Ptarmigan Tunnel makes me cry.  Or was it the rain?

If you remember, I had a wonderful, beautiful sunny weekend when I ended my training. Pretty sure I was even the first person to hike Iceberg Lake for the season. Even had a wonderful little rant against high-priced yoga pants for men.

Now, old Dave would have struck while the iron was hot. Never EVER pass up good skies. Just take the pain of a 30-mile weekend and be a man (circa the 1950s, so more like be a caveman).

That was such a wonderful weather window. I could have done the snow route to the tunnel in six hours round. And then a 7-hour drive home. In bed by dark with a couple of hours of REM sleep. To work by 7 AM. And a full week to lick my wounds while sitting in the back of the steering wheel of a big yellow school bus. Piece of cake.

But the New Dave said Nooooooooo. The mountains will always be there. Just relax. No biggie. Catch that little hike the next time you are back. Can you guess what I got for listening to myself? Let’s go with a little visual. New Dave can be a real moron sometimes.

I’ve only visited Glacier National Park over Memorial Day weekend once in my life. And I remember it well. Partly because it was absolutely fantastic weather (like in my Iceberg post), but mainly because it was the EARLIEST opening of the Going to the Sun road in its entire history. That’s right. After almost a hundred years.

This weekend felt like late May. Cool. Cloudy. Rainy. Old Man Winter saying “I’m not quite done with this place yet”. 

And He gives you the big middle finger.  And you must nod in obedience.

This is supposed to be the worst day of the weekend. I can see some filtered blue up there but not much. Will save the SWC Mtn hike for tomorrow and stay kind of low today.

It’s not as though it’s pouring down sheets of rain on me. It could be so much worse. So let’s just take on Ptarmigan Tunnel and get in my snow route before it has all melted away.

I got an early start and passed only one other couple on the trail. They started with too many layers and had to shed. It was a real rookie move. Which cost them a great sheep sighting.

Now being first in the line on the trail, I got to see a little bit of wildlife. Normally the big horn sheep don’t do much for me. But this little quartet was hanging just off the trail and didn’t seem to mind me.

Until, of course, HE did decide to mind me.

Now, the big stud did come a lot closer than I would have preferred. Clearly, a little early season challenge to entice me in backing off from his ladies.

You don’t know how big these things are until you turn the zoom feature off on your phone and they walk right up to you.

I backed up the trail quite a bit to give them all space to pass.  They just wanted to nibble the greenery in the valley.  This video really made the entire hike for me (because everything else from this point on, as you may have prematurely guessed, sucked).  It is less than a minute (which is too much for most of you).

The backdrop of the SWC valley, the clouds, the birds chirping, the crunching under the hoof, and the feeling of solitude.  It just really brought together what I would consider a wild experience of nature.  Something you can’t find in the summer months.  So yeah, worth getting a little soaked to the bone for.

I made quick work of the upper main valley. Took the traditional right just after Ptarmigan Falls and started the ascent up to the headwall naturally named the Ptarmigan Wall. Some snow still laced the trail but not as much as was present last year (and three weeks later on the calendar!).

And that is when the little spitting raindrops turned into the real deal. A steady shower with 0 visibility and a nice light wind. To remind me in case I had forgotten about the silent killer: hypothermia. A good hiker is always afraid of death.

At this point, I started getting a lot more residual snow on the trail. And with the rain, started getting wetter and wetter every step deeper into the valley I took.

I reach the lake to find it mostly snow-covered. But that’s not the part that bothers me. That was a fact I still had about 800 feet of climbing in under a mile to the actual tunnel itself sucked. To add to that, it would be on very wet, soft, and packed snow.

Sometimes you just have to just cut your losses. This is a fun snow climb on a decent day and decent snow. But on a horrible day with horrible snow, and it is an equally perfect recipe for a body recovery exercise for the NPS.

And we know how those folks in green with Smokie hats love exercise.

Even my favorite Gortex hat was drooping trying to shed the gallons of water falling on it. The problem with hiking in this kind of weather, it doesn’t matter how good you’re gear is. You will eventually get very very wet.

It’s just a matter of time. And, of course, a mathematical certainty.

I thought about hunkering down under a tree for a little while to see if the weather would break. It was still late in the morning and afternoon should have some clearing. But once that heartbeat drops below 110 and you find yourself standing in a puddle of slush, you find yourself on a fool’s errand in short order. This brings us back to a familiar theme: Needless Death in the Wilderness. Time to start home.

With all of the rain falling, the trail turned into about a three-mile-long continuous puddle two feet wide. Just awesome. It was impossible to keep the boots out of the water. I’ll be turning the heat in the cabin up to high and doing some gear drying this afternoon.

The Many Glacier Hotel was looking pretty sad and somber this afternoon. They aren’t open for the season yet. Only have about 50 of the 200 employees to get the place prepared for guests. Which means….

A lot of extra food in the employee cafeteria right now. I filled up a couple to go boxes to take back to the cabin. Get back some of those calories while I beat the water out of my clothing like an old wash woman.

What’s this? Beargrass is showing me a little hope for tomorrow’s hiking. I can’t do much with pouring rain and zero visibility. But I can do something with just a fleeting shadow of that filtered orb up in the sky.

After all, hope is a good thing. Or is it? I guess it might just be all perspective.