Great first day! We started out early from East Glacier with Hailey and her parents. We drove to Many Glaciers to get our permits and had it sorted out really quickly. The rangers were super accomodating and pretty much just let us do what we wanted. We got a good permit taking us over Stoney Indian pass tomorrow and onto the Highline trail. The rangers think it will be dangerous but Chance and I are optimistic. We had breakfast then drove up to Chief Mountain Customs and took all the obligatory photos. Hailey and I had a nice little goodbye and then we were off around 11:30.
Very easy pleasant day. Sunny but quite windy. We met a ton of hikers of all stripes coming through the Belly River area. Anyone we told we were hiking to Mexico assumed we were joking. We met a couple rangers that were complete opposites of each other. The first basically thought our plan was going to kill us, but she had heard of a couple that had done some parts of our plan (although she said they told her they wouldn’t do it again). The second looked over our permit and just said she thought we’d have an awesome time. I liked her better.
Had some nice (loud, bear scaring) chats with Chance all the way along. He talks a lot which is good to go with my long silences 🙂
We finished hiking by 4pm and putzed around camp a bit, but in tents by 6pm. It’s very windy and cold as the sun goes behind the mountains around us.
Daily Summary
Date: June 25, 2011
Daily Distance: 10.3 miles
Trip Distance: 10.3 miles