Canoeing Glaciers

Arriving at Glacier Park we realized that we were again a bit early in the season but at least the mosquitos weren't out yet.  As the passes were all snowed in we decided to do a bit of canoeing in the western part of the park.  Our first stop was Bowman Lake where we paddled to the end and set up camp for two nights.  The mountains were shrouded in clouds as we paddled in so it was a nice surprise to wake up the next day and check out our vista.  When we arrived we unpacked our canoe as a bunch of backpackers unpacked.  Needless to say we had the better setup.  Once we were settled in we headed out on the lake to round-up a little dinner.  I did some fishing as Alexis paddled (once again a great setup).  We had only a little luck till a kid at the camp site suggested that we "jig" with a spoon.  He showed us about twenty lures which he excitedly described, I found one that looked close and we paddled over to the spot he suggested.  With in minutes I had a 20" lake trout in the boat.  It took a bit longer to get a second one but it was even bigger (22").  Once back in camp we found out that our eyes were way bigger than our frying pan so each trout got cut in half (still tasted great!) for cooking.  In the end we has so much fish we gave some away and still didn't have room for any side dish in our stomachs.

                        

The following day we headed up towards Browns Pass for a day hike.  We made it to a few hundred feet below the pass before the snow got to be a bit much (not to mention that our feet were pretty wet from punching though to snow into small snow-melt streams).   All told we hiked 12 miles and gained 2000 feet, just enough exercise to work off those fish.

We packed up our camp, paddled back to our truck, and did a "car portage" over to Kintla Lake where we spent the next two nights.  We saw two black bears along the shoreline, one paddleing out of Bowman and one on our way into Kintla.  I had previously been to Kintla as a kid with my parents.  At that time we canoed in and then backpacked to upper Kintla Lake and then day hiked into Canada.  We just canoe camped at the end of lower Kintla and day hiked to the pass.  Unfortunately you can no longer hike into Canada (they removed the trail) so we settled on a nice long hike to the closest pass.  Of course this hike ended in snow as well but we made it pretty far before wet/cold feet forced a retreat.  

Back at camp we did some more fishing, Alexis caught her first lake trout.  She described it as "gigantic", and I caught a 28" lunker that tried to break my pole.  Unfortunately in all the excitement we didn't get a good picture of him but you can see below a realistic depiction of his size.  After our last fish feast we were satisfied to let the fish be and eat our store bought provisions.  After a great four nights of canoe camping we headed over to east Glacier (saw a moose and calf on the drive) for some backpacking.