Day Fourteen_Butte to Gardiner

We decide to forego the hotel’s breakfast to head out to a local bakery I’d seen some recommendations for online - this turns our to be another breakfast-based disaster as everything we try is shuttered and empty. We try place after place, trying to find anything to eat, before we arrive at She Brews - an all-female owned and operated coffee shop that is currently benefitting hugely from everywhere else being closed so the drive-in is packed. When we make our way to order, we have breves and I have fresh banana bread, whilst my companion orders donut holes - these turn out not to be quite enough, forcing a stop at the Golden Arches for a sausage and egg McMuffin before we head on our way,

The drive continues to offer up extraordinary beauty, with horizon-filling plains swathed in yellow and white that seemingly stretch to the horizon - a sign tells us that we’ve crossed the Continental Divide, which feels like a poignant note as we’re almost half way through our expedition. Eventually we arrive at a small trailhead, which lives (somewhat oddly) just inside a small residential area and should lead us up the Sykes Canyon. As we set out, it’s clear that this is a well travelled local route as we meet people with dogs and power walkers on the lower parts of the track. 

The way is pretty icy, but I try to make some good progress as my legs feel like they need to move after a couple of quieter days. It’s a stunning day and the trail is pleasingly testing without being overly arduous, and by the time I reach the first lookout I’m feeling in a great mood. I continue up onto the slightly less beaten path, into more snow and smaller pine trees. There are small birds all along the path, as well as a couple of squirrels, which provide a pleasant distraction as I near the summit. Once I arrive at the peak of the walk, I can see for miles and miles back to the west, with the plains we’d travelled through this morning looking as flat as a billiard table. Once my companion arrives, and with surprisingly strong cell signals, we decide to make a quick call home, after which we descend the slick paths with a sort of hopping run that gets us back to the car in record time.

We drive on and pass though the town of Livingston on our way to Gardiner, which will be our home on the edge of Yellowstone for the next couple of days. Livingstone itself is an interesting looking place, with classic neon signs hanging of of the sides of red brick buildings. We stop and wander around, but everything seems to be closed for the season - something that feels like it’s going to be a recurring feature as we move east. We spot a delightfully evocative cinema on our walk around town - complete with thick black letters over a backlit white sign, just like in the movies - that we note down for future reference.

With not many places open for dinner, we decide to have something easy and swing into Taco John’s - a north western competitor to Taco Bell - for some cheap eats. It’s actually pretty tasty, and remarkably cheap, the two consistent hallmarks of fast food in the States. We pass a supermarket on the way out of town and decide we might get some supplies to cook dinner for the first time on this trip as our next hotel has a small kitchenette. 

As we leave Livingstone, and start to head back up into the mountains, the sky suddenly starts to pick out the surrounding peaks in pink and orange, and we are treated to the setting sun as we make our way through the passes. Eventually we arrive at the Absaroka Lodge in Gardiner we’ll after dark, and I decide to have a quick walk up and down Main Street to see what might be open for the following nights. The town is pretty quiet and the temperature is well below freezing, but it looks there are some options available. I head back and we decide to get a quiet night - the best chance of spotting animals in Yellowstone seems to be early in the morning, so we commit to a frighteningly early start. 

Day Thirteen_Columbia Falls to Butte

It’s a late morning, as you might expect from the previous entry, and in a cruel twist of fate’s knife, we’re so late that we miss breakfast. In spite of yesterday, and this morning’s tragedy, we’re determined to get another hike in - both to keep our legs from seizing up and to make sure we’re getting the most out of the national park. We head back in and to a more distant trailhead on the opposite side of Lake McDonald to Apgar. 

This trail - the Horse Trail Loop - should be a fairly flat route that takes us along the McDonald Creek, taking in some of the surrounding forests and a stepping series of waterfalls, and seems fairly popular judging by the busy carpark and groups of people attaching their snowshoes as we arrive. It’s an easygoing hike, with some very picturesque moments, which helps to ease our muscles and restore a bit of our emotional lustre.

As we head back, we’re very hungry so stop at A&W for some lunch - it’s a interesting experience, with a flustered young chap fighting with the ordering system and what seems to be a baby crying some way back in the kitchen, but the food is hot and tasty. Today we leave Glacier behind, but it’s managed to earn a place on my list of places to return to, although I think I’d like to see it outside of the winter months, as I imagine it has a very different atmosphere without the persistent blanket of snow.

