Fall Colors Pop on Key Exchange Scenic Point Walk-Thru
 The Scenic Point Hike was supposed to be include a car shuttle and Katie and Tom leading, but with a COVID exposure for Katie, the hike had to be changed. Laurie, thankfully, agreed to lead the hike with Katie and Tom driving separately and planning to hike up and back, so as not to expose anyone on a car shuttle. This hike was further complicated with the Great Falls group meeting up with two others, Madelon from Eureka and Laurie from East Glacier. We planned to meet at the Glacier Park Lodge, and all worked out. With Blackfeet tribal permits in hand, Laurie led us to a place to park near the trailhead. At this point, Tom and Katie stayed to walk from East Glacier tribal land toward Scenic Point while the others drove into Two Medicine to start at the Scenic Point trailhead inside Glacier National Park. Tom and Katie expected to meet the group along the stream and not get very near Scenic Point since it is 3.5 miles from the park and almost 8 from East Glacier. Katie and Tom were on trail by 8:45 after leaving GF at 6 a.m. The other group would have started around 20 minutes later. The fall colors were everything that was expected. They popped against the grey morning sky that turned to blue halfway through the day: the orange and salmon spiraea, the red huckleberries, the maroon strawberries, the red kinickkinnik, the orange mountain ash and golden aspen. On the reservation, Katie and Tom saw many piles of bear scat, so they did a lot of calling out: "Hey, bear!" over and over. The gals on the other side saw a herd of bighorn sheep, but not scat. Tom and Katie went to the top of Bald Butte, then along the Midvale Creek, 41 and 40-Mile creeks, we started looking uphill to see if we could see the gals. Katie said we would go to the 6-7 mile mark and then stop for lunch. At that point, we were less than a mile from Scenic Point and could see the gals on top. Katie zoomed in to make sure it was them, and it was. They sat to have lunch too. At this point. the wind was whipping up, so Katie and Tom sat behind some trees while that gals on top crept below some rocks. After lunch when we saw the gals get up, Tom and Katie decided to continue toward Scenic Point even though it would make a 14-mile day for them if they turned around. After another half more mile, we met the gals and had a fun chat, comparing experiences. The gals reported just how bad the wind was on top. Katie and Tom suggested a key exchange, that they would take Suzie's car keys and continue to Scenic Point and the trailhead. Then they would drive the car around to East Glacier for them, saving about 45 minutes from their day. They agreed, so Tom took the keys and secured them into a zipper pants pocket. Katie and Tom contuned on, with only about 4 miles to go on the day instead of turning around and having 7 more. They arrived at the car at 2:45 and drove to East glacier by 3:10, disinfecting her car just in case, hiding the key, leaving some wine for Madelon by her car door, and heading home. The other gals reached the cars around 4:15 p.m. and decided to head home too since Serrano's wasn;t open. If they had done the shuttle, it would have been. We were all surprised at how fast we did this 11-mile hike! Katie and Tom home by 5:30 and the others by 6:30. |
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