East Glacier Break: Chilling in East Glacier

I woke up tossing and turning the other night in East Glacier. It’s 131 miles from East Glacier to Benchmark Ranch through the Bob Marshall Wilderness and 53 miles from Benchmark to Roger’s Pass—which leads to Missoula. I had a week to hike 184 miles to make it in time for the flight. There was no way I could pull 30s over snow with route finding this early in the game.

I’m twitching, feeling guilty about not being hiking, and worried about hitting the San Juans before snow comes this fall. 10 days off is a huge amount of time, especially for people starting as late as us. The Bob Marshall Wilderness is, in fact, a wilderness, though, with no roads out of it. Benchmark Ranch has a 30 mile hitch on a dirtroad to Augusta, on the Eastern side of the divide, but it’s a hard hitch back to the trail after that. And Missoula is on the western part of the Divide.

So we’re chilling in East Glacier, probably headed to couch surf in Missoula for a few days. Waiting. Twitchily waiting.