Better Outside Than In: Glacier National Park

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Glacier National Park - part 2

There wasn't much in the way of cell phone signal in East Glacier. The park has no signal also. Most of the time the only connection was camp ground wifi which was pretty slow but enough to check weather and email. The weather forecast was calling for sun for as far as out as they were willing to guess. I had done my research on Glacier so each day I just needed to pick something from my list of hikes and get out there. Since I was stationed in East Glacier I could easily get to Many Glacier and Two Medicine which are great areas for hiking.

8/25:
Piegan pass and Siyeh pass. A long day but a good one. Two hikes starting in the same area going to two different areas. Blue sky day with views of glaciers, snow patches, lots of dramatic peaks. Perfect hiking weather. 40 in the AM going up to 60 in the afternoon. Lots of Marmots and Picas on this hike. This was an 18 mile day but the trails are very well done and not hard on the body like eastern trails. There was a lot of elevation gain and loss but the trails are not eroded and have switch backs. It was a nice day and there were seemingly unlimited mountains to take pictures of so... too many pictures.

Camp Ground

End of Siyeh hike

End of Piegan hike

A few shots driving back to camp ground

8/26:
Dawson - Pitamakan
Every day for the rest of my time at Glacier I was thinking that the current day was surely the best day and the hikes could not get much better or different. I was proven wrong. This day was a big 18 mile loop. Walked through a number of different areas and was above tree line for about 12 miles with constant changing views. This is in the Two Medicine area. Lots of glacier runoff lakes on this hike. Ran into and talked to some locals who were out on the same hike. Not many people on this hike probably due to its length.

Diving to the hike - this one and next 3

And we are off on the loop...

4 miles of trail on the back side

second half of loop had a number of lakes

And we are back at the camp ground

8/27:
Grinnell Glacier in the Many Glacier area. This hike brings you up to a glacier and you can leave the trail and walk on the glacier itself. Most of the hike you can see the glacier in the distance since you are above tree line. The trail ends at a lake with icebergs and the glacier surrounds about 1/3 of the lake. I sat out on the glacier for about an hour and you can hear rocks moving and falling as the glacier slowly moves. Very relaxing sitting there in the sun and just listening to the glacier move. Great hike. I did run into a little difficulty getting to the glacier when I went out to it. There is a stream that flows out of the lake that must to be crossed to get to the glacier. Going over I walked down the stream, which is a pretty big stream, and then jumped it in a narrow area. It worked fine but I didn't want to think about falling into this 32 degree water in the area where I crossed which was a waterfall. On the way back I figured out you can cross the stream easily right at the lake where someone had put a number of large rocks to step across.
I hiked with Doug from Canada for a few hours on the way up. He told me about a good hike in Teton, which I later did, and gave me some tips on Banff. Also ran into a couple who are both scientists at the national lab. They were out on the glacier also and I ran into them again on a hike a few days later.
It got smoky toward the end of the day. I also noticed that there were a lot less people on the road in the park and the camp ground was less full. It seems people are headed back to school and other obligations at this point in the season.