This was one of the bigger trips I've arranged this year: eight people, five days, two cars, twenty-plus hours of driving, three campsites, and over thirty miles of backpacking. We left around 2pm on Thursday afternoon (8/10): Phil, Chris, Alex (Chris's younger brother visiting from Minnesota) and me in one car and Simone, George, Katy, and Mike in another. Our car stopped in Spokane for a dinner break, where we discovered a city that (unlike the preconceived notions we had) was not stuck in the 60s, but rather was well-manicured and bigger than expected, with more than one university to its name. From there, we drove into Idaho and then an hour later into Montana. It had begun to rain, which slowed us down, and we didn't make it to the motel we had reserved until 1am.
We 
woke up early the next morning, quickly got ready, and headed over to the park to pick up our permits by the 10am get-them-or-loose-them cutoff time. After reviewing our itinerary and making sure everyone had watched the safety video on bears and the backcountry, we drove to Packers Roost - parking lot and start of our adventure.
Here's a summary of our backcountry days:
Friday: Packer's Roost to the Flattop campground (5.8 miles, 2640' elevation gain)
Saturday: Flattop to the Fifty Mtn campground (6.4 miles, 945' gain, 565' loss)
Sunday: Fifty Mtn to the Granite Park campground (11.9 miles, 1780' gain, 1910' loss)
Monday: Granite Park to the Logan Pass trailhead (7.6 miles, 1026' gain, 830' loss).
We left Packers Roost around noon on Friday, which was an amazingly on-time start and hiked fairly leisurely to the Flattop campground. Since this was a first trip backpacking for some, we wanted to begin slowly and not kill anyone's feet or leg muscles. Most of the packs were in the 30-40 lb range, although Chris and Alex wanted to flex their powers of wilderness cooking and in doing so ended up with heavier bags. And tastier meals, though I'm not sure it was worth it.
Flattop Mountain sustained a lot of fire damage in 2003, so the first two days were mostly filled with erie scenes of lush, carpeting flowers and ground cover surrounded by burnt, bristly trees. What a contrast! The Flattop Mtn campgrounds were vacant, except for our group, and they were clean and pleasant. Each campground we stayed at had a few campsites, a pit toilet, and an area to prepare and hang food. Because of the number of bears in the park, the rangers insist that all food is kept away from campsites and appropriately stored in the designated area. Sometimes this meant hanging the food, and sometimes shutting it in a heavy-duty bear box. We were more than happy to take these precautions, however, to avoid the dangerous possibility of having a bear in camp.
When we woke up Saturday morning, it was cool and raining. Since our day Saturday was rather light, we waited for the weather to clear a bit before making breakfast and closing up. We then headed out, unfortunately walking through additional rain on-and-off. Luckily, Phil remembered a fun game of counting to play. You start at one and count up, with each number being said by a random person. If two people say the same number at the same time, you start over. Simone and Katy also kept us entertained with some fantastic singing. However, by the time we reached Fifty Mountain camp, we were wet and happy to be there. Chris and Alex had gone up ahead, and were already hanging out clothes to dry.
Fifty 
Mountain is a medium-sized campground, surrounded by mountains. When the sun decided to finally peek out, we could see mountain goats in the distance. And that night we met more wildlife, a bit closer to home: the deer in the park, salt-starved, began licking everything we had with sweat on it. Luckily, Phil and I had put most of our gear under the rain fly, and the deer only got to nibble on our hiking pole handles. I even snapped a picture in the middle of the night of one little sucker. However, when we woke up the next morning, we found that deer had nabbed Chris's fleece and Mike's tee-shirt (both were hung to dry.) Sneaky little devils! It surely taught us a lesson.
We woke up early on Sunday, since we had a big day ahead of us, and were on the trail by 9am (which is impressive for a group of eight!) The weather had cleared for Sunday, and the forecasts were for a mostly sunny, gorgeous day. Luckily, Mother Nature delivered! The weather was fantastic and we were really lucky, since most of the hike featured beautiful views. Even though it was twelve miles long, I loved it, and felt it was really worth every step. Chris and Alex went ahead again, but the rest of us all hiked together, and I loved how so many type-A personalities could be so mellow and non-competitive.
There were a few areas where I was nervous, being that I do have a fear of heights, but the hike was so exhilerating that I didn't think too much about them. And the panoramas that unfolded around us were amazing!
The trail had us hiking along a string of mountains, and we could often see both the at-times-daunting path in front of us and the amazing distance we had already hiked that day. As time went on, it was almost impossible to see where we had started, even though we didn't feel like it was possible to have begun so far away.
At one point, we reached the top of an incline and took a break, snapping a group photo of the six of us. I've included it below - it's one of my favorite photos of the trip.
By the time we reached the Granite Park, we were pretty tired, but it was only about 4pm and the sun was shining. This was the first time we got to sit around camp in shorts 
and tee-shirts and not be cold!
The next morning, Katy, Mike, Phil and I had decided to take the "long way" out to Logan Pass (7.6 miles), while Simone, George, Chris and Alex took a quicker route to Packer's Roost and were to meet us with the cars. We started off early, up at 5:45am and out of camp by 7:30am at the latest (it's hard to remember now!) The day was cool and dry, p
erfect for hiking and we sped along the trail. As we inched closer to Logan Pass, we began to see people. Up to this point, we had maybe seen a dozen others on the trail, but as we began to enter day-hiking territory, those numbers went way up. We also looked down upon some big horn sheep, and, just as we were exiting the trail, found some more mountain goats.
Hiking out this way was great, and I would definately recommend it. The only annoyance was the sheer number of people we had to walk around on the trail (I'm talking about groups of 20-30 people all touring in the same group) and the quantity of them who asked us "did you spend the night at the chalet?" :o)
We got into Logan Pass around 11am, actually beating the car-bearing folk by a few minutes (without them, it would have been a much longer day.) We got in, forgot about not having showered for four days straight, and drove back to Seattle. It was a long day, but the trip was well worth it.
We drove over to Tiger, met the guys we were going with, and started up the mountain. Our jumps were tandem, so there wasn't much to learn or worry about.
