Glacier National Park – July 14
Rocky Mountain Front
We had to say goodbye to Pine Butte Guest Ranch today and all the wonderful people here. We had a blast, but Glacier is calling, so we’ve got to go. In 1932 the governments of Canada and the United States linked Glacier with Waterton Lakes (in Canada) to form the first International Peace Park. It’s also a world heritage site.
Glacier
We headed north and came into the park on the east side through St. Mary. We followed Going-to-the-Sun road towards Logan Pass. The plan was to meet up with Stephanie and Courtney to hike the Garden Wall/Loop trail.
When we are traveling by ourselves we take our time, and stop at all the pull outs, and check out the nooks and crannies of a place. This was a bit of a whirlwind tour since we had a time line to keep and someone else had set up the schedule. The park is rebuilding the section of road that we were traveling on so we did have to make a stop for construction. We were a little concerned about the weather. It was a little dark and overcast. There was also snow in places. I was wondering if the hike we had planned might not be a good one for a day like this. There was an option to do two shorter hikes, but we really did want to do this one if it worked out.
Garden Wall
Allan, our team leader, wants to get it all in and is a real optimist. He thinks that with the group of experienced hikers that we have we can do an 11.6 mile hike in four hours. Now it should be noted that while Allan is totally enthusiastic about this schedule and our abilities – he is not coming with us (just saying). Everyone thinks this is a little ambitious, but we want to do the hike so we set out.
And it is a gorgeous hike. It started out cold and windy. A few of us were contemplating at what point it would make sense to turn around and do a warmer hike. So glad we stuck it out! It didn’t take long to get warmed up and also work our way out of the wind.
Courtney and Scott are enjoying some good conversation with the view. It is already warming up and we are stopping to peel off layers and get some water.
We were surprised to see so much snow. But we are high up in the mountains and some of these peaks keep their snow caps all year. Our group included Laura, Bryce, Don Stephanie, Sedra, Allen, Scott and Karin. Courtney took the photo for me.
Below left is a common death camas. Right is a mountain goat.
Mountain Goats
The mountain goats were so used to people that they didn’t move when we came walking by. We were being so careful not to scare them and someone from the other direction just came stomping by and the goat totally ignored him.
This bit of wire has snagged some goat hair. I wonder if it is set up for goats since it seems like to small a tree for a bear (they would just rip it apart).
Looking back you can see the trail we are on. It looks like a goat trail from here! It is fairly narrow. The snow drifts slow us down a little bit. You can see that if you did slide down you would go a ways before you stopped! So far we still have everybody. Along the way we saw Grinnell Glacier.
A little way past the goats a marmot charges me! We’ve seen a lot of marmots in different places and basically they have always acted like people were invisible. They really didn’t seem to care that we were there. At this point a lot of stuff goes flying through my head at once – Do they bite? Do they carry rabies? This trail is really narrow and I’ve got nowhere to go. Can I jump this thing and let the person behind me deal with it? At the last second he swerves and jumps up the wall next to me and poses for a photo! Marmots are beautiful animals and have very thick fur (and I guess some of them are psycho). There is some color variation between them.
OK, I’m not seeing a four hour hike in our immediate future here! Four days maybe. The two local girls have hiking shoes with deeper cuts in them than ours – they’ve got better footing. It was pointed out to me that those of us from San Diego needed to get “real” hiking shoes – because we were slipping and sliding all over the place. Eventually we figured out how to kind of wedge our feet into the trail at an angle and we picked up the pace again.
Big Horn Sheep
We are still seeing spring wild flowers everywhere. Looks like this marmot is enjoying the view as much as we are!
The big horn sheep are picking the flowers for lunch. These guys weren’t too concerned about the people on the trail. They were grazing right along the trail and walking between the groups of people.
Granite Park Chalet
Seven miles in is the Granite Park Chalet. If you were backpacking you can get a reservation and make this into a two day hike. This is a good lookout point and we pause to enjoy the view and check out the bathrooms (classic National Park recycling models). And for the record (Allan) I have no idea who those people where in the photo – I couldn’t wait for them to walk by or Laura would have left me behind (she was pretty focused on keeping the pace going).
The portion of the trail from the Granite Park Chalet to the Loop is a totally different hike. The trail is a little wider here and totally surrounded in places by forest. The first portion of this hike was mostly out in the open with incredible landscape views. We also see more people here (probably because it is shorter from the Loop to this spot than the direction that we came in on).
No more snow patches so the pace is pretty good from here. We make it to the Loop in five hours! Pretty good considering that we passed over so much snow and had such a large group.
Finish Line!
So Allan’s plan calls for us to catch the shuttle down to Lake McDonald. Scott and I hitch a ride with Stephanie and Courtney down to Lake McDonald to let the rest of the group know that we are running late, but everyone will catch the next shuttle down.
The shuttle is a good idea in theory, but it seems that they haven’t figured out that they need more shuttles at the end of the day when everyone comes out of the woods at once. It takes over an hour for the group to make the 20 minute ride down because all the shuttles going by were full.
We don’t have time to make it to Holland Lake Lodge for dinner. They are a small place and stop serving dinner at 8:45 pm. So we have dinner at an Italian place right at Lake McDonald. It was a great meal to end a great hiking experience!
The drive to Holland Lake Lodge takes a couple hours. We spotted several deer along the road and were sending them mental messages to stay there! It was pretty dark at the cabins and you couldn’t see what a cute place it was until the next morning when we got up. I think everyone slept really well after our full day of adventure.