It's time for the Migrant Highlanders to head west finally! And we figured if we're going to do our first trip west of the Mississippi, why not do it big!
Glacier National Park in north Montana, here we come! Home to 25 glaciers, the Continental Divide Trail, grizzlies, moose, cougars, big horn sheep and mountain goats, and we're hoping to bag 'em all!
After flying into Billings, MT, we'll be driving up to to Glacier through the backroads through Great Falls and East Glacier, MT to stock up on some grub for the trails.
After camping two nights on Two Medicine Lake, checking out some of the national park sights, like the Going to the Sun Road, which just opened two weeks ago for the season after finally removing the 80 feet of snowfall it receives every winter, we'll be taking a canoe deep into the backcountry.
We begin our 34 mile one way backpacking trek on the Continental Divide Trail, bouncing through 3 passes, including the Dawson and Pitamakan Passes and the Triple Divide Pass, one of only two watersheds in North America that sends its water to three different oceans.
We'll be schlepping our packs on some pretty tiny trails at about 7000-10,000 feet elevation right through the heart of grizzly and big horn sheep country.
We'll descend into the St. Mary Lake region, known as being a great spot for moose spotting, for a little relaxation before heading up to the Many Glacier section to stay our last night at the Many Glacier Hotel, built by the Northern Railroad company in the early 1900's for their guests. It happens to sit on a glacier lake surrounded by peaks. Here's guessing many pale ales will be sipped lakeside. Many Migrant Higlander pictures to come!
NC...after all, they did name the beer after us, right?! And maybe we'll have to sample a few more of the local breweries just to make sure that our brewery is, in fact, the best as we suspect.
