Glacier National Park
"Third time's a charm!" That's exactly how many times it took us to get to Glacier National Park in Montana, and it was more than worth the wait.  When we first tried to visit the park last August, we found ourselves just a couple of days away from Glacier, needing to change plans.  With all of the lightning-induced fires that had plagued Idaho and Montana last summer, we took one last look at the webcams in the park, and decided that it just wasn't going to be an enjoyable trip with all of the smoke up there.

No problem... we'll just go in June next time to beat fire season, right?  Wrong!  By the end of June, the Going-to-the-Sun (GTTS) Road was still closed due to snow.  Wow!  What a difficult park to visit, and what a narrow window of opportunity between snow and fire.  So, we waited out one more month of the summer, and finally made it!

In ten days, we put 1500 miles on the car: 500 to get to the park, 500 driving around there, and 500 to get back.  Even so, Glacier may be one of the least-geared National Park's for driving.  The GTTS disects the park going east-to-west, but to really see the park, you need to get out on the trails.  The park has about 100 miles of well-travelled roadways, and about 700 miles of trails.  That's why we ended up hiking nearly 40 miles, with a total elevation gain of over 5400 feet.  Total climb distance (all of the ups between the low and high elevation of each hike) was around 9000 feet!  No wonder the kids were complaining by the time we were done!  Amelia and Raymond were real troopers both on the trail and in the car... particularly during that 13-hour dash home.

The following map of Glacier comes from of Delorme Topo USA. The legend for the map is:
  • Park boundary (orange)
  • Continental Divide (red)
  • Going to the Sun Road (white)
  • Hikes we took (yellow) [including two hikes north of the 49th parallel... i.e. Canada]
 

Highlights

While there were plenty of scenery to enjoy at many turnouts along the roads, we found that you really do have to hike to see the beauty of this park.  It is logically divided up into glaciated valleys, as follows.  Numbers indicate the hike as shown on the map linked to in the main bullet heading.
  • Lake McDonald Valley:
    • 2 - Avalanche Lake
    • 7 - John's Lake Loop
    • 11 - Rocky Point
    • 14 - Trail of the Cedars
  • Many Glacier & Logan Pass:
    • 16 - Apikuni Falls
    • 22 - Grinnell Lake
    • 23 - Hidden Lake Overlook
    • 31 - Red Rock Falls
    • 36 - Swiftcurrent Falls
  • St. Mary Valley:
    • 17 - Baring Falls
    • 32 - St. Mary Falls
    • 34 - Sun Point Nature Trail
    • 35 - Sunrift Gorge
    • 38 - Virginia Falls
    • N/A - Deadwood Falls
  • Two Medicine Valley:
    • 39 - Appistoki Falls
    • 40 - Aster Park
    • 49 - Running Eagle Falls
  • Waterton Lakes National Park (Canada):
    • Red Rock Canyon
    • Blackiston Falls
    • Cameron Lake (Canoe)
    • Waterton Townsite
    • Bear's Hump
    • Prince of Wales Hotel
A page of Google maps for each of the five areas above can be found here.

Lowlights

It's hard to complain about the beauty of Glacier, or how well the vacation went in general, but here is a small list of complaints:
  • Even with 6 lodging establishments and over 1000 campsites, the campgrounds are packed!  You gotta act fast if you want to get a campsite.
  • Campsites can be a bit tight at many of the campgrounds.  We had a hard time finding good campsites that would accomodate our tent.
  • We wanted the weather to cooperate with us 100% of the time... but we happily settled for 90%.
  • Not that we didn't expect it, but the insects can be pretty annoying--not to mention tenacious!
  • This is one very busy park.  We found very few opportunities to be away from massive crowds, even though this park is very far away from any major population.  We did find that Waterton Lakes National Park... Glacier's partner in Canada, was much less visited, but still highly enjoyable.

Favorites

Here's what each family member said was their absolute favorite activity of the trip:
Raymond: Shuttle Bus on GTTS Road
Amelia: Shuttle Boats on Swiftcurrent, Josephine Lakes
Suzanne: Redrock Falls Hike
Mike: Best Picnic Spots ever! (Avalanche Lake, Grinnell Lake, Paradise Point, & Redrock Falls)

Takeaways

Here are a few final thoughts from our vacation:
  • Wildlife.  Glacier National Park is truly wild!  No wonder they beat it into car campers to put EVERYTHING away that could potentially attract bears into the campgrounds.  We saw deer, elk, moose, bear, bighorn sheep, and even the cute hoary marmot.  
    • We thought we were totally fulfilled after seeing the juvenile grizzly that bounded across the road in front of our car in Canada, but when we saw a full-sized grizzly bear come directly at us out of the brush about 30 yards away from our trail... well, that gave us quite a start!  Needless to say, we got ourselves as quietly as possible up the path before snapping a couple of quick pictures and moving on.
    • We'd just learned the night before about the mischeivous marmot, so when we saw the little rodent sneaking around the shuttle boat shelter where unsuspecting park visitors left there belongings while waiting on the shore of the lake, we knew exactly what he was up to.  No sooner could we alert the group of people about the marmot's presence, we turn to see the guy quickly hauling off his prey--the defenseless sweatshirt never knew what hit it.  Being closest to the critter, I bolted after him and was able to pluck it from him before he disappeared around the corner and restored it to its proper owner, who couldn't help laugh at the antics of the overstuffed squirrel.
    • Walking back from Red Rock Falls, we noticed a couple approaching us from down the trail.  Compleletly unaware, we noticed a large object move across the trail behind them.  Through the trees, there was no mistaking the distinct profile of a female moose, right where another trail went off to Fishercap Lake.  We slowly and quietly wandered down the path, but never again saw the moose until we got to the shore of the lake, where a crowd of awe-struck spectators where already starting to watch the moose amble out into the shallow lake for some feeding.  Across the lake, we could hear at least one more moose groan under the protection of a thicket of trees.
    • The bighorn sheep was a ewe that we saw right in the parking area of the Many Glacier Hotel.  She was just grazing there right beside our car as we drove by.  In fact, we had to proceed carefully, because she was right in the road for a moment and we weren't sure that she was going to stay out of the way.  Animals have little fear of people when they are protected by National Park status.
  • Breath-taking scenery.  We don't expect our pictures will do much justice to the magnificience of the scenery.  Rushing creeks, pounding waterfalls, massive glaciated valleys, gorgeous hanging valleys, rocks of every color, steep and jagged mountains, and turquoise-colored lakes kept our jaws dropped for the entire trip.  In fact, in many settings, we couldn't get the scene in one picture, so we took nearly 30 panoramics and stitched them together afterwards with hugin.
  • Weather.  From hazy to crystal clear; still air, to gusty wind; rain, hail and abundant sunshine.  Expect everything when you're in glacier...  As they say, "if you don't like the weather, just wait."  We were blessed with mostly excellent weather, but never did get to see Logan Pass on the Continental Divide with any sunlight on it.

Photos

As you've come to expect from the Lewis Family, there are loads of pictures to wade through from our vacation.  We found so many panoramic scenes, that we snapped more pans on this trip than any other.  Thank goodness for hugin, which allows us to easily piece together panoramas from multiple pictures!  It's a real lifesaver!  We've uploaded the following five albums consisting of 325 pictures!  
 There were so many photogenic views, that pictures just seemed to take themselves.

Last Updated -- 10 November 2012