We left Missoula in the early(ish) morning. After the cold and rain/snow/hail of Yellowstone, a nice warm sleep felt good. Our intended target for July 13th was Glacier National Park where we would be meeting up with a friend and former PEEC employee, Bridget.
Bridget is currently working as a Park Ranger with the National Park Service and offered to put us up in her living room. We jumped at this opportunity. We met up with Bridget on the 13th around 1:00 and we unloaded some stuff to make space for her to take us on a tour of the park. During this time Lea received a personalized lesson on how to use bear spray in case of a close encounter. The fear of grizzly bears had been with us since we were in Grand Teton, but Glacier NP has the greatest concentration of Bears of any of the National Parks in the Continental United States. It is almost a daily practice to hear about an encounter with Grizzly Bears and the stories we heard from Bridget were quite eye opening.
The park was quite busy and our intended stop was Avalanche Lake, a very popular trail. The terminus of this two-mile out-and-back trail is a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains and many waterfalls. We walked through the dense hemlock and cedar trees on an easy trail up to the lake. The lake was a light turquoise blue from pulverized rock that is washed in from the active glaciers surrounding the area. This material, called glacial flour, colors the bodies of water in the area a turquoise color; some of the various lakes show deeper and richer colors than what we were able to observe at Avalanche Lake.
When we completed the hike to Avalanche Lake we headed back to Bridget’s house. We decided that we were going to get dinner at the local farmer’s market in Whitefish, MT. We drove out to Whitefish, enjoyed the local crafters, farmers, food vendors, and musicians then decided to head home. On the drive home, we stopped at a small local brewery called Backslope Brewing and had a beer each. We finally settled in at the cabin for the evening where we planned out our following day’s hike, a 10-mile mountain pass trail called Siyeh Pass.
The following morning we woke up well rested and ready to take on the 11 mile(ish) hike of Siyeh Pass. Our park insider Bridget recommended that we park our car at the terminus of the trail and take the free shuttle up to the trailhead. This way when we were exhausted after finishing the trail, we wouldn’t have to wait for the shuttle back to our car. Glacier National Park runs a free shuttle system all along the Going to the Sun Road. The Going to the Sun Road is windy with steep drop-offs in many sections. There are few parking spots along the route so the shuttles allow people to get from one place to another without much hassle. We were lucky enough to get a parking spot at the trail’s end so we waited a few minutes for the shuttle to take us up to the trailhead.
The trail began by winding through a dense forest, eventually opening up to a field of wildflowers, none of which we’d seen before. A few of our favorites were beargrass, which we nicknamed the ‘Q-tip flower’, and glacial lilies, which looked similar to the trout lilies back east, but were much bigger and did not have mottled leaves. We eventually reached a small mountain creek which we had to cross. With the warmer temperatures, there was more snow melting and subsequently higher water levels in the creek. We diverted upstream, maybe 100 yds before finding a location where we could cross. After crossing the stream, we began the climb up into the pass. We had been climbing for the previous 3 miles, but the last mile climbed the steepest. We worked our way up through the alpine environment, noticing the vast array of different flowers in bloom up to the pass. The views of the various valleys were awe inspiring.
The descent from the pass had us crossing some snow fields which totaled just over 100 yds across 4-5 fields. We were able to boot-ski down some of the vertical stretches and as we switch-backed down across the spring laden trail eventually reaching a section of forest that was the site of a massive fire caused accidentally by humans last year.
Some backpackers triggered the fire with inappropriate cooking and it swept through the region, scorching the valley we were walking through. It was surreal to hike through the region and see all the dead standing timber and the newly emerging wildflowers from the soil.
After the hike, we intended to head over to the Many Glacier end of Glacier National Park. The drive back to our housing would have taken us 3+ hours so we decided after our hike we were tired and would just head back to the cabin and then we would go out to dinner as a treat to Bridget for putting us up for the night. As we were driving back we made sure to stop and enjoy the beautiful views.
As we moved from East to West through the park there was a major storm rolling into the valley and the clouds got quite dark and eventually it began to pour. For dinner, we decided on a small pizzeria called the Glacier Grille. We enjoyed some sandwiches and then headed back to Bridget’s for the evening. The next morning we intended to visit the very popular sights early in the morning and see the rest of the park.
Our last day in Glacier we decided to visit the popular sights. Our first target was a trail out of Logan Pass called the High Line. This mountainside trail is carved out of the mountain and only opened up to the public a couple of weeks prior. One of the more eye-opening stories of the trail is that a couple of years prior, two hikers were attacked on the same stretch of trail by a grizzly bear. Oddly enough this won’t be the last of the sketchy grizzly stories from our adventure at the park. We walked about 2 miles out and back on the trail and we awarded amazing views of the valley. Logan Pass is an interesting visitor center because it is up on the Continental Divide and is not powered. All electricity is generated from solar panels and the area is an established Bighorn Sheep Study Area and they are easily seen if you know where to look. Other wildlife which will frequent the area includes Mountain Goats which were very cooperative for some pictures.
After the Highline Trail we headed out to Many Glacier and we hiked out on a small trail to a small pond. Our park insider told us that Fishercat Lake is a great spot for moose. We quickly arrived at the lake and within 10 minutes of watching the lake, a cow and baby moose strolled across the back of the lake.
We watched the moose for a couple minutes then we headed out to a small set of waterfalls called Red Rock Falls.
On our way back from the falls we stopped at the lake one last time and there were three moose on the near side of the lake. Unlike the last time, this time, there were two bull moose and one cow moose just feeding away in the lake. They were very cooperative and the pictures show. One family was borderline too close to the moose and it should be noted that safety should be practiced at all times.
The last stop for the day included Two Medicine Lake which has a very symmetrical mountain right at the base of the lake. Unfortunately, the lighting was bad and the pictures did not do the mountain justice.
We headed back to Bridget’s cabin for our final evening. In a casual conversation with Bridget about how the day was from the ranger dispatch office, she informed us that at Avalanche Lake there was a female grizzly bear with two cubs and they attacked a visitor and took their backpack and were tearing through all of their belongings. Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers were called in to scare the bear off with rubber bullets, as is their common practice. The bullets hopefully deter the bear from returning to the area. If further problems continue they will look to trap the bears and transplant them to other regions of the Park. This was eye-opening because we were just at the Avalanche Lake site a couple of days prior. Tomorrow we plan to head west into Washington and to visit the state waterfall of Washington, Palouse Falls.
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