The Rocky Mountain Front, Continental Divide

Coming down from the heights of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I walked in the plain alongside the Rocky Mountain Front. The Front is the interface point between the Great Plains, which stretch across the American Midwest, and the Rocky Mountains, which divide the continent. It’s another one of the amazing geographical contrasts that often pop up on the CDT. 

The plains stretch on over the distance, a seemingly endless flat expanse. The Mountains rise dramatically, taller than anything we humans could ever build. The plains are hot, and the wind brings dust, which gets in your eyes and nostrils, dulling your senses. The mountains are cool, the air is pure here, as is the light; your senses are awakened by the piercing rays of the sun. The plains are the zones of civilisation, of farmland, of roads and, further on, the cities of the East Coast. But the mountains are wilderness, where human habitation is sparse, and one must rely on good preparation and knowledge of the natural world to survive. 

I struggled through the rugged terrain, all loose rocks and large boulders. The CDT takes the hiker along the plains, and then up the ridges of the mountains, where the going is tougher. As I hiked deeper, the plain disappeared, and I entered the Sun River Valley, where the trail winds through the valleys and canyons of this stunning wilderness area, before arriving in the Blackfeet Nation Reservation, a federally recognised Native American Reservation.

The Blackfeet, or Niitsitapi in their language, have lived here since the 18th century after they were forced out of their woodland territory near the Great Lakes. The Niitsitapi survived on the Great Plains through the buffalo hunt, a practice common to many Plains Indian tribes. In the 19th Century, the U.S. Army began a programme of buffalo extermination, aimed at depriving the Plains Indians of sources of food and cultural cohesion, making the tribes weaker and their lands easier to settle with European pioneers. 

Over the next few decades, more and more pressure was put on the Niitsitapi, and they lost most of their land. Both Glacier National Park and the Lewis and Clark National Forest lie on what was once their territory, and even today, oil drilling and pipelines disrupt the ecology and livability of what’s left of their homeland. This is all part of the complicated story of North America’s wilderness and the long history of mistreatment of the land’s indigenous people. 

I keep this in mind as I approach East Glacier village, which lies on a lake once essential for the livelihood of the Niitsitapi. I have arrived at Glacier National Park, and all that is left now is to traverse this incredible place until I reach the Canadian border and the end of the Continental Divide Trail.