I know from any popular park that you need to get up early and be at the trails early. Once you are on the trails you are fine because the vast majority of the people at national parks do not hike more than 1 mile. They fill up the parking areas and fill up the roads but the trails are fine. If you are there early you are long gone and only see people on the last mile walking out at the end of the day.
There were forest fires all around and in one case in Glacier NP while I was there. Smoke was a problem but varied by day, wind conditions, and time of day. Typically it was clear in the morning and then the smoke would role in during the afternoon. There were many hikes off the main road where the smoke wasn't a problem.
I told someone after I got back that rain wasn't a problem the whole trip. Actually the first full day at Glacier was a cloudy day with about 1 hour of cold rain in the middle.
I made reservations at the KOA in St Mary for the first 3 nights. I knew it was a busy park and wanted to be set at least in the beginning. This is a high end camp ground! It even had a pool! Most of these privately owned camp grounds that are not inside the national parks have laundry and of course showers. One thing I noticed that proved to be true at most camp grounds I went to is that the tent sites are much better than the RV sites. Camp grounds tend to line up the RVs right next to each other similar to a trailer park. The tent sites are more spread out. In this case I had a great spot right next to a nice river. Quiet and had a trail going along the river that was actually very nice.
Sleeping at Glacier was comfortable. Temperatures were about 40 at night and about 75 in the valley during the day with cooler temps at elevation.
8/23:
Arrive with enough time to take some lake afternoon semi-smokey pictures and settle into my camp site.
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| Down by the river |
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| View from camp site |
8/24:
First full day at glacier. This day was cloudy and also had some cold rain for about an hour. Being my first day out I had all kinds of gear so the cold rain wasn't a problem other than hurting the views.
This hike was Iceburg lake and Ptarmigan Tunnel. There is plenty of time in a day so I had time for longer hikes and in this case two hikes that started from the same area. It was a 15 mile round trip day. Iceberg lake is a glacier runoff lake surrounded by cliffs and there are icebergs floating around in it. The tunnel hike was very interesting since it went up and area that used to have glaciers and still has lakes, through a tunnel in the rock at elevation, and then views of an entirely different area on the other side. You could see a large glacier in the distance from the other side of the tunnel.
I was a little worried about hiking by myself since the trail head, and every one I saw for the rest of my time at glacier, said "do not hike alone". This is due to bears and I suppose injury etc. On the tunnel hike I ran into a woman who just graduated from nursing school and was out by herself on a four day backpacking trip. You need a permit for these trips. Seeing her doing a lot more than what I was doing made me feel a lot safer. We walked for a couple of miles and she told me all about the latest light weight camping gear and how she was traveling for a month before starting "real life".
Someone put a lot of work into the tunnel trail. The tunnel of course but the trail itself, particularly on the far side of the tunnel, was carved into the rock. This was a cloudy day so don't give up on Glacier due to this post.
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| Far side of tunnel |
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| Iceberg lake |
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| This is a Ptarmigan? |
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| The other side of the tunnel was very different |
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| Driving back from hike: Picture of hotel I didn't stay at. |
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