CDT + GDT: EAST Glacier to Waterton Lakes, Canada: The end is a beginning

Author’s note: publications will be delayed. Now I need to prioritize my permits how best I can and leave Canada before snow. Thanks for your understanding!

Refraint 29 | East Glacier to Waterton Lakes (GDT!)

Day 111, 10.5 miles.

Today it was easily my most stressful day along the way. I arrived at East Glacier in time to enter Canada and start my GDT permits. I just had to do 33 miles per day for three days and would be in Canada. That was already a great obstacle, to timet the entire CDT so that I arrived here the right day. I felt that I didn’t even have the opportunity to link these paths unless I arrived in time so that I had enough time to overcome the GDT before it begins to snow. But walking permits for Glacier National Park were a bit complicated, and I have a strict timeline. Ideally, I would have reserved them in advance when the reservations were opened in May, which would have been my first day in Colorado. But online permissions can only be reserved in increases of 16 miles, so it would arrive at the camp around 2 pm and wait all day. Other hikers said that people align at the ranger station hours before they open to obtain permits. But he would have to walk 11 miles from the East Glacier, so arriving at the office when they open at 7:30 would mean walking at 4:30 am or before. In addition to that, my friend and resupply manager Jenna, owner of the Wababaland bakery, marked that Vermont shipping boxes to Canada cost me $ 60 per box. I could spend a day in my first city in Canada to re -package and send boxes from Canada, but then I would be late for my GDT permits. So I rethink my refueling plan and tried to find people in each place who could help me buy a refueling and take it to a path. I sent Jenna so many confused cryptic text messages, it is a wonder that discovers what I want to say at all, but passed her early career in startups deciphering chaos, so she says she is accustomed. Anyway, it was a great headache. It should have incorporated more buffer. But January, Jess, who booked the permits, thought that the stitches of August would be strong and could only execute and was reluctant to add delays that could risk an end of October in the early snow of the season. Well, August Stitches is strong, but she is also tired and would love a day to deal with logistics. With a company for so long, it is difficult to plan everything until the mile, until the day, months and months and thousands of miles in advance. The problem is that the easiest way to recover time if I get late to permits is to take less time in the city in each resistant. But my refueling cannot be as fast as I expected if I could not collect a box that Jenna prepared for me. Every minute that Jenna passes is a minute less that I have to pass in the city. After spending the day in logistics while I had service in the city, I walked the 11 miles to the ranger station, so I can look at the permits early tomorrow. All stress melted once I got up to see the views. In the worst case, I have permission to get on the lowest mileage permits reserved yesterday by a CDT hiker that I met in New Mexico, and then I will try to invent the mileage once I am in Canada. At least I could eat blueberry pancakes for breakfast made by Chill, whom I have miraculously found four times on this path despite its colorado jet. Life is good. Take everything as it comes.

Day 112, 35.7 miles.

Well, getting the permits continued as I thought I would. Many camps were reserved and most people do not want to allow strangers to share their camp, so they did not have many options. I am grateful that the Ranger worked hard to try to get something reasonable, but it is still a quite unchanging itinerary that probably implies some night walk. The permissions system is mainly there to manage the enormous impact of more than 3 million annual visitors to the park. Rangers have to balance the protection of land, wildlife and people. I should have tried to ask a friend to reserve several itineraries online in May, including having to do and then cancel ghost reserves to avoid mileage limits, or should have given me much more time to cross the glacier to be able to be flexible with the camps. The system is designed for regular park users, not long transport plans such as what I am trying. I will make a more detailed writing about all this after it ends. While walking today, I’m quite sure I ate at least one pound of shrubs. I love that Huckleberries refuse to be domesticated and yet they are abundant for those who work. At the last minute of the day, I could see the officer and his children Yankee Doodle and Pantry. I met them for the first time in New Mexico and then I found them again in Colorado on 53 and 54: They were the three figures I saw in the pass I wanted to find desperately after walking alone in the snow for so long. I don’t know how he kept two teenagers fed along the way. We will be the last CDT hikers to the north we see, so we congratulate ourselves and remember how brutal was the path and how pleasant is the glacier compared. «The qualification of these passes is very easy,» he said. «Yes, meanwhile, that stretching for Leadore was so steep,» I complained. «My calves were taking,» he agreed. I am glad to have seen some family faces towards the end despite all the different options that each one made on the path: walks on the road around the snow or different alternatives or flip flops. From tomorrow I will be in my last fifty miles to Canada.

