Glacier Continued That evening after our hike and back to Grinnell Glacier, I jumped in a little stream to do a bit of fishing. While I had all the gear that we might need, fishing was really an afterthought for this trip. I did not want to be consumed with anything besides just being there. Sometime activities can help you enjoy a place, but I find they often keep me from truly taking everything in and they become a distraction unto themselves. That being said, I took off wading down this little stream in my Tevas in pursuit of a trout. Buy the way that water is cold! Generally speaking there are a number of trout located in this park. Cutthroat and Bull Trout are the native fish, and Rainbow and Eastern Brook Trout were introduced by stocking long ago. It is a little different to fly fish in grizzly territory. For one thing you have to be quite focused on the fishing and you really need to maintain some focus on what is going on around you. I have gotten myself into a jam one time in the Bahamas not paying attention to the tide while chasing a permit (fish) and found myself in the presence of bull sharks in water that was entirely too deep. But that is another story. Let’s just say I really didn’t want to look up out of my fishing zone and find a bear standing behind me. I was trying to do this multi-tasking kind of thing, casting, watching the fly line and drift, looking around when the sky opened up and a cold driving rain started falling. So I trundled off toward the camp site on my stiff cold feet. The rain didn’t last long and we fixed up a great meal of fresh local produce and hit the tent. After our hike up the mountain and back we were pretty well wiped out, but not too tired to notice that the temperature was rapidly falling and it was spitting rain again. Now Rachel is one of those people that get cold sitting in the shade of a tree on a 90 degree day and generally speaking I am not cold. However with her heavy sleeping bag and me with my light one I think we were evenly matched in the chill factor! When we got up in the morning, there were frozen half drops all over the tent like those little sheets of colored penny candy. Quite pretty. We spent a good part of the day and evening getting ready for the back packing portion of our trip and checking out bears on one side of the valley and mountain goats on the other. We even had a white tail deer and fawn come into our camp while Rachle was getting ready to cook dinner. That day we took it easy and recovered from our big hike the day before. I have really bad ankles that are prone to getting very stiff if I don’t eat a steady diet of anti-inflamatory drugs of one kind or another. So it was a good thing to rest up a bit. The hike up to the glacier was a sort of test to see how we would do with the altitude, the climb and descent and for me, the weight of the pack and my fussy ankles. In addition to the local weather forecast this test was important to determine where we were going to go into the back-country. We had tentatively chosen an 18 mile loop for a three day two night hike, but all the camp sites were pretty high in elevation and subject to much cooler weather and the change in elevation was over 2,000 ft. After looking at out literature and talking with a couple of the staff we decided to go to option two which was the Belly River Drainage. We would be camping at a lower elevation and there was only a 740 ft decent at the very beginning of the hike. And with that in mind we secured our back country-packing permit for later in the week. Before they give you one, by the way, the rangers ask you several questions about your gear and they make you watch a video on how to avoid being attacked by a bear and what to do if you are. I did have some bear spray, which is this of high-octane pepper spray in a canister that reminded me of a small fire extinguisher. I have been “maced†and pepper sprayed in training situations and I figured was enough pepper spray in that canister to knock about fifty people to the ground. I couldn’t help but think they should tell everyone, Christ if you have to spray a bear, your are going to get sprayed yourself!†I didn’t see anything in the video about what you are supposed to do after you use the pepper spray and you have incapacitated yourself with the back draft. I suppose while you are flopping around on the ground you are easy prey for Cougars. I also found out from the video that should you be attacked by a black bear or a cougar, you are supposed to fight, (unless you have pepper sprayed yourself) If it is a grizzly you are supposed to play dead, unless you think the bear was planning to eat you. Then you are supposed to fight like hell!!! Yeah right! I had already thought this through in my head, and my plan was to trip Rachel should she try to out run me. Actually I knew all this stuff already and I had decided that if needed I was going to trip Rachel even before she started going to the personal trainer. Later that evening we went to a very informative park program at the Many Glacier Lodge. This is one of three rather mammoth wooden structures in the park that was built years ago. It is a big controversy in the park service to keep 'em or tear em down. Huge overhead. The place gets shut down at the end of September and there is one care taker in the whole valley. Kind of like the “Shiningâ€Â! Actually the general history of the park, of how all the lodges were built, the road to the sun, the story of the Native Americans of the region just added to our ability to enjoy the majesty of the place. While the temps were in the thirties that night I think we had gotten our sleeping gear adjusted because we both slept very well. We woke up to a heavy frost. After breaking camp, we were off to the Belly. This trail-head is right south of the Canadian border. I pretty good poke from Many Glacier. We stopped at this little general store at Babb, and had an absolutely great breakfast at the Babb Press then drove the 15 or so remaining miles to the trail-head.