It’s a beautiful day as we head south towards Butte, on our way towards Yellowstone, and the scenery continues to be indescribable as we weave through the mountains and valleys. The valleys here spread wider and far, but are stitched in by mountains in all directions - impossibly long trains rumble by, single engines towing miles of box cars that can take minutes to pass. We stop regularly to take pictures or stretch our legs, in what must be one of the most impressive stretches of geography in our trip so far.

We arrive into Butte in the early evening - the hotel is fine, but Butte itself is one of those specific American towns that sprawls across the valley with not obvious centre, only miles of busy roads lined with restaurants, shops and petrol stations. Butte was apparently one of the richest towns in Montana due to a successful rush on gold and silver in the surrounding hills, finding subsequent wealth in the large copper deposits once the shiny metals had be dug out. It’s hard to judge to much, given we’re only staying for a few hours, but perhaps this history has given the city what feels like a distinctly industrial feel as we drive in.

After checking in a pretty enormous hotel room, we head out to find some dinner - it seems like much of the city has closed and options within walking distance are limited. Given that we’re both pretty shattered after the past couple of days, we decide on a takeaway pizza and head back to the hotel to finish off The Last Duel - which we started, but never finished, during our time in the Montana pile up - whilst I do some laundry in the meantime. Tomorrow we hope to reach Yellowstone, so it makes sense to get some rest.

Day Twelve_Columbia Falls

After our preparatory morning rituals, we head down to the breakfast room in the hotel - it’s one of those specific types of setups that are common to certain types of American accommodation, including a pretty huge spread of hot and cold options. Most importantly it offers the make-you-own waffle station, which is a great innovation involving the rarest of culinary technology - the rotating waffle iron. We indulge, with waffles and bacon aplenty thanks to a very attentive staff member, then set off into the national park.

It’s an impressively recurring theme that many of the national parks seem to try and maintain some sort of access through the winter months. Whilst roads are more limited than in the summer,  several arterial sections are regularly plowed and cleared of waist-deep snow and ice. This diligence affords us entrance to the Apgar Lookout trailhead, a hike that my companion has identified using his trusty AllTrails subscription - it’s described as ‘hard’ and covers a fairly vertical c.22km section of a peak overlooking the surrounding area.

What follows is one of the hardest physical endeavours I’ve ever undertaken. After an almost interminable approach through deep, powdery snow that sucks at our snowshoes and makes every step a chore, we start to climb sharply. We’re following a path of sorts, although the overlapping impressions of boots and snowshoes means each attempt to move forward risks twisting an ankle or dropping a foot an unexpected depth into the snow. It is wearying in the extreme and progress is slow - this worsens when the established track runs out and we have to blaze our own trail using our map and GPS. The snow is now more than knee-deep and one step can find surprisingly solid ground or a leg that pushes deep into the yielding snow. The path requires several long, sweeping traverses that snake up the mountain and mean that our up-slope leg bears the brunt of the work whilst the down-slope leg slips and flails uselessly.

We end up taking alternating roles as pathfinder, as walking in somebody’s compacted snowshoe tracks is significantly easier than breaking fresh ground. We cover increasingly shorter amounts of ground before we have to swap places and the trail seems almost infinitely long as we focus on just putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, in what seems like a lifetime, the ground starts to level out and we enter the edges of a peak top forest - snowy dunes curve away from us as we see a cabin emerge from the grey skies. It’s a fire watch post, barred and padlocked for the winter season, but welcome as it marks our final destination. After our obligatory summit celebrations, and a frozen beer, we start to make our way back down. 

We’re tired, with legs that shudder unpredictably as each footstep hits the floor, but we start our descent in high spirits after conquering what feels like our first real peak. The descent from the Lookout is quicker, made easier by the presence of our own footprints, and we make reasonable progress. The good feeling slowly dissolves once we arrive at the surrounding forest plains, which seem to stretch on forever, far longer than they did on the way up. By the time we’re an hour or so in, my body is working purely on instinct and I resent every slip of foot or unexpected dip into the slushy snow that bites at my boots. Finally, finally, we make it back to the car - without more than a handful of words spoken between us, we remove our gear and stow it in the boot, and sit silently in the car for a few minutes. It’s not a bad feeling, more the quiet reflection that always seems to follow something that genuinely feels like an endeavour.

