Glacier NP, the Food Aspects

So, as I’ve said before, Jon and I have certain dietary restrictions due to vegetarianism and diabetes.  I also like to avoid sugar and caffeine.  Here is a rundown of what we ate on the Glacier trip in September 2010.  Also, keep in mind that the grocery store in Many Glacier was closing and therefore the shelves were very bare.  BYOB and F, for food.

On our hikes, I ate LÄRABARS, a new obsession of mine because they are tasty and have very few ingredients and no sugar.  No sugar is a quality that is hard to come by in a store-bought “bar.”  I was very happy when I discovered them.  They taste good, too, so that’s a plus.  My favorites are key lime pie, peanut butter cookie, cashew cookie, apple pie, and banana nut bread.  Those last two flavors are really sweet, though.  Jon usually eats Clif Bars, not too new or exciting, but useful.

Throughout our trip we ate these amazing peanut butter rice treats from the book The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone.  They are so good and have zero sugar but a ton of calories.  They basically involve: brown rice cereal, brown rice syrup, peanut butter, and grain sweetened chocolate chips.  Delicious!  They’re expensive to make because the jar of brown rice syrup is like six bucks itself.  We also ate these ridiculously fattening layer bars (I will call them magic bars because they are a lot like something my mom used to make called that) that involved margarine, graham cracker crumbs, coconut milk, shredded coconut, chopped pecans and walnuts, and more grain sweetened chocolate chips.  Delicious!  I ate one of the magic bars before bed every night for extra calories because I get cold easily.  We wanted to carry happy food in case the backpacking got hairy.  These were definitely happy treats.  They were also a bit heavy for backpacking food.

When we are hiking, Jon doesn’t really have to worry about taking insulin because he is burning so many calories as we move.  He does have to be careful to eat enough and scale back on his nightly insulin because if he gets low blood sugar (commonly referred to as “a low”) in the middle of the night in bear country, he has to go all the way to the bear hang or bear box to get food, which is both a real pain and sketchy.  Would you want to go fuss with your bear hang in the middle of the night?

We had two Backpacker’s Pantry meals on this trip.  We tend to favor this brand because they have more vegetarian options.  We ate Louisiana Red Beans and Rice, which we’d had before, on some tortillas.  The red beans and rice are a good pick.  They’re a tiny bit spicy to warm you up.  On our overnighter at Elizabeth Lake, we ate Ginger Teriyaki Stir-Fry which is “Asian vegetables in teriyaki sauce with rice.”  This meal tasted salty, but otherwise was pretty good.  Unfortunately, both of these meals contain sugar.  I’ve tried making my own dried meals before, even from a recipe I found in a magazine, but it was gross.  Too much spice, I think.  We’ll probably have to try again because these pre-made meals really have too much sodium and the inclusion of sugar is always a bummer.

As for camping beverages other than water and beer, we found warm drinks super helpful for cold morning motivation as well as going to bed warm.  I drank herbal tea with hot water and apple juice.  The apple juice is an old Food Not Bombs trick I picked up during high school/college from volunteering.  The apple juice makes the tea sweet and more special.  Jon had those newish Starbucks Via instant coffee packets.  He had both Italian and Columbian and liked them for both flavor and the pick-me-up aspect.

The Park Café is located near the St. Mary entrance to GNP.  It is open seasonally and offers a wide array of offerings, including a number of exciting vegetarian options, including tofu pesto sandwiches and a Gypsy burrito as well as more expected, but still desirable, fare like a veggie burger (homemade) and veggie chili.  The first time we ate at the Park Café, the first night of our trip, I got the pesto tofu sandwich (it was hot) with French fries.  Jon got a Rueben.  (Yes, meat).  We both liked our food very much.

 The long descent to Elizabeth Lake

 The mocking rainbow on our hike out.

 Grinnel Point and Mount Wilbur

After we hiked out from our overnighter at Elizabeth Lake, we went to see if the Park Café was still open.  They, like everything else, were closing for the season on that very day.  But, hooray for us, they were still open.  Sadly, they were out of two of the items I wanted to order, but it was still good food.  I got a salad and a veggie burger (house made) with fries.  What I really wanted was a Gypsy burrito—it had sweet potatoes and other veggies and a Thai curry sauce on it.  Alas, they were out of the sauce.  Jon got some bison chili and a burger. “It wasn’t as good as the Ruben,” Jon said.  The burger was pretty run-of-the-mill from a distributor like SISCO. I have no idea why this place had veggie options (a lot of them, and good ones, too) but I was so happy to find them.  I think it’s owned by hippies (no offense) and the employees are seasonal workers.  Apparently, their pie is the big deal and they have like 35 flavors or something.  Everyone was eating pie but us.

The Park Café find is really what traveling is all about for us.  Finding a restaurant like that, with hot, vegetarian food, can totally build morale and morale can take a trip from bad to great, especially in a rainy, overcast week like we had.

Glacier National Park in Late September

In early September of 2008, we visited GNP and it was hot, a little rainy, and there wasn’t any snow.  It was hot enough that we jumped into a glacier-fed alpine lake (which was the coldest) after a hike.  In late September of 2010, we visited GNP again, because that is when we could book the perfect backpacking trip and take time off from work.  It didn’t exactly go as planned.

Our drive out of Bozeman was met with sunny, warm temperatures and the knowledge that there was a high probability of precipitation and cold temps along the Canadian border in GNP. We left the comfort of the Gallatin Valley in early afternoon and made it into Choteau, MT as night and sleet began to fall. We were hoping to camp but the outrageous prices for a tenting sight in the RV/Camping place we found convinced us to stay in a motel instead. We opted for a bed and cable instead of setting up the tent in the sleet.

