Aaron Unscripted A blog about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings…

Day 1, CDT

June 16th

The Morning was spent waiting for Gazelle, Marlow, and their ride Gesh, to show up from Whitefish to help carpool people up to the US-Canada boarder at Chief Mountain. Because of limited space in the vehicle Luna and Freefall managed to score a ride with the cook at the neighboring restaurant.

We all managed to make it to the boarder and trail head by early afternoon. We took some obligatory pictures at the boarder between the respected boarder stations where there where a couple of international boarder posts. There was also a nice blaze that ran down the side of the hill and acted as a distinct line between the two countries.

We hit the trail about 1:30 for a fairly tame day of less then 10 miles, into Elizabeth Lake. the trail seemed to go down a slow grade into the Belly River, that we meandered with up into the mountains of Glacier. The sites where spectacular, and the weather was great for hiking, sunny, partly cloudy at a moderate temperature with a cool breeze.

We stopped for a snack break at Belly River Campground, before heading up to Elizabeth Lake. On our way we came upon Dawn Mist Falls, a beautiful falls that could not have been  named anything other then.

Eventually we managed to make it to Elizabeth lake where we found the rest of our party, Chance and George, who had headed out the day before to check out Chief Mountain. Chance and George had a fairly exciting story about almost getting a citation for stealth camping and not being where the permit had them. The two had gotten into camp early, and George had made friends with some of the other campers. He borrowed a fishing pole and managed to catch a couple of trout. We pouched the fish in a pot, and passed it around for a delicious treat. I was impressed with Freefall's ability to de-bone the fish with such ease. I went to bed hoping the fish didn't attract any unwelcome visitors, like bear.