Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? Jon Jandai at TEDxDoiSuthep

Climate Hike in Glacier National park 2014

View from the plane

The much awaited climate hike is over and I can't believe I am back in Dallas already. It was a wonderful experience. I got to hike with some awesome people and very knowledgeable Glacier Guides. In the excitement and planning for the trip, I didn't sleep the night before my flight to Kalispell, Montana. I am a chicken when it comes to flying in a plane. I prefer aisle seat not because I need more room for my short legs but to avoid the dramatic views in the window. I sometimes wish that the person at the window shuts the window so that I don't panic seeing the slanted views by mistake. But when the flight was about to land in Kalispell, I moved to the open window seat next to me and peered outside taking in the beauty of the scenery. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

DFW CCL team. Go team!

From the moment I landed, everything was taken care of. My teammate Ricky had already flown in. So, he picked me up and the five of us from DFW Citizens' Climate Lobby team went out for lunch. After lunch, I got dropped in my room at Glacier Guides Logde. This is an impressive eco-lodge that was LEED certified. Was happy to see a recycle basket in the room without a plastic liner. Got rid of my collected stash there.

View from my Glacier Guides Lodge room

I took a power nap and was ready for a short hike in the park. The hospitable host showed me the closest trail and dropped me there. Seeing a lot of people at the trail start, I was confident to do my solo hike. I was surprised to find nobody hiking the trail. I stopped to take several pictures and was enjoying the silence and the beauty of the trail. Suddenly, a fleeting thought came to me. What if I see a bear? Should I appear big? I didn't know what's the correct thing to do. I continued walking away from the trailhead saying to myself, "I am good to nature, so nature will be good to me". I turned around after about 40minutes and hurriedly walking back to the trailhead. By now I was scared. I hadn't seen any hiker on the trail. I made it back to the trailhead and walked back to the hotel. I asked the host. There is no chance that bears could come to the trail that I was on, right? She said, "No, they can be anywhere. All of this is bear country". I am just grateful that I didn't see one then.

The host, Jen was kind enough to give us a ride to Russell's Fireside which is the only

restaurant in the area with organic, vegan options. Amanda and Rebecca were nice to accompany me even though they had nice options near our lodge. I started looking forward to the hike. If I had such a good time even before the hike, I couldn't wait for it to start.

At 8am the next morning, we got picked up from our lodges to meet at Glacier Guides office were we were given our rental gear, packed lunch and snacks for the day. We did a moderate warmup hike on this day. We reached the Avalanche lake after walking for 3.5 miles. We then had a long option or a short option for the rest of the way. I chose the long option to train for the next day which was the longest hike day of the week. The views were breathtaking. I hiked 10miles that day before dinner. We came back to the campsite and found our luggage kept by the tent side. We pitched our tent. Rebecca led a yoga stretch for me and Amanda after which we savored a hearty dinner.

After dinner, we gathered around the campfire to listen to the speaker Dan Fagre. This talk was so educative. He clarified the difference between Climate change and natural cycle. Climate change falsely allows natural cycle to be part of the equation. This park has always had a natural cycle of alternating 20 yr periods of dry and wet cycle. This has been historically the case for 1000 years. What they have observed is that global warming is combining with the natural cycle changing the ecosystem drastically. Usually the park looses snow, alpine vegetation and animals in the dry season and gains back the loss in the following wet season. The park is just coming out of the wet season but due to global warming, the benefits of wet season was not realized, instead they has less snow, more wire fires. Now, the park is headed towards a dry cycle with the additional effects of global warming. He estimates the park will loose all of its 24 glaciers in 10 years. Most of the tourism that the park gets is from people visiting the park before all the glaciers are gone. The park had more than 100 glaciers at the beginning of the century. He said that the park has gone past the climate mitigation phase and is in climate adaptation mainly because the park is at a lower elevation. There is still a chance that we can save the ecosystems in places like Colarado but we need to act now.

I went to bed with a heavy heart that night. Next day morning, we woke up, broke the tent, got breakfast, packed lunch and snacks for the hike and loaded the vans with our day hike packs and poles. Today we did the 15mile hike to Piegan pass. It was 1800feet elevation climb in 4miles. One of the difficult hikes of the trip. Only 11 of us could go on this trip. Since it felt exclusive, many of us competed. There was talk of putting our names in hats to pick participants for the hike. But, Alix and Betsy are couple of the nice ones who gave up their spots to make that unnecessary. Piegan pass hike was challenging and rendered beautiful views of Piegan glacier, Gem and Salamander glaciers. We saw beargrass, monkey flower, Aspens and bear poop on the trail.

We went to the camp at St. Mary. I found that our tent had been already setup by Rebecca who did a different hike. Dinner was extra tasty today since it was curried vegetables in coconut cream and rice.  We relaxed and socialized before we were briefed on the hike options for the next day. We were to visit the Grinnell lake the next day. The options were to do a 8mile low elevation hike around lower Grinnell lake or do a 12 mile hike upto Grinnell Glacier and see the point were Glacier melts to form the lake. During this hike, we saw a bear about 30 feet from the trail. He was small and from a distance, I saw the mom. Dan told us that this glacier has been melting drastically. Apart from receding more, the height of the glacier at the melt point has decreased steadily. 20 years back, one could walk under the ice melt. Now, one can step on to the glacier from the lake.