We woke to more rain and dwindling hopes for sunny skies over GNP.  It was foggy as we drove into the Many Glacier area.

The weather was cold and rainy.  It was also super foggy, which, for Glacier NP, almost wrecks everything.  In many places in Montana, a person can hike to an alpine lake or summit a mountain any day of the week.  If you live in Bozeman, like we do, you have access to at least four mountain ranges as close as 15 minutes and as “far” as an hour.  Travel further than an hour and you can get to many more ranges still in the state of Montana.  It’s mountain-tastic out here.  So if a person drives six hours (from Bozeman) to get all the way to Glacier, there is a reason.  That reason, my friends, is the view!  J. Gordon Edwards in his book A Climbers Guide to Glacier National Park describes the scenery, “High up on the massive mountainsides, usually nestled in ancient glacial cirques, are more than sixty small glaciers, and the north and eastern faces of many of the peaks are liberally sprinkled with sparkling snow banks and snowfields even in late summer.” 

The mountains in GNP look a lot different than the other mountain ranges in MT, which were formed mostly by volcanic activity and continental extension along faults.  Yes, GNP has glorious alpine lakes, wonderful flora and fauna, and etc, but if you hike 2,500 vertical feet and can’t see the surrounding peaks, it’s a serious downer.  Our trip wasn’t horrible, but we definitely got used to being wet, cold, and muddy without much of a view of the upper mountains.

We entered the park through the East entrance and car-camped at Many Glacier CG. 

While day hiking our first afternoon on the Swiftcurrent trail, we randomly ran into our friend Ryan and his girlfriend April, who we’d never met before.  Everyone on the trail saw a young bull moose and a cow moose with a calf on this trail but us.  We passed a group of about 40 French Canadian people with sneakers and ponchos (and gold jewelry and smelling of strong colognes and perfumes) so I will blame them for our failure to see moose.  Anyway, we, Ryan, April, Jon and I, decided to day hike to Iceberg Lake the following day.

 Swiftcurrent Trail

The hike to Iceberg Lake was about 5 miles (10 miles round trip) and the grade wasn’t too challenging.  The pace of our group seemed to fit everyone’s needs, which is rare, especially in a group of people who have never hiked together before. We reached the lake hoping to see a huge iceberg floating around in the lake. There is a glacier at the foot of the lake which sometimes fractures or calves and the piece that falls off falls into the alpine lake, hence the name Iceberg Lake. Apparently this only happens in the heat of summer and not when we were there. We did however, stumble upon a few hikers on the way back who had come face to face with a mother grizzly bear with three cubs on the trail. The hikers stepped off trail and the bears just walked by without any trouble. We took the opportunity and hiked up onto a large rock and scanned around for the bears with Ryan’s binoculars. We spotted them in an alpine field a good distance away. It was a great experience and a great treat to see a healthy family of grizzlies.   

Our one overnighter (our original trip was thwarted by the fact that the Going to the Sun Road CLOSED the day we were supposed to leave for our trip.  This means no shuttles) we hiked to Elizabeth Lake (10 miles).  We had to hike up to and through the Ptarmigan Tunnel, which is really crazy to see.  The tunnel goes through the mountain and it’s wet and dark inside.  The Elizabeth Lake hike was challenging because of all the elevation gain and loss.  We gained 2,500ft from the trailhead to the tunnel, and then descended 1,000ft to the lake.  It was a hard-on-the-knees day.  We camped at Elizabeth Lake Foot and it was very muddy.  Our shoes were heavy with mud.  The next day we hiked out, so we had to do all that elevation gain and loss backwards.  We had permits to proceed to Cosley Lake that day and link up with the Indian Pass Trail for an overnighter before returning. With a ford or a potential extra mile and a half to a suspension bridge to reach the lake coupled with a cold and wet morning with low clouds throughout the valley, we opted to hike out. The weather was gray, as usual, but really windy on our way to the tunnel and the wind made hiking really challenging.  There was a rainbow over the lake as we hiked out.  In our misery, it certainly seemed like the rainbow was mocking us.

 Ptarmigan Tunnel.  Jon found a rock bar.

 At the Ptarmigan Tunnel overlook.

 Suspension bridge just before entering Elizabeth Lake Foot CG.  Horses cannot pass here.

 Deer as we hiked out and were almost back at the Ptarmigan trailhead

After hiking out, we drove to the west side of the park on Rt 2 (because the Going to the Sun Road was closed).  We drove through Blackfeet reservation land a couple of times to get to the East entrance and then over to the West and let me just take a moment to say: there are hundreds of adorable stray dogs on reservations.  These dogs are the cutest combinations ever.  They look like they were bred, purposely, to be so adorable.  If you want an adorable dog, for free, go take one off a reservation.   We almost brought one home, but I doubt Gordie Howe would have liked that.

We car-camped in the Apgar CG, which was mostly closed and deserted, and the next day it was pouring rain.  We walked to the ranger station to check the weather report and it looked like rain for the next 5 days or so.  We decided to cut our losses and go home, a controversial decision for some of you harder-core readers, I’m sure.  We went to the Salvation Army SUPERSTORE in Kalispell on the way home.  This seemed to cheer Jon up.  It was two days from his 28^th birthday, after all, and our trip had been less than perfect.

We left GNP early, but ended up in Yellowstone National Park (just an hour from Bozeman) the following day and had a great day hike to Osprey Falls (10 miles round trip) and a wonderful soak in the Boiling River.  The weather was perfect: slightly cool, breezy, and sunny.  Then we picked Gordon up from the kennel and took him home.  He smelled like a barn, was covered in some sort of dust, and it was gross.  He seemed okay, though.

 Osprey Falls, Yellowstone NP

 The Boiling River, Yellowstone NP