Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. Yum, huckleberries.

Come on. You have to be impressed. How many people would throw in their subject line a title from an early 1970’s hit song by the Carpenters??? Yeah. You are so welcome.

I knew this would turn around and bite me in the butt. All that complaining I did in July about the excess heat. But I have to be honest, going out and hiking almost every day and never having to look at the forecast to see if you are going to get flooded out on a trail or struck by lightening on a peak for six weeks: absolutely priceless.

And as the saying goes, you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain. It also keeps the entire western United States from being consume by a conflagration that would rival the Second Coming (just a shout out to all the believers out there).True, sad the August rains hit on the very few working days off I have. But at the end of the summer, it won’t be about miles and elevation gain (although you must say, they are impressive numbers), but the stories that fill in the gaps during my travels.

The ‘bad’ weather did allow me to get in a couple of redo’s, especially fire lookouts. I like fire lookouts because the trails are often a wonderfully even grade, miles are very predictable, and I can benchmark my times from early on in the season to see if that employee cafeteria food is high in protein and antioxidants. At least the I know the Diet Coke from the soda machine is high in caffeine, which has been beneficial to the health of the employees riding the late night shuttle.

Apgar FLO is still unmanned with a view the trees are taking back a little every year. I’m surprised no one has gone up there with bag of copper nails. The rain kept me cool and it was an up/down thing. I did come across another guy who appeared to be doing the same thing. You can tell the difference between tourist and the people who are just doing it as tuning for something else.

I simply asked him what he was training for, which began the standard 15 minutes conversation that any stranger is destined to have when they cross my path and make eye contact. As I guessed, a park employee. He was trying to get to some of the 10k footers this season, specifically Kintla and Stimson. Kintla his approach sounded pretty good and I wished him well. As for Stimson, I was surprised the climbing info on it hasn’t changed much since I did it so many years ago. The Nyack is a remote area. It’s one where they don’t issue you a backcountry campsite, but an entire zone and give you X number of days anywhere in it.

He was camping at the same lake I did back in 86, so I gave him the beta on traversing Mt Pinchot to the saddle between Stimson, which apparently has not made it out of the oral history stage in this era of all things internet. He pulled out a paper and took some notes. I remember this part of the climb so clearly because I COULD NOT take this traverse which would have saved me many painful hours of side hill walking.

Why? Because the guys I was climbing with ‘gave up’ at the saddle so I had to return that way to get them. They were out of Denver, and the rock in Glacier was too ‘rotten’ for their liking. Yeah, welcome to GNP. And if you don’t like it, there are plenty of us who do so stay home. Still bitter at 35 years? You might say a little.

Huckleberry FLO I was able to sneak in just as the storm clouds were forming for the AM. But I really got the Hammer of Thor fighting my way back to the car. At 12 miles RT and 2700 gain, there is some real commitment to getting wet if the weather catches you to early.

Bright point is I had some cell service so got caught up with Nancy. Second is I got to chat with the fire lookout lady. I bumped into her last July as well and she remembered me. Kind of funny. You can tell she hates tourist because of all the stupid questions. But at the same time, she is clearly starved for human contact being on that rocky mountain outpost. We must have chatted for a good 45 min, enough for the rain to catch me and follow me all the way down. But I can always dry off and she was a really nice person. Elizabeth. Lizzy. Talked about the future of retail stores, putting people in outer space, and is there a global pandemic or a conspiracy going on? I could tell she was pretty well read, and this late in a season of isolation, a little more than half bat-shit crazy. At the end of the day, I think we all need a little crazy. Finally, her tea pot started to whistle, and I started back down the mountain.

By the way, my return time was just HORRIBLE compared to last July. Why? Huckleberries. I hiked on the WA coast for 23 years, I know how to do it in rain. And it was that light, WA rain with no wind. Staying nice and dry under a very purpose hand-sewn Syl-nylon poncho my wife had made for me, I took my time and picked and ate until my fingers were just cold numb little stubs. Then hiked a mile to warm up and do it again.

Makes me wonder what is going thru a bear’s mind when they are just on a hillside foraging? Probably ‘this vegan shit really sucks, where can I get a side of meat?’ Must admit I was hankering for sausage breakfast burrito when I got to the car (although I was halfway to Polebridge, so a latte and huckle bear claw would have been a close second).