.
In the morning we packed up food and water and scrambled up the nearest peak with the buzzing in hot pursuit.
Our goal was to hit the ridge and then make our way around the bowl that surrounded Otokomi.
The climb to the ridge was more than we had bargained for and took several hours. The loose, flaking, red rock made for a slow accent. Finally at the top, we were able to see new snow capped peaks and mountain lakes in the distance.
Alex and I were low on water and made it a priority to follow the ridge to a wonderful mountain lake not far from where we stood. Distance and depth can be deceiving and we worked hard scaling some pretty hairy ridge lines to reach the precious goal. Fortunately, we ran across a stream running from a snow melt and were able to filter some water that would sustain us as we worked toward our mountain prize.
After some wild vertical that tested our nerve and skill a little more, we arrived at the lake, removed our packs and garments, and dove from the rocks into the icy blue below. It was a refreshing dip, but we exited like dogs, paddling ferociously to the waters edge and scrambled to land shaking and shivering.
After drying, we cooked up a huge meal. The night before without food left us with double the daily ration and we enjoyed the healthy, full clean-up.
Drunken on the food or full of our ambitions and pride we packed up and attempted the most difficult climb of the day (and probably our lives to date :) ). The route from the lake to the high ridge above was steep and we soon found ourselves pushing our limits. Rocks would loosen under the weight of our hands and feet and fall tumbling 2-300 feet to the next floor below. When the climb became nearly all vertical, Alex stayed behind while I pushed on hoping to find a feasible route. I hit several dead ends and gave into the voice of reason and sense and turned around.
The slow climb down was even more difficult. Alex and I called out foot and hand holds for one another. A few hours later and we were back at the mountain lake. Now we still had a rather sizable decent to our campsite at the lower Lake Otokomi. While there were sections of slow going, we made use of several snow melts and slid hundreds of feet on each which was a blast! Check out our methods of decent...
Back at camp we quickly jumped in the tent avoiding the mosquitoes. This night we went to bed full and free from the pesky little bugs. At one point we counted over 100 on the mesh tent walls between us and the rain fly. Alex and I made a game of flicking them from their landing spot on the tent walls and into the rainfly. If you did it just right it made this pleasant "popping" sound and a few even smacked so hard into the rainfly behind them, they fell to their death. Justice.
We woke up early and tried to pack up before the mosquitoes knew breakfast was out and about. The hike back to the bikes was brisk and hastened to a trip as drizzle turned to downpour. Back at the campstore, the sky let loose and darkness surrounded the mountains. Fortunately, there was a nice big porch where we were able to spread out our stuff, sit down, relax, drink hot coffee, read, write, and visit with the various other people who had gathered under its shelter.
At around 1:00pm the inclimate weather had passed and blue was revealed. Alex and I packed up and lit a shuck for Montanee!
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