I went to Glacier National Park with my wife and one of our friends. My wife and I took hammocks and this was to be our first trip hanging. We bought hammocks specifically to save weight for this adventure. I've got the Warbonnet Blackbird, she has a Yukon Woot Special, and we share a Kelty Noah 12 tarp.
We weren't quite sure how well we'd be able to hang at Hole in the Wall in Glacier National Park. All of my searching yielded zero results of anyone who'd ever taken hammocks there, and pictures of the allowed camp sites were limited. Being so high up the mountains I had big concerns that there would not be enough large trees in proximity capable of hanging from. I went, with my hammock, for science! And hoped for the best.
Our 37.4 mile journey began at Bowman Lake. The first night, 7 miles in at Head of Bowman Lake Campground has plenty of trees available for hanging. Especially with our 16' straps, we had no shortage of options. We selected one large tree and one 7" tree and strung up.
But when we got in the hammocks later that night, the 7" tree CRACKEDat the base and tipped, and suddenly my butt was on the ground. Woah! Defective trees! Part of the issue was that we were hanging a little flatter than desireable given the distance between the trees, but that spot just worked best with a ground dweller with us too. So then we changed trees in the dark, which wasn't too bad.
Day 2 was an 8 mile hike with 2600ft elevation increase up to Hole in the Wall. Gorgeous views, spotted a grizzly bear, and was finally relieved to arrive at Hole in the Wall and find that there were numerous large trees to support hammocks. Yay!
And a couple of the other camp sites at Hole in the Wall too that I took pictures of just for this post. There were 2 other sites which also had trees large enough for hammocks, but with campers in them I didn't want to be weird taking photos of them and their tents.
Right after finishing dinner, it started to rain. HARD. And fierce wind to go along with it. We slept for 12 hours, listening to the rain and the wind flapping the Noah 12 tarp. But the tarp did it's job, and we stayed dry. And thank goodness we were hanging because there was a stream flowing under our hammocks and a tent would have been pretty wet underneath.
One side effect of all the rain was the gorgeous waterfalls the next morning. We packed up under the tarp, and just as we took down the tarp the rain stopped. Yay!
Thus began a 3rd day's hike another 1000ft up to Boulder Pass, and then 3000ft down to Upper Kintla Lake. The tamarack (larch) trees were turning golden up at that elevation (7400ft) and it was so beautiful. Like walking in a painting.
Finally arriving at Upper Kintla Lake campground, I was shocked to find that they have all of the camp sites immediately next to each other. There was maybe 15 feet between us and our neighbors. Ridiculous that with all that forest around they didn't spread things out a little more. But there were still plenty of places to hang.
And the same photo the next morning
We finished with a 12 mile hike out to the tail of Kintla Lake. Amazing and beautiful adventure, and great with hammocks.
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