Glacier 2022 - Day 1

Today started earlier than yesterday — we got up at 4:45 to eat breakfast, pack our tent up, and head into the park. The early start was to beat the traffic and make sure we got a parking spot at our trailhead.

We arrived at the trailhead around 7:30 and set off. The first few miles were through some dense wild raspberry bushes which were covered in dew/rain that completely drenched us from the knees down.

There were clouds, but no rain, and the visibility was good. We had started out on this same hike last year but had turned around on day 2 due to how cold and snowy it was. This year there was a big difference in how much more we could see.

After crossing a creek on a small bridge, we headed up the mountainside to Flattop — a campsite we were planning on stopping at to take a longer break. Along the way, we got distracted by eating some ripe wild huckleberries. They were delicious, but also made us wary of the possibility of finding a bear. Thankfully no bears were seen through the rest of the day.

After eating lunch at Flattop we set out again. It was a little chilly and there were some questionable-looking clouds, so I put on my rain jacket. We plodded along in silence for a while as we made our way up to the top of Flattop Mountain. The breeze picked up a good bit and every once in a while we got a few sprinkles of rain.

As we headed down into the valley getting to our campsite we could see some rain rolling in. It hit us quickly and poured for a good 10–15 minutes as we continued up out of the valley to our campsite. Thankfully the rain stopped just as we arrived, and we were able to set up our tent while it was dry.

As we finished setting up the tent the rain started to pour again, so we got into the tent to set up our sleeping bags and put fresh dry socks on. Laying in the tent we thought back through the day and talked about how even though the rain was a bummer, it was better than last year, and we are excited to keep going. The weather looks rain-free for the next week so hopefully, tomorrow is a lot drier.