As soon as we pull away from the carpark, we’re chatting easily - mostly about how tired we are - and driving back to the hotel. Upon our return, my companion heads directly to the leisure centre’s hot tub (for what seems like hours) whilst I shower, change and collapse onto the sofa. We head out for dinner - a massive portion of carne asada that verges on the ludicrous - which a little suppressed due to the cold and the bone-tiredness we’re both feeling. In fact, I don’t really remember the walk back from the restaurant and I certainly don’t remember anything from the room before sleep crashes over me.

Day Eleven_Plains to Columbia Falls

After the best night’s sleep so far, we head out to get breakfast from The Butcher’s Nook, a recommendation from the friendly faces at the motel reception. It’s a restaurant fan by a local community of Amish, serving hearty American classics and freshly baked doughnuts, pastries and bread. We order a mix of the pastries and sit in their large dining hall as we eat them, saving some for later - they are made from scratch every morning and you can really taste the difference (that should get Sainsbury’s lawyers on the phone).

As we begin the drive we were supposed to complete yesterday, we start moving into a noticeably rural area - this coincides with an increasing frequency of Trump banners and flags, a very visual reminder that for large parts of the USA, the 45th president is still a very important and very relevant figure. But that’s something for another post. 

We arrive at Columbia Falls, a town that marks the entrance to the Glacier National Park and where we’ll be staying tonight - in the meantime we take a drive into the national park and veer off when we see a sign for Hungry Horse dam. As we make our way through snowy, weaving roads, we glimpse a damn that evokes the opening scenes of Goldeneye - the atmosphere is amazing, with wispy mists floating through the valley, obscuring the massive arc of the dam itself. We park up and walk towards the dam, stopping to look over the huge void it makes into the valley, seemingly the only people around - that is until a door in one of the access tower opens and almost pitches my companion over the edge of the dam.

Once we get to the other side, it seems like there’s a snowed-out road that is used by the locals in the winter as a snow-mobile track which winds deeper upstream into the valley. We decide to walk along a ways, as it’s a beautiful afternoon and we want to stretch our legs after yesterday, but decide to leave the snowshoes in the car - this isn’t too much of an oversight as the way is pretty compacted and it’s easy enough to make progress in just our boots. We end up walking quite a long way into the valley, which is filled by an artificial lake as a result of the dam, and is lined with needle thin, needle-free pine trees that appear to have been charred - perhaps by a wildfire in the summer months. Mist pours over the top of the dam like a waterfall moving backwards and everything is perfectly silhouetted against the muted sky.

After a few hours, and a conversation with a man on a snow-mobile (rather ominously, he said we were ‘very brave’ for walking on the track in boots), we head back to the car as the mists really settle in and drive back to our hotel - we’re planning on staying here for a couple of nights, our first ‘long stay’ of the trip. We drop off our stuff and head back out to find some dinner -  this leads to the Gunsight Bar, which serves a decent sandwich but has one of the weirdest pub quizzes I’ve ever witnessed underway when we arrive. The round we’d missed had answers that included Osama Bin Laden, Pol Pot and Nagasaki, just to give you a flavour of the tone - it left us wondering what the hell the theme of the quiz was in the first instance. That said, we enter the picture round and absolutely crush the answers - we’re so confident that we hand in our paper early, assured of our victory. We are therefore pretty angry when the host tells us on his amble to the bar that we only got 9/10, despite getting every question right. 

We leave with an indignant flourish at this travesty of quiz-based justice, and head to the supermarket for some supplies then head back to the hotel to get some rest before tomorrow’s first proper venture into Glacier. Should be fun.

Day Ten_Moscow to Plains

We left our motel later in the morning, after sleeping off the physical and food based excesses of the previous day. We walk around the corner from the hotel to a very cool looking diner - a single storey block made from polished stainless steel and glass - to have some brunch, my first Philly Cheesesteak of the trip. It’s a beautifully crisp morning, so we have a short walk around Moscow to see it in the daylight before getting back in the car.

We start on the road north into Montana, which becomes more and more vertical as we start the long climb into the northern Rocky Mountains. The temperature drops significantly as well, with the car’s thermometer registering -9degC as we weave our way through the peaks. As we push onwards and arrive in a long slow descent, we notice the increasing quantity of red brake lights on the road with the traffic eventually coming to a full standstill on the highway. Nothing’s moving, and some of the other travellers are leaving their cars and wandering down the road to see what’s causing the hold up - it turns out that a large artic lorry, from Amazon no less, has jack-knifed on the road and wedged itself across both lanes. A returning driver tells us that the police have advised of a wait of three and a half hours at least, as they try and get a tow truck up from a nearby town to clear the lorry.

