Blackfoot Mountain - Glacier National Park
John Carter (Senior Explore Intern, MK), Jeremy Freeman (Junior Explore Intern, from BC) and I went on a mountaineering trip starting on Monday the 8th. We were on our way up to Prairie Bible College, in Three Hills, AB, after working at Camp Bighorn, near Plains, MT all summer. We hiked into Gunsight Lake, 6 miles, and then kept hiking 2 more miles to the base of Blackfoot Mountain, which is to the east of Mt. Jackson, which Daniel, Katie and I climbed partway up when they came to visit at the end of June. We got a late start on Mon (5 pm) and were still hiking at about 10 pm when it was already dark and we had to find a place to cross a rushing glacier melt stream. We finally found a place where we could leap across between two rocks. Then we threw our packs across and passed our sharp gear (ice axes & crampons) by sliding them on our rope. I hunted around and found two small trees to hang a bear-bag while John and Jeremy set up camp. A lot of dark clouds had been moving in so we were worried that it would rain. By the time we had eaten and boiled some water, it was almost 1 am. We decided to not get an early start but sleep in, realizing we probably wouldn’t have time to reach the summit the next day though. The next year’s Explore students were arriving at Prairie in about a week, so we also didn’t want to completely wear ourselves out right before starting the next school year. We slept in till 8 am (Tue, Aug 9), and then ate and packed up and started hiking by 11 am. We crossed another stream, went over another glacier moraine, and then scrambled up rocks to the base of some small waterfalls coming down from the Blackfoot Glacier. We found a place to scramble (4th Class) up the rocks to the side of the waterfalls, and then followed a rocky ridge into the glacier. We ate lunch at the edge of the glacier, about 1 pm. Then we put on our snow gear, and our harnesses and crampons and tied into our rope and started ascending the glacier. Most of the glacier was melted down to the glacial ice, and there were streams of water coming down on top many places, and down through the crevasses. As we got higher, and into the shade more, we were walking on snow. There was a good size rock cliff with an ice cliff above it. Together the cliff was about 240 feet according to the topo map. There was a break in the rock cliff where the ice cliff ended, which is where we wanted to go up the glacier. There was a big bergschrund, which is a gap between where the glacier breaks away from the rest of the snow bank where it steepens. The gap was about 6-8 feet across, and 10-15 feet deep, and the upper section was about 6-8 feet higher than the lower section. There was water rushing underneath. I wanted to climb down into the gap at the east edge where there was a route up the rock face that I was sure I could climb, and then get back onto the snow above a second big gap running parallel to the bergschrund. We decided there wasn’t enough time to get all of us past the ‘schrund and then back down onto the main glacier before our turnaround time, which was 5 pm. I think it was between 4:15-4:30 at that time. We decided it would be more valuable to go down and explore the glacier more, in an area with a lot of crevasses to practice crossing and navigating around. So we went further east on the glacier, lower down where it steepens and there are a lot of open crevasses. The whole glacier is on a pretty small scale compared to most glaciers, so the crevasses weren’t very big. We stepped across most of them. For the bigger ones, I placed ice screws before crossing. The biggest one we crossed we had to leap across, which was fun. I crossed one wider crevasse (6-8 feet) that was filled in with snow, but as I probed with my ice axe, a lot of the snow bridge was very thin, but I found a place to cross where it was thicker. I made sure I marked where the thin areas were, and that John and Jeremy followed in my footsteps. It was getting late so we made our way back onto the glacier where there weren’t open crevasses and then got back onto the rock ridge and climbed all the way down to our campsite. We decided to try to make it back to Gunsight Lake to camp that night, so that we would only have 6 miles to hike the next day, Wednesday, which is also when we needed to drive all the way up to Three Hills. It started raining on us that night as we finished packing up our campsite, and then we had to find a different place to cross the stream than the way we had come because it would have been a more difficult jump going back where we had came. We eventually made it across, and then it started getting dark as we bushwacked through meadows with boulders and patches of small trees until we ran into the end of the Jackson Glacier Trail. We got to the lake, cooked dinner, hung our bear-bags, and then searched for a campsite. All of the tent sites were already taken, but we eventually found a small clearing next to another tent site where we were able to sleep. It stopped raining before we went to bed so we didn’t have to all cram into the 2-man tent we brought. We got up at 8 am again on Wednesday and then started hiking by 9:15. Right after we started, it started dumping rain on us again. The trail was overgrown with thick brush so we were soon soaked. We made it back to the trailhead at 11:45. It stopped raining on us before the end, which was nice because we had to pack up my car.