Day 113, 36.5 miles.

I feel obscenely fortunate to spend the last day of my 20 years in the Glacier National Park, Blackfeet homeland. It is directly from a fairy tale. Something about the walls and sharp angles makes me feel that each mountain is its own benevolent being, taking care of us. It is not surprising that we call it a mountain face. If I had a church, it would be this. The temple of the mountain. You can call it as you want: God, Nature, Allah, Dhamma. Live here. And when the clouds descend on the spikes, my breath puts on my throat. When reading the comments of other hikers in Farout, there was no consensus about the «best place in the park.» «Take this secondary path,» some would say, or «try to get a permit here,» is the best part of the park. Maybe anywhere you visit looks like the best place in the park. It was also fun to read some of the comments of sobos who had just started the path complaining about overgrowth and the responses of nobles tired that said: «Thank you to even have a path! Simply worsens from here, it hardens better!» Today it was so beautiful that I kept stumbling because I was too busy looking up to look down. While I walked, I thought about how I lived my 20 years, and I am proud. If I had to die tomorrow, I would be proud of the elections I have taken. I was crying all day, but I had to keep it together because there were many day hikers on the road. The first time I visited this park, I was three years old. The first time I visited as an adult was three years ago when I rode my bicycle to go to the road. It was September, and even with all the escape of the car I remember it as one of the most beautiful walks of my life. I really want to finish this path tomorrow in this beautiful place.

Day 114, 17.4 miles to Canada, 10.3 miles out. 27.7 miles in total.

Today I walked my miles to the border. I found two types on CDT Hats Clearing Trail with chainsaws. «Thank you for your work,» I said as I passed them. «I really appreciate it.» One of them looked at me. «From Mexico already?» «Yes,» I said. «What are you starting, 35 years?» «Yes,» I said. «Good job, congratulations.» I have completed this path in a continuous direction towards the north in three months and three weeks. The same day of walking on the PCT, I had just crossed the California/Oregon border. I have completed the CDT in the time that took me walking through California. Which is crazy, because thousands on the PCT is much easier.

While listening to the sound of my steps, my constant partner during the last three months, I thought about all the mud, the sand and the rocks and the snow and the artemis and the willows and the heel and the scree and the ice that I have traveled. All the farms that I have passed. All the streams that I have seen. All the doors I have opened. Every morning frozen morning I’ve supported. All the mountains that I have accumulated. All the birds I have heard. All the wild flowers I have seen. Each crew. Every dawn, each sunset. I felt very grateful to have lived the last months of my 20 years as the purest and most raw version of myself.

Usually, the end of a walk is nothing special. There is no great banner in the finish line. There are no crowds to welcome you. There are no applause. There is no fanfare. It is just a small remote clear and maybe there is a score and a record in which you can sign your farewell as proof that there was once you did something great. You got here, on foot, from the other end of the country.

There were some tourists on the limit when I arrived. I arrived next to Canada on the limit marker and collapsed in tears. They were worried and they asked me if I was fine. Once they learned what I was doing, they began to applaud and even sang a happy birthday. So I guess I had a crowd and some applause.

«Was it difficult?» One of them asked. Yes. Yes, it was difficult, but it was equally gratifying. It is Newton’s law: you recover what you put.

After they left, I sat there eating my birthday cake oreos. A very dirty 30 for me. But I have promises to maintain, and more miles to go before sleeping. I was in the term for thirty minutes before I went to buy a refueling in Watton, inform my crossing to the border control, collect new shoes and then take out my first miles on the great path divides before the bed.

At the bottom of my mind, there was always the possibility that I did not arrive here with enough time to do the GDT this season, or that I could get here and decide that I have already finished for the year and that would be completely valid. But I’m here, and I still feel good. As my sister said in a congratulation text, this end is a beginning. I am looking forward to more walks. In many ways, today it was special, and in many ways it was like any other day. Get up, get at work, enjoy the view. So bring it, Canada.

XX

stitching

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