Closing out the blog category. What a wild ride.
Originally Posted 12/18/21
Although you will find this seasonal letter elsewhere on this blog, for continuity is feels like it belongs here with all of the other material specific to my Glacier 2021 Season. A nice bookend to close what truly was an incredible chapter in my life. Thank you for allowing me to share with you.
Here is the newsletter:
The Mountain Man Review
Been a couple of years since I’ve done one of these. So get settled into a comfy chair and put on your favorite holiday snuggie. This might take a couple of sittings to get thru.
Started off in January with the 25th annual SnowCamp. This year found us returning to Winthrop and the magical Methow Valley. Instead of cramming six guys in an unheated cabin/garden shed in the back of a pretty nasty trailer park (like the last time were where here), we put eight old white dudes in an Airbnb house with a net zero carbon footprint and outstanding views. This annual gathering has come a long way over the years, and obviously, we have all climbed a couple of rungs up the economic ladder and can afford some creature comforts (like heat and a bathroom).
Great company, clear skies, full sun, amazing snow, and COOOLLLLLDDDD. Even with all the sun it never got above the high 20’s in the day, and at night dropped to -5F. The nice thing about that kind of cold is it your whiskey doesn’t get watered down with too much ice. Stays nice and cold on its own. But be careful not to let the tongue stick to stainless steel of the Yeti high ball thermo.
Since my Jammer job at Glacier fell through, I kind of wanted a little GNP fix so packed up some friends the day after school was out and we drove up to camp a few nights at Bowman Lake in the northeast corner of the park. It was a nice early-season outing. On the way home, I saw I got a call from Glacier Park. The transportation guy said he was sorry the jammer thing fell thru, but he had another driving job open if I was still interested in working in the park this summer. So began the Summer of Dave.
Now I have recorded this odyssey in pictures and a LOT of written narrative on a Facebook page that Nancy set up. I spent the summer adding to it in real-time almost daily. If you aren’t a Facebook person, I’d advise just creating a dummy account (trust me it’s worth it). Search for “Dave’s Glacier Adventure 2021”. Nancy will accept anyone and everyone into the group. You will laugh, you will cry, and more likely than not might even pee your pants (just a little). I’m not going to try and recap all of that here, but I would like to throw out some stats and share a few fresh insights from what was truly an amazing two months.
Yeah, the shuttle job was horrible, but in a great way (just in case Dave E ever reads this). It was the turd in the proverbial punch bowl. So much so that everyone they had assigned to it only lasted about a week before they found something else or just plain quit. But it was the perfect means to get to my personal end. My passion is hiking and climbing, not driving some employee shuttle van over 250 miles a day while transporting an average of 1.8 people per shift. But this mindless job meant that if I just grabbed 5-6 hours (turned into 4) of sleep after ‘work’, I still had 8-9 hours of prime daytime hiking before my next shift.
Being able to hike DURING a workday was the game changer. Then my ‘weekends’ could be saved for the 20-mile monster hikes and more distant peaks. I knew that I would never get a chance like this again. A zero-effort job with endless hiking options. I knew that every road I had traveled and every step I had taken in my life had brought me to this moment. There was never really a choice.
It’s been 35 years since I’ve done seasonal work. They threw me into employee housing that was incredibly substandard. Xanterra, the concessionaire for GNP since 2014, has gone to the RV park model. They buy cheap maintenance-deferred seasonal RV parks at the fringes outside Glacier and turn them into employee housing only. Then fill up the run-down cabins with transient rootless type workers like me, a shared kitchen, and a shared bathroom.
The camp’s population was a mix of younger kids, some older like me, and even a couple of families. But most were hard-core seasonal employees that migrate from place to place every few months following the sun or snow or whatever.
Xanterra then courts and woos retirees (who aren’t there for the money) to take management jobs at the hotels for the summer and provide full hookups for their spacious (and very self-contained) RVs. Giant fifth wheels and more than one million-dollar Class A motor coach (many actually landscaped their sites for the summer with bark, flower baskets, lawns, and gnomes).
A very clear delineation of the haves and have-nots that did not comingle. Like the caste system in India. Don’t start me on economic class disparity. I couldn’t ask for a better social experiment in which to become immersed. This was just a great big sweaty epic slice of what I like to call Americana. And I took a big bite and smiled.
