Fancy Footwork: Going to the Sun

If you go northwest to Montana in June, you will be greeted by unpredictable weather and hungry rivers that will swallow you whole if you're not careful! The liquid is aquamarine with a homogeneous chalky precipitate tempting you with its froth. It slips over boulders and cedar logs like it has urgent business to attend to in the west.

On our bicycles, we recklessly weave left and right across a carless two-lane road bathed by the sun. And why not? There are no obstacles except for an occasional bear or descending cyclist. We otherwise have both sides of a highway to ourselves. So we extend our necks and indulge in views above the tree line. The Rocky Mountain oxygen diffuses into all of our tissues at once, powering our pedaling up an ever-increasing incline. It has been ages since my body has conformed its shape to the frame of a bicycle, legs and feet pushing and pulling in unison with breath and heart. It’s a pure joy to feel blood moving to toes, fingertips and my brain.

I peer up and find I am surrounded on both sides by a blue-crystalline sky-etched by white jagged pyramids, towers marking my entrance to the Great Continental Divide.

As glaciers melt away, so do the layers of distractions that keep me bound to cycles of doing without awareness. The wild west seeps into pores providing passageways for clarity once more.

The sun pours down the highway and penetrates a dense forest, awakening groggy animals to come out and see what new shoots there are for nibbling. Voracious beasts munch on mountain strawberry blossoms perfusing the ditches bordering the edge of this highway.

A shiny black coat stands out against the long green grassy swords saluting the ditches on the side of the highway. The black bear is too hungry to notice the swishes of my leggings against my bicycle frame. Her head is deep in the grasses and blossoms trying desperately to relieve her backed-up intestines. I only spot her stumpy tail and shiny rump as I sail past.

My legs pump and push upward, a looping highway, the blue-green glacial liquid dripping and spraying at me from its tumble down the rocky ledges as I switch-back up towards Logan’s Pass. The thought of avalanches and grizzly bears is quieted by the sun’s warmth and a majestic crown of white ahead of me.

As Greg and I hit “The Loop”, there is a sign telling us the road from there-on is closed - until 3 PM when the snowplows go home for the day. We spot a trail near the shuttle stop, going out to the Granite Park Chalet towards the Swift Current Lookout. We decide to ditch our bikes in some bushes and explore on foot until the road reopens. To our delight, the trail is dry and intact, skirting the side of a mountain that overlooks the crown of the continent. At times, waterfalls crossing the trail need to be maneuvered. It takes me a few extra seconds to conjure up courage to step onto a stone with water pouring over it to continue onto the other side.

Thirty minutes out and we start to feel what it is really like to be in the backcountry. Streams and rivers cut into ancient sedimentary layers across a sweeping valley, marked by aspens and variations of pine. The sun kisses every blade of grass and delicate winds turn and twist aspen leaves, their ping pong friction can be heard batting against the canyon walls that we traverse. We lose track of time, there’s something about a single track snaking a celestial playground that hypnotizes you - akin to a gold spoon lure dropped in front of a starving cutt-throat in early June. You just can’t stop, you need to see what’s behind the next bend, and the next. But it’s time to jump back on our bicycles and ascend the mountain until we reach the snow wall or our shuttle leaves without us.

A white-tailed deer jumps in front of us and becomes the leader on our trek back to the road. She is unshakened by our chatter, rather, she actually seems to want to be near us, maybe we make her feel a bit safer from her predators who are keeping a very low profile on this recently thawed trail?

Much of the trail on return seems unfamiliar, likely due to our fixation with the valley floor and glaciers feeding it from above. Thank goodness for that familiar slippery stone, once again needing me to step down and reconfirming my direction back.

As we approach the sign marking the trail, our deer friend steps to the side and lets us back onto our bicycles. Greg darts ahead, in pursuit of a snowy wall telling him to go home. I push up a few miles more, glacial trickles finding the cracks in my bike helmet. Something about the quiet and change of light suggests to me it’s time to descend. So I make a wide turn and glide down the sun road back along creeks and rivers I traveled all day. At the Avalanche camp shuttle stop, I reconnect with my two squirrely teenagers basking in the last bits of afternoon sun.

Here’s some more pictures of our Glacier Park adventure.

Two Medicine Lake - East Glacier (most remote part of the park)

Hike to Avalanche Lake in the McDonald Valley - the most lush, moist part of the park with Red Cedar and Western Hemlock trees.

Avalanche Lake - we sat on a log and watched three eagles swoop above us and in those cliffs in the canyon.

The deer were enormous and super friendly!

We took a boat ride on McDonald Lake it was very relaxing after our hike to Avalanche Lake

We had a nice hamburger dinner at the McDonald Lodge - lots of dead animals hanging above our heads. I had to edit out Zennen and Finn’s inappropriate wannabe gang signs.