UM hoops star has Glacier Park roots

Katie Baker knows her way around the basketball court. As a junior, she led the University of Montana women’s basketball team in scoring with 15 points per game and in rebounding with more than seven boards per game.

But it wasn’t always that way — Baker didn’t grow up the proverbial gym rat. She spent much of her childhood in Glacier National Park with her mother Chris at Huckleberry and Swiftcurrent lookouts.

Chris Baker worked as a lookout in the Park for 17 years, and Katie tagged along from infancy to the age of 10. Meanwhile Katie’s father, Bob, watched her two brothers at their home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

“Mom carried me up to Huckleberry when I was a baby,” Katie recalled in a recent interview. “When I was four, I started hiking on my own.”

Hiking to Huckleberry at age four is no small task. The trip is six miles long one way with an elevation gain of 2,725 feet. But they’d stop at every gully along the way, and “Mom would give me Skittles,” Katie said. Chris also stashed Otter Pops in the small freezer at the lookout as an added incentive to get there.

Katie said her experience growing up was special.

“I loved it,” she said. “I didn’t know anything else. I played with a ton of different things using my imagination. I had such a big imagination.”

When she was eight, Katie started playing the cello and Chris lugged that up to the lookout so her daughter could practice. Katie would regal visitors with her playing. She still plays cello today.

There were also plenty of bear encounters, but Katie says she never feared them. She recalled looking down over the rail of the lookout one evening at a sow grizzly and cubs that were looking up. They left the bears alone, and the bears left them alone.

Katie said she didn’t really think about basketball when she was young. Her older brothers were the jocks of the family. It wasn’t until fourth grade that she tried the sport and found she wasn’t very good.

“By a fluke, a team needed another player,” she recalled.

She said she finally started getting good in sixth grade. She recalled scoring 20 points in one game. It was then that her family realized she was a talented athlete, and summers at the lookout were replaced by basketball camp. Chris gave up the lookout job so she could travel and watch Katie play.

Katie’s high school team won a state championship when she was a sophomore playing for Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy. Chris is an English teacher at the school.

Katie said she wasn’t even sure she’d play for the University of Montana. She wasn’t that interested in the school at first, and they didn’t seem all that interested in her, but after attending a summer camp there as a junior, she played the best basketball of her young career. A few months later, she signed with the Lady Griz.

A senior this season, Katie said her goal is to help the Lady Griz win the Big Sky Conference and make it to the NCAA tournament.

After college, she said, she might go to Europe and play professionally. If that doesn’t work out, she’s considering a career in nursing.

But she still has a soft spot for Glacier Park. She’s been back to Swiftcurrent Lookout as an adult, and she’s taken long hiking trips with her family into the Belly River, where her parents first met as seasonal employees of the Park.

“It was nice to hear and see their stories,” Katie said.