Cracker Lake

A week or so ago, I went on an epic hike to Cracker Lake. I would have liked to write about it sooner, but have been happily busy with other, more pressing activities. But today, I’m homebound thanks to a somewhat Biblical four-day rainstorm that has caused the National Park Service to close the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and therefore has closed our store at Logan Pass, where I would have been working. You can see from the photo above that visibility on the road is dangerously low, making it seem more like Going-to-the-Clouds Road, and I’m honestly glad that we don’t have to try to navigate it under these conditions!

But anyway, I got a text one night last week from my friend Charlie (also known as Girl Charlie to disambiguate her from Boy Charlie) asking if I would like to join her on a hike to Cracker Lake on our shared day off. You bet I would! I had just heard some of my coworkers talking about their hike to the lake a few days earlier, and my FOMO was hitting hard! Not only that, but I was still stinging from not being able to go on the hike everyone else (including Rob) went on the first weekend we were here due to problems with my ankle (which are thankfully now resolved). This would be the perfect opportunity to prove myself! Plus, I knew I would have fun with Charlie and Alex, who should probably be called Boy Alex for consistency but we don’t have a Girl Alex this summer so… Just Alex is fine.

Cracker Lake is a beautiful, brilliantly blue glacial lake on the east side of the park, in the Many Glacier region. I recently learned that the “cloudy” quality in the water of any lake or river means that the water is coming from a glacier: as the glacier moves, it is grinding up the rock underneath into a fine silt and as it melts, the silt runs off with the water. Cracker Lake’s water comes from the Siyeh Glacier located immediately to its south, but I really don’t know why it is so brilliantly blue. None of the other glacial lakes I am familiar with out here share this color. The hike itself is a little over 12.5 miles, with a 1500-ft elevation gain. I knew all this when I accepted the invitation, having looked it up earlier, but had to chuckle when Charlie kindly suggested that I look up the hike prior to our departure. Twelve-and-a-half miles is nothing to enter into lightly–at best it’s going to be a day-long commitment, including the 2.5-hour drive each way to Many Glacier. And I admit I thought long and hard about this, but concluded quickly that I could do it. Like many things in my recent life, I want to do it so it’s just going to HAVE to work out somehow! Whether or not I will actually enjoy it is somewhat immaterial.

Fortunately, my hiking companions made this hike a blast! First of all, I threatened to call this post “Hiking With Gingers,” as they both have red hair and the personalities to go with it! We had a non-stop laugh fest on the drive to the trailhead. The photo above is actually from the END of the hike, but if we still looked like this at the end, you can imagine how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we all were at the outset. We started by divvying up the bear calls: I chose my characteristic “Day-oh!” that I learned from Ranger Austin, although it was more typically, “Yo-oh!” Charlie has one that she learned from one of our coworkers who backpacked in Alaska that actually sounds more like a pig call: “Ooo-eeh!” with your voice going up on the second syllable. Alex was undecided about what style of call to use for most of the hike, but vacillated hilariously between “Hungry!” and “Hot dogs!” like a ballpark vendor.

The first three-or-so miles of this hike consist of switchbacks through the woods on a trail that is equal parts mud and horse shit. All I can say is, Thank God this was at the beginning, because I never would have had the mental fortitude to continue if it were later on. Around Mile 3, we hit the talus slope you see above. A talus slope is a geological condition that occurs as part of the evolution of a mountain. The mountain erodes in such a way that trees can no longer grow there. Once trees can’t grow, the grass and shrubs also start to erode. The mountain can no longer maintain soil without root systems holding it there, so it evolves into a bare rock face. Ground water seeps into crevices in the rock face and begins to erode the rock; as it freezes and thaws, bits of rock break off the face and roll down into an ever-increasing pile of rubble. We generally think of mountains as permanent, unmoving, and unchanging so learning about this phenomenon last year at Yellowstone was a huge eye-opener for me and has really captured my imagination. Buddhist cosmology speaks of a kalpa: a period of time that is defined in many ways, one of which is the length of time it would take to flatten a mountain if a dove flying over the mountain every hundred years brushed the top of the mountain with a silk cloth it was carrying. In other words, a very long time. But I had no idea that such a thing really happened on this Earth!

