Opinion: Freezing at Fifty

By CHRIS PETERSON

Hungry Horse News

So when you have bypass heart surgery they typically take a long length of vein from your leg to do one of the bypasses. I had a double bypass in February so the surgeon grabbed a length of vein that ran from basically my groin to my knee and used it to patch up my failing heart.

Since then the heart is chugging right along, but the circulation in that leg, especially when it gets cold, is something to be desired. They say it takes awhile for the circulatory system to compensate for the lost vein and I believe them.

So about 2 a.m. Sunday I simply couldn’t get my foot warm. I was in a zero-degree rated top of the line sleeping bag. I additionally wrapped the foot in my coat and then a merino wool sweater, because I forgot to bring an extra pair of wool socks.

But that foot was still ice.

There was just one problem. It was the wrong foot. The foot that was attached to the leg with the missing chunk of vein felt fine. It was the other, perfectly good leg with the perfectly good foot that was an ice block.

Meanwhile, the rest of me was toasty warm.

I give up. So I lay there and tried to get some sleep. We were at the Fifty Mountain campsite in Glacier National Park. A quick in and out weekend hike. The camp is a coveted one, but when temperatures drop down below freezing you can get many camps in Glacier National Park to yourself and such was the case on Saturday.

The direct route (you can do longer ones) is from Packer’s Roost off the Going-to-the-Sun Road up the Flattop Mountain Trail all the way to Fifty.

You’re supposed to be able to see 50 mountains from camp (or at least near camp, camp itself is largely in the trees) thus the name. I’ve never actually counted them, but it seems about right. 

The hike is just under 12 miles, with a nasty little yo-yo as you drop off the ridge, down into the valley and then back up to camp. 

If you add in the hike up to the Sue Lake Overlook, the day comes in at 15 miles, with more than 4,000 feet of elevation gain.

We didn’t go to the overlook this go-around. The boy was running out of gas and to be honest, so was I. We opted for a hike outside of camp with big boulders and great views. I read the boy a few stories and at dusk we headed back to camp.

He slept like a log in the frigid quiet October night as the frost grew on the grass and heaved in the mud on the trail. I wished I could have set my freezing foot aside as I tossed and turned and muttered to myself in the long wait for dawn to arrive.