Month: July 2017

Sooooooo, like the front page says this is a work in progress and I’ve never claimed to be an expert at traveling, hiking and especially blogging but I just figured out I could post from my phone. 

Hahaha. I feel stupid for just figuring that out now. Now I can post as long as I have mobile service and don’t need a coffee shop. 

Great success

Matthew

Also, you can follow my instagram at “realtripping”.  You should just be able to click the instagram icon at the bottom of the page and go right there.

I arrived into Glacier National Park on 6-27-17.  I stopped by the Ranger Station to try to figure out if Frank and I could do the hike we had planned on doing where the short answer was “no” and so I spent quite a while there trying to find a different route which proved very difficult because all of the mountain passes were still covered in snow and unpassable which really restricted where we could go.  I found a decent alternative, left the Ranger station and decided to try a hike to Avalanche Lake before heading to the hostel for the night.  I started the hike late, around 7PM, and decided to hike until 8:05 which would give me time to get back to my car and drive to my hostel before sunset which was around 9:30PM that day. 

Around 8PM I ran into Daniel (Not his real name) walking back towards the parking lot.  The first thing he said to me was, “I hope you are not planning on making it to the lake”.  I responded I was planning on turning soon but was going to see if I could make it to the lake first.  He told me I was only about halfway there so I figured it was best to turn around now and walk back with him but not before he took me around one more curve where I saw my first elk of the trip.

He was probably in his mid twenties and as we walked back to the cars I learned that he recently just got out of the Navy where he was an engineer on a submarine for the last 5 years in Georgia.  He was driving from Georgia to Portland to start his new job.  He was not enthused about this new job as an engineer and told me his true passion was scuba diving.  When he wasn’t on the submarine he was working at a dive shop and had completed the requisite dives and certifications to be a diving instructor.  He was planning on working in Portland until January then move to the Caribbean to work full time as a diving instructor.

I mentioned that I just recently got certified and he said he was planning on going diving the following day in the park and had enough gear for two people in his truck.  He invited me to join him and which I accepted.  He said he was sleeping in the parking lot at the hotel at Lake Mcdonald and that the dive was in Lake Mcdonald so be there around 8AM. 

I asked about him sleeping in the parking lot and he responded that he had traveled from Georgia to Montana sleeping in parking lots of National Parks over the last 10 days and hadn’t paid once for sleeping.  He figured this is federal land and his taxes pay for him to sleep anywhere in them.  (Eh, whatever works for you)  He would park his F250 Diesel truck in some parking lot, crawl underneath his scuba gear and fall asleep.  I felt like such a naive, idiot.  I built this car to sleep in and yet I was paying to sleep in places meant for RVs.  How much money had I wasted over the last three weeks?

I left him in the parking lot with the expectation of seeing him the next morning.  I never saw him again.

When I got to my hostel that night I met several guys who were 2 days into their trek of the Pacific Northwest Trail.  This trail runs from Glacier National Park all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  Lucky for me, these guys just walked the path that Frank and I had planned to hike but in the reverse direction and they said there was one part that was a little tricky but if you had an ice axe, you would be fine.  This first person account is what led Frank and I to complete our original route.  (When we went through 4 days after them, we probably didn’t even need ice axes but since I had one, I used it).

Three of these guys, Will, Ian and Erik, went to college together and look to be recent graduates.  They invited me to play a board game with them before they headed out to to their tents for the night.  The game was Carcassone which I had never heard of.  It is a map building game where you pull tiles extend the map and place your pieces to earn resources and points.  I won, NO BIG DEAL! 

Jonathan was another guy staying at the hostel that night and the only other guy actually sleeping in a bunk as the PNT guys were all sleeping in their tents out back.  Jonathan looked several years younger than me and as per usual we started a conversation about our travels.  He was on a 10 day vacation where he drove from Orange County to spend a week in Glacier NP.  That night was his last night in Glacier before he was starting the 20 hr drive back to Southern California.  The last thing he was going to do was see sunrise at Bowman Lake which was about 30 mins from our hostel.  I invited myself along. 

When I told him what I was doing he responded with something like, “Well, I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for.” Obviously, this is a notion that I have spent time thinking about.  What causes someone to drop everything, quit their well-paying job, leave their established life to go live out of a car.  I’ve never really come up with a good answer.  Am I looking for a purpose, a job, a calling, something I’m interested in, relaxation, an experience, a challenge?  All of those things?  None of those things?  I try not to think about it because then I start thinking about getting to the end and looking back and realize this was all a waste.  That nothing came out of this and I’ll be back working in some office doing the responsible thing, living a life.  I guess if nothing else I’ll have some cool pictures I can put up.

(Note:  Bouldering is like rock climbing but you just climb up/on boulders and don’t need any equipment.  A nice substitute if you don’t have a partner.)

Well I don’t even know if you can say I attempted bouldering.  I attempted to find a boulder to, uh, boulder.  I was actually planning to summit Mount Rundle today but yesterday’s hike up to Harvey Pass took way more out of me than I expected and when I finished I just couldn’t imagine ascending another 5,000+ft today so I was really looking for something else to do. 

While brushing my teeth last night at the water spigot the guy behind me mentioned bouldering in the area which immediately gave me a better idea than going up Mount Rundle.  I did some searches on my phone and found that  one of the biggest places to boulder in Western Canada was about 25 mins from me.  Done, found a replacement plan.