We came back to rest at the same campsite that night. By now, I was feeling the strain of hiking 37miles over three days. Also my hiking shoes didn't have enough support that I would get unbearable feet pain after 10 miles everyday. Didn't know how important that is. Just found out the hard way. The sad part is, I had another pair of nice boots at home but I wanted to travel light. Now I know which set to take for the next Climate hike! This night, Michael Jameson spoke to us about his work across conservation groups, national parks and Canada to connect all the national parks in the area. By connecting these parks, we create corridors to help animals adapt to Global warming better. As our planet warms, animals have to migrate to higher altitudes. With current national parks which exist as Island, animals are forced to occupy smaller and smaller areas and hence are driven to extinction. By connecting parks, we provide opportunity for many species to reach higher altitudes along the entire western border of the continent. He has got a bill passed by 99 senators but the bill is being held up by Texas state senator, Ted Cruz. Ultimately, this just buys us more time for us to get our act together on Climate Change.

That night few of us decided to lay on the meadow to star gaze. We saw the milky way! I am guessing that it much be the eye of the milky way. We saw some shooting stars and artificial satellites moving in the star studded sky. How long has it been since I saw this? In Tucson, we used to drive to the end of town and get to see the stars. Its been more than four years.

We had three options for the hike the next day. This day, I felt well rested, so I choose to do the difficult hike to scenic point of 2400 feet elevation climb in 3 miles. But it turned out to be a popular hike and only 11 people could go on it. I decided to do the Cobalt lake hike instead which was 1800 elevation climb in 5.7miles. When I started the hike, I realized that I had damaged my right knee from the hikes the previous two days. I hiked slowly but the other hikers were very nice to let me be in the middle of the group. I ate so many huckleberries from the trail today. Saw many flowers. I was able to make it down without hurting my knee more. I pain is gone now after icing it for few days.

This night we didn't have to setup tents since we get to sleep in Tipis in Blackfeet reservation!
We did a talk circle this night. We introduced ourselves and shared our motivation to join Climate Hike. It was amazing to meet so many people who work for environmental non-profits during the hike. Some of us stayed up tonight talking until the northern lights started to light up the sky. We all became speechless viewing this rare event. Few of us had already decided to lay out in the grass looking at the sky. I was so contented to lay down on the tarp in my sleeping bag and look up at the star studded sky before I drifted into sleep.

I woke up the next morning to beautiful colors before the sun peeked out in the horizon. I could tell that the day will be good.
We put away our hiking shoes and got ready for our rafting trip. We split into groups of eight and boarded rafts with our guide. We paddled our way through rapids and calm water listening keenly to our guide's instructions. We had splash contests with our other boats. The water was so clear, the scenery very beautiful and the rapids were thrilling. I got to dip in the river.

All my clear plastic packaging material for recycling

After the wonderful white water rafting trip, we were shuttled to the Glacier Guides office where we were greeted with a wholesome lunch. We were even given a ride to the airport by the trip guides. I couldn't believe that I was leaving Montana already. It is definitely one of the most memorable trips I have ever done.

After coming to Dallas, I haven't been able to do much. But I got around collecting all my ziploc bags, shrink wraps and snack bags from the trip. I will rinse the dirty ones and take them along with other plastic packaging to grocery stores for recycling. Refer to this short post for more details. http://carbonneutral-greengirl.blogspot.com/2012/02/recycle-plastic-bags-in-grocery-stores.html
I am by no means trying to say that I am great. There was another hiker, Catherine rock who didn't use any of these bags. She got here own tupperware for the trip.

Apart from saving my clear plastic, I also collected chips bags and energy bar wrappers to send to Terracycle. These are hard to recycle substances since they are a combination of metal and plastic. I will be shipping them to Terracycle, a New Jersey based company for recycling. After doing this collection, its very clear to me that recycling must absolutely be the last option. Even in this context, where all the participants care so much about the environment, I was able to salvage less than half of these bags and wrappers. One solution is to eat energy bars that come in compostable packaging like Thunderbird Energetica (available in Whole Foods). Bearded bros is one other local brand.
If many of you tweet Thunderbird and ask them to donate bars to Climate ride, they will heed our request. Here's mine:  @thunderbirdbar - why not supply @climateride participants your bars

I want to thank all my donors for making this trip a reality for me. I had such a wonderful experience and it has only increased my commitment to work for climate. Thank you all so much. A special Thanks to Thomas Wikman who contributed a third of the funds raised by me. Also, a shout out to Pete Meyer who donated $500 to my fundraiser. Both Thomas and Pete have taught me to be more generous with my climate donations. Pete decided to join the hike a month before and didn't have much time to raise the funds. He has paid the dues but if he raises enough to meet the minimum, he will be given a refund of the raised amount. Please consider donating to his fundraiser. Thanks! http://bike.climateride.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=3048