Between about Mile 3 and Mile 5, I started to actually feel like a mountain that had been worn down over the last kalpa or so. There is just so much uphill climbing on the way out! At one point, I got so winded and lightheaded that Charlie said it would be OK if we didn’t finish this hike. Believe me, I had already thought about it! And if Rob had been with me, it’s quite possible that we both might have tapped out at that point, leaving our hiking companions to continue on their own. But I wanted to make it and still thought I could. And I didn’t want to be the one to turn the whole group around! So I taught them the door code to the truck, just to be on the safe side, and ultimately confessed, “You know, I really considered telling you I was 61 years old before accepting your invitation, but I figured you must have some kind of idea about that.” Yup! They did. And so, not needing to pretend to have any more stamina than I actually did, I continued the trek, with full awareness of the fact that my life depended on these two continuing their bear calls because I was just too winded to yell anymore. Happily, we were rewarded not too long after this with the view above. The lake must be just around the corner! This is when I remembered something my coworkers had said when talking about the hike a few days earlier: you go on for a long time thinking that the lake is just over the next hill. And that is exactly how it went down for us.

At long last, we did reach Cracker Lake! With a gorgeous view, and a nice, big rock from which to enjoy it. Charlie had her heart set on swimming in the lake and Alex wanted to go with her. “That’s great. I’ll just sit here on my rock and watch you two,” I said. They tried to protest: “What if you get attacked by a bear coming out of the brush? How will we explain this to HR?!” I was absolutely unconcerned about this, as we were out in the open where there just didn’t seem to be any possibility of a bear hiding. My already-cogent arguments were bolstered by my conviction that there was no way I was going any further. So I was able to persuade them that I’d be fine sitting here on my rock. Which I was. I passed the time by eating an entire Walmart-sized bag of trail mix, and defending my rock from this nearby family of ground squirrels.

Meanwhile, Alex and Charlie hiked the additional half-mile down to the lake, where Charlie was able to check off “Swimming in Cracker Lake” from her bucket list. Do you see the two specks on the snow near the edge of the lake? That’s them! Sadly, it just hadn’t occurred to me to loan her the towel I had dragged the 6.5 miles out there, back when I had thought I would join her in this swim. As a result, she was a bit blue once they returned. But very #bada$$! Honestly, the fact that you had to hike through snow to get to the beach would have been enough deterrent for me, but she did it.

Almost all hikes in Glacier are “out-and-back” hikes, meaning that you take the same trail back that you took out. But is it ever really the same twice? The whole time out I was super-excited that we would be going downhill for most of the way back, and this was indeed a huge morale-booster. The only challenge was just the sheer distance: 6.5 miles is a long way to hike, especially after you’ve just hiked 6.5 miles! So around Mile 10 I really needed a rest stop. Charlie and Alex were so encouraging the whole way: they were happy to take rest stops, and offered words of affirmation interspersed with bear calls. We enjoyed the absurdity of engaging in serious conversations in which someone has just shared something kind of personal, and someone else responds with, “Yo-oh!” or “Hungry!” But… ya gotta do it.

After about three more kalpas, we reached the parking lot. I have never been SO thankful to see the truck! We kissed the ground, changed, and headed for home, pausing for a fried chicken dinner on the way back. And I’ve been bragging about this hike ever since, to the point that Rob really wants to go! Right now, though, Cracker Lake is off-limits, as it was posted for bear activity a couple days after our hike. Lol! I have to think our tripartite bear calls were effective, as we never caught even a glimpse of a bear! But the memories will last even longer than the muscle and stamina we built on this major hike–the longest hike of my life!