Recently my wife and I returned from our epic glac-anada adventure. This involved our first time backpacking through Glacier National Park, driving through the Canadian Rockies, exploring Vancouver, BC, and going to the Portland Timbers game. There was a lot involved in the planning and preparation, especially with the back packing portion.
Picking a route!
So one of the funniest parts of the preparation was deciding a route. I used hike734‘s writeup on great 3 day hikes to get some good ideas, and spent a lot of time looking at the map of the park. There’s also a good amount of help to be found on the official park website.
Getting a permit
Glacier required a permit in order to go into the back country. You could show up at the ranger office and get one for that day, but I wanted to make sure and get the route we decided on so I sent in the form to reserve the sites ahead of time. They start issuing permits on April 15th. Any forms they receive prior to that are shuffled together and worked random. After April 15th they’re processed as they get them. We found out when we picked up our permit that our chosen route was very popular and tend to go quickly, so I was glad I mailed our form in before the April 15th window.
The Gear
Emily and I done many hikes in the Portland area. The PNW has an immense bounty of possibilities for going on hikes. We had also done our fair share of camping, albeit car camping, before deciding to go on this trip. That said, there is a lot of backpacking specific gear I discovered we would need. I read a lot of reddit threads on what people pack, and talked with some people about things I’d need.
One thing that made life easy was REI garage sales. If you’re apart of REI’s membership program you’re invited to their garage sales. These tend to be very hit or miss, but we were able to find a backpack for Emily that only had a broken clasp. We were also able to find her a sleeping bag where the only issue was the stuff sack had a tiny tear in a seam. These items were found at roughly 60-75% markdown. REI also had a big anniversary sale where most of their merchandise was 50%+ off list price. We used this chance to talk with some store reps on what kind of supplies we needed, and they pointed us to a good pump water filter and jet boil.
Our main source of dinners and breakfasts were dehydrated foods. These were super lightweight foods that you added boiling water to. Our hand-pump water filter made getting water a breeze. Drinking water from a glacier fed stream was a great experience. Because Glacier Natl Park is home to many bears, there is a lot of protocol you must follow regarding food stuffs. This includes things like, storage of food, or anything that smelled, far from the tents, in an area designated for food storage. The usual two methods for this is either hanging it all in a waterproof bag, or keeping it in a bear proof canister. We opted to go with a bear canister. In theory, the benefit of a canister, over hanging a sack, is you can just put your stuff in it and stow it on the ground in the food storage area without needing to tie a line. In reality, the bear canister was a giant pain. It added a bunch of extra weight, and size didn’t diminish over time. Not to mention that it wasn’t big enough to hold absolutely everything, so we ended up rigging some bags to hang anyhow. Next time I do this I’m for sure sticking with just bags to hang.
Hiking poles was something I always thought was for people with bad joints, but now that I’ve started using them I don’t want to stop. They relieve so much pressure on your joints especially going down slopes. I started using them on just regular day-hikes to much success.
This is part 1 of a 3 part series about my vacation through the mountains. Find part 2 here, and the link to part 3 will be posted when it’s written.
These are the breaks 