East to Glacier!

(From Seattle)

This is it! Dale and I are heading off to Glacier National Park in a few minutes to start our long-planned, long-anticipated journey. Thanks to Dale's mom and step-father, who are driving us to Glacier, we will start our hike in Polebridge, MT on Sunday afternoon. (Thanks Jan and Horace for the ride!) We didn't get much sleep last night amidst all the last-minute packing details and anticipation. Okay, so I can't really speak for Dale, but I slept in fitful spurts punctuated by excitement, nervousness, eagerness and a few bear-encounter dreams (bears have been a reoccurring theme over the last few weeks). Dale is much calmer than I am this morning, and I am trying to soak in his collected, soothing attitude. I still have little butterflies flitting about my belly, even though our packs are in the car, ready to go and we don't hit the trail until tomorrow.

Our packs, by the way, are enormous. I was a little freaked out last night seeing everything laid out, and wondered how the heck I'd get it to all fit! Any go-light hikers would be rolling on the floor if they saw the size of our packs. The good news is we'll be eating a lot to get the weight down. It's going to be a challenging week!

The actual start to the PNT is on the East side of the park but the route through Glacier isn't open yet so we will begin on the west side. We'll start in Polebridge, MT on the west side of Glacier NP and hike east to the continental divide. We'll hike east up to Brown's Pass, stand with one leg on each side of the Continental Divide, and then take the northern (scenic) route back past the Kintla Lakes before turning south toward Polebridge again. This leg of the hike will cover approximately 75 miles, with an low average of 7.5 miles/day. We're leaving a food box at the Polebridge mercantile, and will pick it up around July 22. Then we head west across Montana, toward Eureka. The second leg of the journey will see an increased daily mileage and will cover approximately 80 miles in six days. We hope to get WiFi in Eureka to post a backlog of blogs!

At this point we are unlikely to have any news of our adventure posted here for a couple weeks. Check back after 22 July.

Oh, and if you are interested in keeping us up to date on what's happening in your lives (we'd enjoy getting letters or notes on the trail), we are recommending folks send letters or notes to the Frazier's and they'll drop it in the next food box. Keep in mind, food boxes are being sent about 15 days ahead of our arrival at the drop-point, so there will be a time-delay. Mail to: Callae Frazier/Dale Tessin, P.O. Box 233, Conifer, CO 80433. Indicate it's for the PNT somewhere on the envelope.

Okay, it's time to hit the road! Thanks to everyone we've heard from in support of our adventure. We'll be in touch when we can!

Callae & Dale