Steps in the Right Direction: Day 10 Sperry Glacier

Miles hiked:8
total miles hiked: 105.1

Climbed out of bed this morning and quickly put some warmer clothes on. The temps are a tad chilly to not have heat. We headed to breakfast to find a little personal checklist piece of paper this is what we will use to order breakfast. Just need to check what we would like for breakfast oatmeal, eggs of choice, pancakes, bacon or sausage,orange juice, coffee. Yes, sound good, one of everything! While we are over eating, I mean eating, we meet two ladies who are leaving Sperry today. Both of these ladies work in the public school system in Austin, Texas. One is a speech pathologist and the other a physical therapist. The kind of vacationers they describe themselves as is airplane campers. They enjoy car camping, but have camped everywhere you can reasonably drive to in the Austin area, so now they have opened their world to jetting to a destination, renting a car, and then car camp. Their best and worst camping adventure was Kodiak Island in Alaska. Rather big grizzly live there. Very hard to get a good night of sleep, when every sound in the night makes you think you are the grizzly's next meal...as we are talking two more ladies stop at the table to say a kind hearted good bye. They are also hiking out today. As we are talking all of a sudden two other ladies stop at our table and start chatting. as we are chatting the question comes up if Kate is the bear lady? We find we are chatting with Kate Kendall who is a famous bear researcher in the national park. I think I have written about barbed wire placed on certain trees along a trail were bear are most likely to be walking on the trail. The bear scratch their backs on the trees and the barbed wire snags the hair. Then using a collection process the hairs are gathered and taken to the lab for DNA testing. Without capturing any bear or grizzlies the researchers can identify each bear and where it has been traveling. Please see for further information on this subject :http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/files/norock/products/NGSbearmon_Infosheet.pdf

Anyway Kate's research has made her quite the popular person and she finds people either love her research or they think it was a huge waist of time and money. I for one think what it was fascinating. She was most interesting to chat with and I wish we would have known last night as we could have all sat around the table and talked about that.

Oh well, our brush with greatness. We start out for Sperry glacier around 9:30 it is sunny, no breeze and we have finally hiked clear of the cloud of mosquitoes that are hovering over the chalet. We are on our way to one of those perfect days. We have the very loud group of six from Alberta in front of us, but it does not take too long before we hike up and pass them. Yesterday this group of six were hanging by the sleeping lodge. They were drinking wine and having cheese and crackers. I think they must have had a pack horse haul up their wine because the bottle were endless, which meant the noise was louder and louder. I'll just say if they thought they were keeping quiet they are very mistaken.

Anyway the trail is very well constructed and works it way back and forth up switchbacks rising up past a few waterfalls and onto a hanging valley. Here there are several small pools of collected water, but also a wide view of the Lake McDonald area. Just a wonderful little play land, but the pass still lies ahead. It was in this area which we encountered a herd of Mt Goats. We tried very hard not to disturb them, but they seemed very interested in following us.

As we get to the head wall we have to climb up and over a snow field to get behind it. Then we have to skinny up behind there so we can get to the special stair way which has been blasted and picked into the rock. There is a cable that is installed for those who might find it handy to grab on to something, however there are wonderful solid rocks to grab onto for assistance. This little stairway is also a huge wind tunnel. It was blowing really hard down through the slot. Some of the steps were as wide as the stairway but were only three inches deep making it necessary to step sideways up the stairs. When you emerge from the top step you are standing on the pass with the little madder horn straight ahead and the remainder of Sperry Glacier to the right. If you follow the tall rock cairns to the right you get down to the official toe of the glacier where the sign indicates you are at the official observation point of the glacier. When the glacier was first discovered it was 800 acres in estimated size, at the time of the sign placement the glacier was shrunk to 300 acres, I would easily say it is considerably less than that now.

To get down to this point we had crossed several snow fields. To hike out we just put our ice stabilizers on and walked right up and over all of those snow fields. Easy. I would think the task would have have been much more difficult with out those little gadgets.

On our trip back to the pass and down the slot we somehow gathered another herd of playful mountain goats. I just don't want one of those guys coming down that rock stairway with me... We choose a good time to go and the goats are behind us and through it in short time. Of course they do not need to us the stairway as their special hooves keep them well attached to the shear rock wall.

We watch the goats play games such as tag and catch me if you can. A few of the are just frolicking on the snow. One little baby is separated from momma and is bellering away. Most of the other goats come to its rescue and the little guy gets reunited with his momma.

Just a perfect day, a great day to see what will soon only be a snow field. This glacier is expected to loose its glacier status by 2015. This will still be a special hike, but one less glacier to see. As we are hiking today with out any special ordering of hikes or trying to manipulate the miles, we surpass over 100 miles hiked. Wow.