DAY FOUR.
This day started with a quickly evolving sunrise on Lake McDonald, and our last one here for the week.
After the sun just appeared above the mountain tops, we went back up to the campsite because we had to pack everything up at Fish Creek Campground on the west side to move to the east side of the park for the remainder of the week at St. Mary's Campground. When we were packing up, I could see how drastically the smoke swept in over the lake and was blocking the sun. I ran with my camera back down to the lake and within five minutes had gone from what you see above to the smoke filled skies below.
I ran back up the hill to help finish packing up since we had to head out to start our hike. While we were cleaning up, a ranger was walking around and just started to make conversation with us about where we were heading and what we were doing the rest of the week. When we told him we were heading across the park to St. Mary's Campground, his immediate response was, "uh oh..". Not a good sign. He proceeded to tell us that St. Mary's Campground was closed to tent campers due to bear frequenting on the campsite.. At this point he told us to talk to the ranger in the box where you enter the campground and see what she could do for us. Thank goodness this ranger decided to strike an early morning conversation with us. We weren't planning on changing locations until after our hike for the day, so all of the campgrounds could have been full by the time we got there. The rangers were super nice, and the woman at the front made a call for us to Two Medicine Campground and got us set up with a new campsite and told us about all the great things about Two Medicine. This was the best thing that could have happened on this trip. Two Medicine is where we wanted to stay originally, but they don't take reservations ahead of time and coming from Pittsburgh we wanted to reserve spots. Two Medicine ended up being the most emotional, natural, and spiritual place in our trip, but that will come later. After we squared away our new campsite, we drove to Logan Pass to start our hike to Hidden Lake.
Parking at the Logan Pass Visitor Center was crazy. We were trying to get there super early so we would be able to find parking, but with the campground chaos we were running behind. Everyone just kept driving around the parking lot in circles for a half an hour until you were the lucky one to catch someone leaving. We finally parked, and began our hike to Hidden Lake! There were still wildflowers at Logan pass that you could see from the boarded walkway up the first little bit of the trail.
We saw a goat on our way up! This was the easy part of the trail to the Hidden Lake Overlook. Once we reached the overlook we sat down on some rocks to eat a snack before heading down the mountain to the lake. We learned that these little ground squirrel friends are always anxious for some dropped crumbs. They're so cute, but we definitely didn't feed them or leave any crumbs behind, much to their disappointment. But they really have no shame in jumping on your bag, feet, or almost your shoulders to get a peek at what you're eating.
Once we avoided a squirrel attack, we began our journey down the mountain and many switchbacks to Hidden Lake. The whole way down all I kept thinking was, "Once we get down here, I don't know if I'll be able to make it back up!". Since we started our hike late it was the hottest part of the day when we were hiking this area. I definitely though that this was the hardest hike of the trip, but the reality is that it was only so hard because it was so hot and so steep. The smoke from the wildfire was everywhere at the base of the lake, making it hard to see very far.
Once we reached the bottom of the lake, we decided to jump into the cold water. This water was much colder than the water at Lake McDonald. There we could swim around for a little bit before we got cold, but at Hidden Lake, I went in with long spandex and a tank top and cold barely stay in long enough to take a picture! Danny wasn't as phased as I was by the cold, clearly.
Once we got out of the lake, we dried off pretty quickly, grabbed another snack, and decided to explore a little around the lake.
After exploring around Hidden Lake, we decided to start our ascent back up the trail.
We were so tired and anxious to get to Two Medicine to make sure we actually had a campsite, so the rest of the day only consisted on phone pictures. We got our campsite set up at the campground and walked around to see what it was like. It was incredible. Pray Lake was right on our campground in sight, and Two Medicine Lake was just a short walk away. The stillness and reflection of the landscape in the lakes were the most incredible here. We decided to hang around the campsite for a chill night, so we went to the general store and got some local beer called Good Medicine by Great Northern Brewing Company. We drank a lot of their beer at the campsite this week, along with eating a lot of berry frozen yogurt from the same general store. We set up camp, made some dinner, and settled in for the night. Also, while we were making food, a guy from the campground next to us saw my Pittsburgh Pirates hat and came over to talk to us. After a long conversation about him backpacking from Mexico the the Canadian border and learned more about him and his life outside of backpacking, we discovered that he lives in a neighborhood next to ours in Pittsburgh. Small world! When we came home we later found out that he actually did contract work for a friend of ours. An even smaller world! We shared a beer with him, ate dinner, and ended the night with a walk around the campground.
