Larry,
I think it's been about 15 years or so since I took this trip, but it's one of the most vivid sets of memories I have.
You mentioned something Larry, about crossing paths, that I often think about when I'm hiking or canoeing in wilderness areas. And that is the connections we have to others through our sense of place. For instance, when I'm canoeing the BW and Quetico, I'm concious that I'm crossing paths with the likes of Thompson and Mackenzie, explorers and fur traders. When I'm hiking outwest that I'm crossing paths with Pike and Lewis and Clark among others.
Somehow that gives me a sense of place.
Speaking of place... there is another chalet in Glacier NP at Sperry Glacier. Ever been there? This lodge was built, like the one at Granite Park, by the Great Northern Railroad. While the Granite Park Chalet was built in prime grizzly country for hunting those shaggy beasts, the Sperry Glacier Chalet was built in mountain goat habitat. And there were goats everywhere up there (along with deer that would eat the chalet's sheets right off the clothesline -- needed to be guarded when things were drying) when I visited there in the early 1980s.
We were told that the goats hung around the Sperry Glacier Chalet because the goats had discovered, by trial and error apparently, that the closer they stayed to the buildings the safer they were from grizzly attack. The night that I stayed at this backcountry chalet, rangers emptied two backcountry campgrounds of hikers because of a couple of grizzlies that were getting increasingly aggressive with people in the area. That night, a bunch of scared campers ended up sleeping in the chalet's halls. The goats ended up sleeping on the verandas outside our door.
The place had a siege mentality that night and the next morning. The goats really didn't want to get off the veranda. I had to bump one, gently, with the screen door twice to get him to move far enough away that I could get out.
Here is a photo of one of the goats....