With nothing else to do, we try and nap before eventually starting to watch TV programmes and movies on our iPad - we get a good way through Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel - when somebody asks us to move far over to the right of the road so they can get another large vehicle past. This slowly makes its way through the traffic, in a considerable feat of vehicular logistics, and once it has disappeared around the bend we eventually start moving again. It’s a very surreal experience, especially having no control over your own progress, but something that feels unique to have been a part of on a journey like this.

It’s late now, and in another bout of car-related drama we almost hit a deer on the road - so we stop at little less further on than we’d hoped in a very small town called Plains - it sits on the edge of the entrance to the Glacier National Park. We manage to find a small motel, run by an exceptionally nice family who gift me a coaster, called the Dew Duck Inn. We take a short walk to a huge petrol station store (somewhat wonderfully called The Town Pump) to get some food, seeing deer just stood on the side of the road, before retiring for the night in our cosy room. Quite the day…

Day Nine_Walla Walla to Moscow

We awaken somewhat suddenly to riotous noises coming from the adjacent hotel room - a man shouting angrily, kids screaming as they’re running around and a female voice somewhere in the middle of it all. Things calm down eventually, but when we leave our room to check out we’re confronted by five or six police officers interviewing the woman about how she hurt her face. It’s a shocking way to start our day and a stark reminder of how easy it is to forget the realities of life when you’re on a journey like this and we’re a bit stunned as we eat our breakfast - my companion made a call to his family as I stared blankly at two televisions in the breakfast room, one showing an evangelical preacher asking for money from his congregation and the other blaring home shopping products.

Ironically, we drive away from the hotel into a beautiful day - bright sun and blue skies - and into the landscape of empty, rolling hills that are becoming increasingly snow covered. In the summer, these must be vast fields of wheat, but given the time of year they have become a patchwork of soft yellows, browns and white that are penned in by the distant ridges of the mountains that we’re heading towards.

We cross into Idaho and drive to a trailhead so we can start today’s activity - the Moose Marbles trail. Snowshoes on, it involves a brisk walk up an icy road before joining a snow covered trail that leads up into the hills through a sparse forest. The going is fairly easy to begin with, if a bit winding, but before too long we’re heading off the more well-walked part of the route and into knee high snow (again). The trail becomes harder to read, so we navigate via GPS and keep pushing through the terrain - progress slows and legs begin to ache, but we make our way up to an overlook that gives a good view of the surrounding landscapes. We start our descent, but it quickly becomes clear that we’re not going to make it back before the sun goes down - luckily we’re equipped with head torches and some extra layers, as the temperature and light start to drop, but the route back includes a slightly ‘off-piste’ moment (and a snowy creek crossing) but we eventually make it back to the car after just under five hours.

We are a little chilly and very hungry as we make our way into Moscow, a small town on the very edge of west Idaho that is twinned with nearby Pullman in Washington State. Both are major university towns, so there’s lots of rivalry and a noticeably younger crowd as we drive through the streets. We head out for some dinner and end up at quite an upmarket restaurant called Lodgepole, which turns out to be genuinely amazing - the food is the equal of many of the restaurants we’d usually visit in London and we have a great meal that feels well-earned - local cheese & cured meats, an outstanding filet mignon and an eggnog crème brûlée, for those wondering.

As we leave, we ask the restaurant manager - Michael - if there’s any places for drinks likely to be open, and he points us towards the Corner Club - it turns out to be an overly-bright but packed bar filled with students, as there’s a key NFL game on that will decide the end of the season, and we have a couple of beers whilst soaking up the increasingly raucous atmosphere. It’s actually a really cool way to spend an hour or so, as there are competent factions in the bar and lots of trash-talking between the fans. Game over, we head to another of Michael’s recommendations called John’s Alley which seems to be the polar opposite of the previous place - dark, homely and a little less packed. We put some tunes on the jukebox and notice another patron from the Lodgepole in the corner - eventually she spots us and introduces herself as Jackie, and she’s actually Michael’s partner. Michael himself eventually walks in and we spend the evening with them and their friends, discussing their plans to move to Canada, life in Moscow and even a little bit of politics (Moscow is a Democratic bastion in an otherwise entirely Republican state).

It’s a really lovely end to a great day, although the real fun begins tomorrow as we head up towards our first national park - Glacier.