Our Hike on the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada
Ronda agreed to pick us up in St Mary at 9pm, so we have a 34 mile run with 2 high passes to hike in 1 day. Tent, quilt, and other non-essential gear are back at the hostel so we have to make it! Here is the first climb of the day!
We finally Made it to the Canadian Border and headed south. Due to camp closures from bear activity, difficult logistics and other costly stuff we opted to start at Chief Mountain border crossing instead of entering Canada. We had a 2 ½ day stretch to St Mary and the end of the permit. Our first day was 20 miles to Poia Lake, and our second was 28 miles to Gunsight lake.
I have no words for how beautiful this park is, and the pictures barely suffice.
Once we reached St Mary thanks to a hitch down the Going to the Sun Road, the ranger told us exactly what we thought they might: there are no walk-up campsites there and no camping permits available to get us back to Two Medicine by trail. We called a Mountain Chief Taxi (a local hiker shuttle) to see if we could get a ride back to the hostel. Ronda, the shuttle operator and local Pikuni woman, invited us to camp on her land on the reservation for the night and offered a ride in the morning. We gratefully accepted and started up the highway after an expensive lunch from the local grocery store. Tourist town.
Camp was quiet, peaceful, and accompanied by a reservation dog we dubbed “Pedro” who joined us for dinner by St Mary Lake. After sitting by the lake at sunset for hours and sharing some dinner with Pedro (he was really hungry), he looked us both directly in the eye, seemingly to say thanks, before walking away into the forest. We never saw Pedro again.
We arrived at the ranger station early, grabbed another hiker to group-up for permits, and still didn’t get a permit straight through Glacier NP. With the big group of hikers here clamoring for permits combined with the 4th of July vacationers, we only managed to get 2 campsites between Canada and St. Mary Lake. This left over 44 miles of park where we will be unable to camp legally. Hopefully we can obtain a second permit at the St. Mary ranger station to continue south. We’ll figure it out when we get there. Meanwhile, we decided to knock-out the 10 miles back to East Glacier to shorten what we’ll have left without having to camp.