Look Back on a COVID-19 Year, Dec. 2020

• Not one hike in Glacier Park or Waterton
• Cancelled two backpacks
• Cancelled three trips to Sperry
• Cancelled Essex trip
• Cancelled Mary, Nora and Suzie’s Cabin trips
• No trips with our Canadian sister group

Yet, despite all the negatives, we still offered 63 hikes for a total of 324 miles, 53 gals hiked at least one mile with our group; six gals completed the 20-peaks-in-2020 challenge; eight walked/ran 2020 miles in 2020 individually and racked up a total 17,486 miles! We added 10 new gals to our group and took a first-ever trip to Las Vegas to hike (Thanks, Bonnie J!). Unfortunately, we lost one of our newbies: Phyllis. We had just gotten to know her when she lost her fight with cancer. May she rest in peace.

We also hiked 20 new trails that we had never done before. And some of those hikes involved a lot of bushwhacking, some really learned what bushwhacking meant. With the east side of Glacier Park and the Blackfeet Reservation and the Canadian border closed, we were forced to find new areas for hiking, many not as clearly marked as Glacier trails. Three new areas opened to hiking, so we had to check them out: Falls Creek, Birdtail and Lionhead Butte area, and Shaw Butte.

The Bears Paw Mountains beckoned, so we braved the COVID checkpoints on the reservation and climbed Mount Otis--in the snow!
Some of our most memorable hikes:

• Colorado mountain: falldown and marshes and stinging nettles from hell--Beth required stitches.
• Rodgers Peak to see the state flower--bitterroot
• Kings Hill to see the limestone or Jones columbine
• 747 trail, sinking and postholing hip deep, digging gals out
• Getting lost going from Kings Hill to Silver Crest
• The naked man in the Sluiceboxes
• Getting wet on the Middle Fork Judith hike
• Yeager Flat with Cathy Balasky historian talk
• Calico Tanks (scary drop offs) trail in Las Vegas
• Crow and Elkhorn peaks--the hardest hike of the year
• Square Butte (Cascade), oh, my the wind, the hired hand and dogs and getting permissions after two-year wait
• Skidway hill snowshoe with hairy ride home in a blizzard, thanks Amber
• Priest butte with a broken cross and dino prints
• climbing Lionhead butte
• Shaw butte
• LC Pass Loop
• Falls Creek in winter and spring
• Scratchgravel hills
• Sunset mountain with huge chocolate lily
• Blackleaf canyon pass
• Collar peak
• Mount Otis
• Fairview Mountain

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