The boulder location was in a provincial park but not on any established trail.  I had the GPS coordinates punched into my phone and I started walking towards the red flag waypoint.  The main trail at this park leads to Mount Yamnuska where all the other hikers were heading but my phone pointed me up a dirt road.  I followed the dirt road as far as I could watching dump trucks pass me back and forth every few minutes.  Obviously they were hauling dirt or rock from somewhere in the park.  I finally got to the end of the road at an active mine.  While the signs said “Warning: Active Mine”  it was really just a rock face with a front end loader dumping rocks into the dump trucks.  I followed the road around the construction site and walked as far as I could until I finally decided to turn back not being able to find a trail.  As I started walking back down the road looking for a trail, one of the dump truck drivers stopped me and asked me what I was looking for.  I told him I was looking for a rock climbing site and  while I was expecting him to reply with something along the lines of “this is a construction site and you have no business being here” he surprised me with a smile and telling me that he saw people hiking along the same road with their “gear” last week and said there was a trail “up” there somewhere.  Astounded at how helpful he was I turned around again and headed back up around the construction site and found what looked like the remnants of a trail and started trudging through the forest.

My iPhone had my blue dot location and red flag waypoint and I tried my best to walk straight there.  The trail pretty much vanished immediately and I was trailblazing through knee high grass and fallen trees.  Finding my way to the boulder proved way more difficult.  I should have just followed my phone and walked straight there but instead I would find what looked like a trail and start following it for awhile until I realized it wasn’t going towards my destination.  This happened several times.  Now I’ve been walking through pretty dense forward for about 30 mins, turned around several times and was worried that I wouldn’t find my way out if my phone died. 

One of the drawbacks of living out of your car is lack of access to electricity.  The only times I can charge my phone and USB charger are when my car is running or if I’m holed up in a coffee shop.  So my phone was running low on battery and of course I left my USB charger in my car.

According to my phone, the boulder location was only about 1000-1500ft from me and I figured I could make it but after another 15mins of walking I didn’t seem to be any closer.  Once I got the “20% power level” on my phone I turned and started heading back.  Even if I got to the site within a few minutes, I was worried I would be stranded there after a few hours of climbing.  I set my heading for a lake nearby which the dump truck driver said another dirt road ran to.

Finding my way back was just as difficult and I don’t know if others’ phones are like mine but I feel like going from 20-0% could take an hour our 5 mins so I wasn’t sure when my phone was going to die.  I took my compass out, found my bearing to the lake and figured even if my phone died I wouldn’t miss the lake or dirt road.  After a few more minutes I decided to change my direction back to the original dirt road I walked in on because it appeared on my iPhone the road was running perpendicular to me so I changed my bearing to hit the road ASAP.  Finally I made it back to the road then quickly found the other dirt road that I assume led to the lake and as one might expect a much more defined trail heading back into the woods.  I considered following this trail to see where it led but thought better of it as by phone was below 10% at this point so I headed back to my car.

It was about noon when I got back to my car and although I still had plenty of time to make it to a trail and complete a day hike I decided to take care of a few items that needed to get done.  I ended up going to the grocery store to stock up on trail mix, Peanut Butter and tortillas (pretty much the staple of my diet) get gas, then head to a coffee house.  Currently I’m in Beamer’s Coffee Bar in Canmore, AB which is a chill place.  I’ve downloaded several audiobooks (thanks Nick) and podcasts to keep me busy for weeks and obviously update this blog.

While, I didn’t get to do any bouldering today I’m glad I got to attempt to find the location and I feel like with a fully charged phone I could have made it there and back.  I feel like I kept a cool head while “lost” in the wilderness and didn’t get frustrated with myself for failing.  I realized this was the first time I had ever attempted anything like this and was fully aware that failure was possible.  I’m happy to have had the experience of forging my own path (even if I didn’t make it to my destination) but also happy that I made the right decision to turn back.

While I’m not really sure how to define this trip or what I expect to get out of it one thing I know for sure it is meant to push me out of my comfort zone and try new things but not do anything (too) stupid.  I think I did that today.

Matthew

I know it has been a while since my last post and I’m afraid this is going to be a short one for now.  I’m in Banff, Alberta sitting in Evelyn’s Coffee World where I just housed a chocolate banana loaf.  It was AMAZING! 

When I left off I was just finishing up my few days in Moab, UT in Arches and Canyonlands.  The day after my last post I drove back to Arches to go see the Delicate Arch which is the poster child of Arches NP.  Unfortunately due to my ineptitude I deleted the pictures of the Delicate Arch before I properly uploaded them to my computer. 

I ended up leaving Moab a day earlier than I had planned to give myself 3 shorter driving days to get Glacier NP.  I stopped outside Ogden, UT and at Georgetown lake outside of Anaconda, MT on my way to Glacier.  It was uneventful few days of driving listening to “Ready Player One” and true crime podcasts.

I spent almost a week in Glacier, 5 of those days I was joined by Mr. Pov Jones, hiking and driving all over.  Then, I celebrated the sovereignty of the USA by exercising the border crossing into Canada on the 4th of July.  I have been in Banff for 2+ days now.

I will add more posts soon detailing my time in Glacier, the places I’ve slept, and the people I’ve met but for now, please enjoy my Montana p.  It truly was a beautiful place.