I came in with a three-prong approach for my short Montana summer. A) start with heavy trail miles to get my legs back and sweat down the belly roll. B) move to elevation gain with off-trail scrambles and familiar climbs to get my lungs back. C) EXPLORE! Trails, waterfalls, mountains, places I had never been to because there was never enough time.
Yet time was very finite, and not to be wasted on the mundane like grocery shopping/laundry/hammock naps. Two months is too short, and I would need to hike every single day (the weather and the body permitting). The first week was a painful one. Breaking down while building up is never easy, and I didn’t have the luxury to ease into it. Truly amazing what the committed mind can make the body do.
I constantly planned my hiking schedule four to five days out, while keeping complete flexibility and a very detailed log. No day was to be wasted or squandered. Hiking was literally my full-time job this summer. No distractions. Completely out of my comfort zone. No longer coasting on autopilot in the wagon wheel ruts of life. This experience would be whatever I made of it. Full control of a blank slate. Empowering. Scary. And totally awesome in a 1980s kind of way.
So how did it all turn out? My contract only went to Labor Day because of the start of the school year, so I got in just 62 days as a ‘shuttle driver’ in the park last season. In that time, I was able to rack up 456.1 miles with a bone-crushing gain and loss of 114,814 feet. I was also able to get my skinny ass up on 21 peaks, with just over half of them personal first ascents.
On the surface that equates to an average of 7 miles a day with 2000 feet of gain. But if you carve out the 20 down days I took (some by choice, others by my body telling my mind to **** off and stay in bed), well, yeah, things got a little crazy. At least that’s what the other employees kept saying.
I didn’t go into the summer with any kind of mileage or peak count goal, I just knew I had to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime shot to hike in my favorite place on earth. After clearing over 100 miles in the first six days (and…. On the seventh day I rested; slept for 17hrs straight and almost missed my afternoon shift), I knew this was going to be a BIG summer.
Another number is the 233.1 hours of solo hiking/climbing time. That is a lot of time to be aware and absorbed by your surroundings. Appreciate the rich flora, and observe the magnificent fauna (whose only interest is putting on winter weight). Watch the colors and hues change with a passing cloud. Smile at the stormy contrast of an August snow heavy on the needles of old-growth cedar. See the wind ripple across a mountain lake like a pulsing heartbeat.
That’s also a lot of time to think. To access the really deep thoughts, the ones only solitude can bring to the surface once the static of daily life fades away. Such solitude in nature provides one the rare opportunity truly see their priorities in life; to literally feel the clarity between the important and the trivial. Such solace can be overwhelming. Definitely cathartic. Clearly healing.
I came home with a much more intimate understanding of the park. So many great experiences in the mountains. My only regret is the rather steep price I had to pay (other than losing a lot of sleep and some toenails). I missed out on the social aspect of seasonal work. And those are gems you will never find again.
Given I was basically working a night shift and everyone else was on days, there was not a lot of overlap for hanging out with my fellow ‘parkies’ (yeah, their words, not mine) as I would have liked. All the individual backstories of what brought people to the park and where they had been and where they were going are just so truly awesome. I spent most of my free time writing in the common areas to be around that raw energy and enthusiasm that can only radiate from young adults at that stage of life. So much rich writing material.
These vibrant youths don’t allow the problems of the world to beat down on them. They are not distracted by the false absolutes society tells them they must accept, and rely on their intuitive understanding of what really matters to them. Throw in the seasonal transitory factor and there is an unmistakable refreshing vibe that just makes me smile. Even during this pandemic thing, these kids (as I called them) were happy to be living their lives and refused to buy into anyone or anything telling them how they should feel.
So that’s what I did last summer. I let myself be absorbed by my true passion in life, which I recognized as not only a gift but an opportunity that so few people get and fewer have the courage to grab and not let go. I clearly admit this was the hardest thing I have ever done, physically and mentally, at any stage of my life.
I’d like to think I could have pulled something like this off in my 20s, but I know I did not have this kind of discipline, determination, or commitment. And I even regained some of the optimism from my youth. Back when everything was still new and the world was there to be explored, not just something you just lived in and watch tick away day after day.
If I could only share one takeaway from this experience it would be that happiness, at least for me, is to be an active participant in life and not a bystander. To see and breathe and feel the world around you. Treat every experience as something new, enjoy it, then seek the next.
Oh, and stay away from grizzly bears. Those things are terrifying in person.
- dw
I hope you enjoyed.
