Horse manure. Hiking crowds. Pole stripper. This is Glacier!

Original Post date 7/8/2021

I found out I had a step function on my altimeter watch.  It read 34,729 steps before I started my work shift. I guess you would call this a good hiking day?  It’s all relative. You be the judge.

Nice little walk today.  I figured that since the Avalanche Lake trailhead is always impossible to park at, what are the options?  I found out if you tie a horse trail into a seldom used 4ish mile or so section, you can get to the same place and avoid the crowds.  Of course, it turns a six mile day into 15.2, but what the heck.  With only 1000ish feet of gain loss, it feels like a rest day.

The horsey part of the trail was icky, but only about 20 minutes.  I can take walking thru bugs and dodging big piles of horse manure and urine swamps for that long.  Then I passed thru big stands of Fir and Cedar, with areas of classic PNW sword ferns where moss covered everything including the trail. I found that the path also stays far enough in from the Sun Road so that you don’t see (and hear it), except at a couple narrow spots in the valley. 

Of course, when I merge into the Avalanche Lake trail, the literal shit show starts.  Toddlers walking in diapers and and moms in flip flops.  Families walking four people across oblivious to the world.  An elderly man had three people help him over a six inch high tree root with 30 more patiently waiting to walk past.  That’s why at the lake it was more fun to take pictures of the people that the scenery. Because of this hike, the people ARE the narrative. Pretty mild views over all since I was what I called ‘valley locked,’ but this was a day for putting on miles and those are starting to feel very good.

Tangent. I am constantly astounded by the really really weird people working here this summer.  There are no ‘J1s’ working this season (so named because a J1 Visa Student Exchange Program is a type of worker visa passport that the foreign students get to be enslaved to work for starvation wages for three months). As a result Xanterra is tapping a much more transient and fickle labor market, while turning up the recruitment for old retired couples who still kind of want to work with zero effort in a beautiful place with a cheap RV hookup.  With no foreign labor pool this year. And most of the domestic economic class normally forced into these jobs to make ends meet are staying home to cash their Covid stimulus checks. What is left is a weird, sort of funky backfill labor appearing on a rotating basis that can’t decide if they want to work, where to work, or for how long to work before moving on. It has been awesome collecting backstories. They are as endless as they are random and make me want to write every day.

Like the thin blonde girl at the trailhead in the yoga outfit (or stripper pole costume, I can’t tell the difference) who couldn’t quite pull off whatever look she was going for. It was post hike and I was parked tailgate-down swapping into street clothes and sorting gear. 

Suddenly Ms. South Carolina brakes next to me in a cloud of dust in her beater mini van. Kayak on top, mountain bike off the back, windows stacked high with junk.

After a greeting she asked for some some trail beta which I am always happy to share. While still conversing, she turned around, fished a deodorant stick out of her pig-pile/dumpster-fire of a van, and liberally applied without missing a beat. 

She then told me to hang on a minute, walked over to the nearby vault toilet, blew it up, and upon return continued chatting seamlessly. As casual as if she were stirring Splenda into her morning coffee.

My mind had a hard time processing all of this.  I am clearly not the person of absolute freedom from personal boundaries that she had mistaken me for.  It must have been the spare sleeping bag and gear tubs I had in the back of the truck, making me appear as a kindred spirit. That and we both had employee badges.

I drove out of the parking lot confused with a lot of internal questions. And very happy I had a real home to go back to at the end of the summer. Not a rolling homeless camp. I’m not ready for that kind of freedom. Most likely never will be. And I’m really really good with that.

Speaking of people, I’m starting to meet some interesting employees, like Randy. A 60+ year old cook at Lake McD who has a nice little routine on his off hours.

Starts with a few beers at Freda’s in West Glacier (employee bar when I was there in ’86), then taking in some mini golf (free for employees), and finishing with a little shopping. The icing on the cake is catching my employee only shuttle back to home at the top of the lake. 

A little more drunk that I personally prefer to be at 4 in the afternoon, but he does get in a full 19 holes (I hear the bear head is the hardest).  He’s been doing the seasonal park thing full time for several years since his wife passed.

I was really happy for him to find something meaningful after losing a life partner of 40 years. Randy noted it was great to be able to pick and choose seasonal locations, with all of the labor shortages and such.  He’s lined up a great head chef gig at one of the better restaurants at Grand Canyon’s South Rim this fall thru spring.

Just L-I-V-I-N the dream, which can come at any stage of life.