The Plan:
Climb Spirit Mountain and spend a night on top. It's a mesa-like mountain with a relatively large flat top. Then come down the next day and hike from lake to lake on the way home.
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| Moon Creek: Most guidebooks say take a right here for Moon Lake. I found it better to climb the left side of Moon Creek basin, not the right. I did it accidentally, but there's a trail there too, and it was a scramble, but direct. |
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| Looking back down Moon Creek towards Rock Creek. |
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| Happy Kip!!! |
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| Such a cool creek. Probably six feet deep, but only a foot wide. |
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| First glimpse of the Bear's Tooth |
What Went Wrong:
The Fantan Lake Incident still seared in my mind, I changed my approach at the last minute from Island Lake TH in Wyoming to Glacier Lake Trailhead on the state line. Then the weather got worse and worse. I decided at the last minute to bring fishing gear, which made my pack heavier. And then I decided to take Moon Lake approach instead of what would have been the much more prudent Glacier Lake route. Also started late. Much of the approach was done on very wet ground, so all my equipment was pretty soaked when I got to Frosty Glacier. On Frosty Glacier I got socked in by a storm.
Long story short: everything that could go wrong went wrong, but I kept going on instead of being safe. I paid for it.
Not sure what exactly happened. Towards the very top of Spirit Mt, on Frosty Glacier, I knew I had to turn around. It was the thunder; I've never felt anything like it, I was inside the cloud that was thundering. This cloud just kind of reared up and materialized all around the mountain. It was hailing, snowing, laced with lightning, and rolling thunder.
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| No Filter: the red in the air is dust being blown around. |
I panicked, and tried to get back down the mountain ASAP.
Not sure of the details frankly. I think I blacked out just a touch for a second. I remember experimenting with a couple techniques for scooting safely down. Then I remember tumbling through the air and looking down at the snowfield zooming by below me at an amazing rate, and trying to figure out how to stop. I remember watching my right leg extended straight out and my heel slicing through the snow like an angry hoe, shooting up snow everywhere but not at all slowing me down.
Then I was stopped. Shattered and torn equipment continued to fall around me with pebbles and snow.
I gathered what I could, adrenaline rushing, and ran / skied / slid / tumbled down to Frosty Lake.
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| Frosty Glacier |
Bad Mojo
Spotted a nice slice of flat grass on a bench above Frosty Lake just as darkness took hold. Quickly pitched my tent and hopped in. All my clothes were soaking wet and I needed to heat up.
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| Frosty Lake |
After a minute of warmth and repose in my bag, this wind picked up all of the sudden and the sky clouded again. I made a mistake again and got out to put on my rainfly. The rain never came, but the wind kept up for the next twelve hours solid, and for the first six of it I kept the fly on and suffered. The fly acted like a sail and I spent six solid hours limbs akimbo, moving my pack and wet clothes around on the inside of the tent in an attempt to stay earthbound, as the tent was constantly threatening to leap skyward, off towards the glacier that was trying to suck me in again.
During a thirty second respite from the wind, I scampered out naked in the night and took down the fly. It helped a lot, but I still probably only slept an hour or so. The wind got even stronger and started to collapse the tent on to me. At six in the morning, it became clear the wind would never, ever, every stop blowing up the skirts of Spirit Mountain, I packed up all my stuff and got the $%*& out of there.
Not twenty meters below the wind stopped.
*&%$ YOU FROSTY LAKE!!!
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| Mountain Goat Lake |
At a kind of island / bench on Mountain Goat Lake, I spent the warmest, nicest hour of my weekend unpacking all my stuff and drying it out. Kip finally stopped trembling and slept in the hot sun.
I took stock of the damages: smashed my sunglasses in two and shattered the remaining lens, lost a nalgene, tore my nice tights, lost my best pocket knife, and seriously jacked up my right shoulder, neck, jaw, and ear.
But I was (very) alive.
Get out of Dodge
You can't tell here, but about ten minutes after this picture with Kip, the weather took another crazy turn for the worse. Also, it was becoming more and more apparent that my shoulder was jacked up, and backpacking out would be hard, much less fishing and backpacking my way out.
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| Looking down on Triangle and Glacier Lakes |
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| Really wanted to fish Triangle. It's supposed to be epic fishing. No go though. Storm coming. |
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| Tried to sleep on the beach. Second spot in the wild, after the bottom of the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone, that really made Kip uncomfortable. Something here he didn't like. Kept nudging me. So, no nap, and get back going home. |
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| Glacier Lake after the storm. |
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| Last Lake: Glacier Lake Afterbay. Sunny stroll downhill home from here. |