The Carthew Trail

We had looked forward for three years to hiking the Carthew Trail since Jessica, Jack and Bud came back with such exciting tales about it. We had a good day for the hike, so we drove around to Cameron Lake and were walking along the edge of the lake at the beginning of the trail. Soon we were on switchbacks which quickly brought us high enough to look down on the lake through the trees like the scene at right.

Brenda and Rod were delighted to finally make it up here with Jeff and Darla. We had sent them up here on their honeymoon, jokingly extracting the promise from them that they had to come back and do the trail again with us. We had tried on one previous occasion with just the two of us, but had been rained out. The opportunity arose again when Rod had a meeting in Spokane, close enough to stage over to Glacier and Waterton.

Moving on up the long series of switchbacks on the trail, we reached a height where we could look back down on Cameron Lake and the dock that we had walked on a short while before. We had talked to folks enough to hear a tale about a fisherman on the lake who had an encounter with a bear which wanted the fish he had caught. Jeff had a bear bell on his pack - seeing a bear at a distance was fine, but we didn't want to encounter one on the trail by surprise.