Glacier National Park Backpacking/Camping Trip Day0 and 1

2015 summer we went to Glacier National Park for backpacking and camping. 

I was very excited about going to Glacier National Park for the first time. I had never even been to Montana.

Because the flight was at 6 p.m. on Friday, it was a little stressful to finish everything by 3 p.m. at work.

I went to the airport with a friend Mr.S1. He booked a cool service run by Way.com.

We went to the parking lot of somebody's house near the airport. The house has an extra parking spot, so they rent the space. After parking, we called Way.com, then Lyft took us to the airport. Way.com has a package service of parking near an airport and Lyft to the final portion to an airport. We were a little late, so Mr.N was already at the gate.

The first flight was on time, but the connecting flight was delayed an hour. So we ate dinner and went back to the gate. Then we noticed that the flight was delayed another hour. Because of the 2-hour delay, we arrived at the campsite at 3 a.m. However, we had to get up at 6 a.m. to go to the wilderness permit center the next morning (technically the same day)....

Can we get permits or even get up?

We got up at 6 a.m. to go to the wilderness permit center. Although we slept for only 3 hours, we didn't feel so sleepy because we were excited. 

It took only 10 minutes to get to the center. The wilderness permits were first-come first-served, so 10 people were already in line in front of the door. Because I had heard that it would not be very competitive in the Glacier, I was surprised. According to Mr.N who is from Montana, a line is rarely formed.  Luckily we got the permits as we wished.  Since we got permits for the undesignated area, we had to show them our bear canisters. The bear canisters are not required for designated backcountry campsites in the Glacier, so people in the center including rangers seemed to be surprised.  Because we live in California and Yosemite requires a heavy bear canister, our canisters were rare in the Glacier in Montana. It was fun and impressive seeing many people from all over the U.S. and world, according to car number plates and people's accents and language. 

After we got the wilderness permits, Mr.N and I got a cup of coffee. It was ridiculously expensive. A small cup was 5 bucks. The park is in the middle of nowhere, the price might be inevitable. Luckily the coffee was good. For some reason coffee is much better in the wilderness or in the mildde of nowhere. 

Then we stopped by a campstore to get fuel for backpacking. After paying, Mr.S and I couldn't find Mr.N. A few seconds later, I found Mr.N at a coffee stand. He was buying another cup of coffee. Really? He was sipping coffee 10 minutes ago. I had not even finished the coffee. 

I said, "Oh wow Mr.N is buying a cup of coffee."
Mr.S replied, "Really?"
Probably he was the most coffee addicted American I have ever seen. It's more than European.

Then we stopped by a bakery and had pastries with huckleberry. I don't remember clearly but probably Mr.N got another cup of coffee.
Then finally headed to a trailhead at 2 p.m. by driving dirt road for a while.

Upper Kintla Lake

We started hiking at 2 p.m. on the first day. It was very hot. 

BEAUTIFUL

I had expected that Montana would be cold, so I was surprised. The first day was only 12 miles and almost flat, so we hiked relatively slowly. Kintla lake was really pretty. 

When we had hiked about 10 miles and reached the point where the destination was visible, we encountered a black bear.

At first the bear ran away after hearing us. The bear was on the trail and went away from our direction. We continued to hike but it was behind a tree and now we were very close. So we slowly went back. The bear didn't move at all, so we needed to go off trail to avoid him. At right side there was a lake and at the left a steep hill. We climbed the hill and went back to the trail after a while. Then we again encountered the bear. We had believed that we passed the bear, but apparently not. Now he was at the hill side. So we decided to walk in the lake. It was quite hard to do it with bare feet, so I entered the lake with hiking boots. 

It was supposed to be a very easy day, but we had an adventurous day from the beginning.