Wild Trails & Tall Tales

- by Roland Cheek

 

AND THEY WONDER WHY?

Six of us--three couples, all in our sixties--packed into the Belly River country in Glacier National Park. The time we chose was the second week of September in order to avoid heavy visitor numbers of mid-summer.

We packed our saddle horses and walked, traveling through meadows of unbelievably lush, thigh-high, timothy grass. The reason we packed our riding saddles is because we're only allowed six horses at the campsite. And to compound our problem, we're not allowed to graze horses in Belly River. Thus all horse feed must be packed into the Park.

The horse campground near the Belly River Ranger Station is situated in a thicket of down and standing beetle-killed lodge pole pines. There are three campsites cleared within the wind thrown thicket, each roughly ten feet square. We didn't read the fine print on the permit which said we must camp four to one of those sites and, not liking to crowd our tents against that of our neighbors, each couple selected a separate tent site.

There are a couple of other things wrong with that Belly River camp: the water trail for the horses is upstream from the water trail for humans. Understand, this is not the first time I've drank after my ponies, but the other members of our party turned out to be picky. Another problem was in the cable where we were instructed to hoist our human and horse feed to keep it from the gullet of grizzly bears--it was right over the designated cooking spot.

It is true the cable appeared to be a stout 3/8ths, anchored to trees at each end, perhaps fourteen feet in the air. But we were required to pack 500 pounds of concentrated horse feed. And that, along with the weight of our human food and pack boxes swinging from that cable, made it feel, while cooking supper, like we were beneath a Twentieth Century equivalent of Damocles sword.

The campground did have sufficient quantities of dry wood nearby, though we were instructed by the Park Service that it'd be best if we packed our own saw.

The next weekend found us hiking to Triple Divide, also within the Park. Camping near the Cutbank Creek Ranger Station was an entirely different experience: there we were reprimanded for burning a Park branch. When we pleaded ignorance, the Ranger said it was posted on their bulletin board--that we must learn to read.

That's the same thing a minister said when he waved the Holy Bible in my face 45 years ago. Looking at the plethora of Park regulations, I'd rather read that preacher's Good Book.

Contrast our park experience with that of the forty or fifty years I've been camping on National Forest land:

We need no permit. That means we can select our campsite, go when we wish, where we wish.

We're not restricted to two tents in a postage stamp space.

We can ride saddle horses and take pack stock.

We can graze our ponies.

Incidentally, the Ranger at Belly River (who is a pleasant man) said we're the first horse party to visit that campsite--ever.

The devil made me do it, I know, but I asked if maybe we could collectively come up with any reason why....

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