Memories on Mt Brown

Ed and I stepped off the trail to let the mountain goat pass by.  We were high up on Mount Brown in Glacier National Park.  The goat was coming down the trail; we were hiking up.  We stepped about 20 feet above the trail. The goat stopped to look at us and turned toward us; we headed higher up.  “The trail switches back.”  We got on the next level of switchback and continued up the trail.  The goat followed.   

It was 1977, we were 19 years old.  This was one of our first hikes in the west, and it was our first engagement with a wild animal.  It continued to follow us up to the lookout.  At that point in our lives, I’m not sure if we even knew it was a herbivore.  We just knew that it was closer than we were comfortable with and that it wouldn’t leave us alone.  When we reached the tower, we found a dead baby goat at its base.  “Maybe this is why it was following us,” Ed said as he reached down and felt one of the baby’s front hooves.  “It’s still soft, it might have died this morning.” 

We climbed up on the tower hoping to get a break from the goat, but it was closing in on us.  We weren’t sure if it would follow us up onto the narrow porch that wrapped around the tower, or if would stay by its dead baby.  We took in the view as quickly as we could, then scrambled down the steps and away from the tower.  The momma goat stayed at the tower’s base near its baby.  It made us sad; it made us worried about the safety of other hikers who might come across this momma in the next few days.  We were determined to tell a ranger as soon as we could.

West face of Mt Brown; high ridge through the fog

I hiked Mt Brown for a second time with Huk in the early 1990s.  It was a chilly October day.  The plan was to climb the peak.  We hiked past the lookout and continued up through forest and meadow to the edge of where it transitioned into a narrow rocky ridge.  The peak was along this ridge; it was class 4 climbing which was generally within our range, but it was covered in early season snow.  It would be slick and dangerous.  We turned back.

I still haven’t climbed the peak, but I made my third pilgrimage to the Mt Brown lookout tower on Friday the 13th of September, 2024; I was running this time.  Its slopes were forested when Ed and I, and Huk and I hiked up.  The Sprague Fire of 2017 reduced the trees on the slope of Mt Brown to a field of standing sticks.  Small one-to-two-foot pine trees on its slopes made me hopeful that it would be but a short time before another mature forest covered its slopes. 

The open slopes provided views and some comfort.  I sometimes have the sense that I am playing Russian Roulette when I am out alone running in the mountains.  The thought that maybe I shouldn’t be out there, maybe I should turn around, crosses my mind.  I felt that strongly as I ran up Mt Brown.  It was a cold grey day.  Bursts of snow and ice fell from the sky, the highest 1,000 vertical was above the cloud layer.  There would be no views.  There were lots of good reasons to turn back.

To some extent the concern that I will run into a wild animal, or will get injured is always there.  Just two days earlier I was running on the Piegan Pass trail near Many Glacier. I came around a corner to find myself face-to-face with a full grown bull moose standing on the trail not 30 feet away.  I screamed “Whoa!” which made the moose jump—his front hooves literally hopped off the ground.  I backed around the corner about 50 feet and waited.  He came up to the corner and munched on some tasty leaves while he contemplated my presence.  I was debating whether to backtrack the five miles I had just run, or try to talk him off the trail.  For the first time ever, I unholstered my bear spray and then I started talking to him.  “Mr. Moose, if you’ll just step off the trail, I can get by you and you will be done with me.”  He started to walk into the brush.  Either he understood, or he had the same idea himself.  “You’re going to have to go in another 10 feet, for me to get by.”  He walked in 10 more feet.  I started down the trail, talking to him as I went.  I made it around the corner and was just passing him when I heard a “Woof!” and brush crunching.  I bolted down the trail.  After about 100 feet I looked back.  He wasn’t chasing me.  I slowed down.  He freaked me out and likely was now enjoying a good laugh at my expense.  I expect he got his moose buddies roaring that evening.

The storm on Mt Brown was unwinding, but it was going to be an all-day process.  When I stood on the lookout porch, the clouds lifted momentarily, just enough for me to see an outline of the peak.  I didn’t see any goats this time, but a number of internet reviews of the hike mention habituated goats following hikers up to the tower. 

It had been 47 years since Ed and I stood on this porch.  We were amazed at the view.  These two kids from New Jersey had never seen anything like Glacier Park.  Ed died in the early 1990s; I spent a moment of quiet reflection in his memory.  By the time Huk and I arrived here we were seasoned outdoorsmen who knew the park well.  Huk owned a home in Whitefish, not far from the park.  I visited as often as I could.  We could pick out many of the mountains by sight; I had climbed a handful of them, Huk had climbed quite a few.  Today, the clouds were quickly thickening around me and I had to rely on my memory to see the peaks. 

Ed, Terry and I were camping at Sprague Creek near the base of Mt Brown.  We got around by hitchhiking on that trip.  We made our way to Apgar the next morning and excitedly went into the Backcountry Ranger Office to tell a ranger about the dead goat.  The ranger's response was disinterested, “A grizzly will likely carry it off.”  It was life and death in the wild.  It was a lot for two kids from New Jersey to absorb.