Glacier 2016 - Part 4 - Many Glacier and Highline trail

Day 5 we drove up to the Many Glacier area of the park (about 45 minutes north of the St. Mary area).  We did not get to visit the Two Medicine area, or the northern lakes on this trip - have to go back someday...

Many Glacier is home to several smaller lakes, along with a number of hikes to glaciers and is a jumping-off point for the northern part of the backcountry in the park.  At the entrance the reflective view up Sherburne Lake called for a stop and pictures.

Sherburne Lake

Our goal was to hike to Grinnell Lake, which receives water from Grinnell Glacier on the east side of the Garden Wall rock formation.  There is a boat tour which heads along two lakes to make a remaining 1 mile hike to the lake, we hadn't reserved spots on a boat so chose to start from the trailhead and hike along Swiftcurrent Lake and Josephine Lake, making a total round trip of about 7.5 miles.

On the outbound trip, we saw a doe feeding on the flowers alongside the trail, she stepped off the trail about 10 feet to get around us and continued in the opposite direction.  The trail started along a creek, then followed the lakes before joining and following Grinnell Creek.  There was a suspension bridge crossing the creek which added a little excitement to the hike.

Lunch was at lower Grinnell Lake, seeing the falls at the far end of the trail.  There is another trail that heads to the upper lake, and has a view of the glacier - but is about 4 miles longer round trip, with some elevation gain.  We saw another doe wading in the lake.  We didn't stay too long - mosquitoes were pretty bad, and clouds were starting to come in (in fact, it started raining about 5 minutes after we reached the car).

On the return trip, we decided to hike the other side of the lakes, to see something a little different on the return trip.  Once we reached the boat dock, the disembarking passengers told us about a moose in the water near the boat dock, so we saw him for a bit.

After about 1/4 mile of walking we came upon Momma Moose and her calf, eating trees on and along the trail.  I didn't get a good picture of them, but did get a picture of the prints in the trail.  We eventually turned around and returned on the other side of the lake when it was obvious that the moose weren't going to move for us.  There was a group of hikers on the other side of the moose, who were looking at a much longer way around if the moose didn't move on soon...

Not much happened on the way back to the car - other than clouds starting to gather.  On return to the trailhead parking lot we found 2 more moose eating the grass alongside the road - about 20 feet from the car.

Our last day in the park we wanted to go up to Logan Pass and do some hiking - but the day was a bit colder and much cloudier - we saw clouds over the tops of the mountains, and the pass was quite chilly.  At the pass we had two choices - a short hike to see Hidden Lake (the trail to the lake was closed for fish spawning), or we could hike some portion of the Highline Trail.  We ended up hiking the Highline Trail from Logan pass to the Loop trailhead down the road - 11.5 miles total hiking with mostly an elevation drop - the kids did awesomely the whole way.  We then caught a shuttle back up to Logan Pass, and then a shuttle back to St. Mary Visitor Center.

Highline trail hike

Highline trail elevation profile

We enjoyed lunch near Haystack Butte, an afternoon break at the Granite Park Chalet, seeing Marmots, another doe, and some fantastic views into the valleys.  If you look at the map above you can see we actually were pretty close to the previous days hike - the Highline trail runs along the east side of the Garden Wall, and has a spur trail to an overlook of Grinnell Glacier.  The start of the Highline trail is carved out of the rock wall, with a drop to the road below.  After the chalet the last 4 miles is all downhill, dropping 3000 feet.

Cloudy at Logan Pass

The carved portion of the trail

Look - snow!

Marmot!

Bear Grass bloom

At Granite Park Chalet

Huckleberries!

Waiting for the shuttle - windy and chilly at Logan Pass

Over 30 miles of hiking in all - lots of great scenery, but we barely scratched the surface of this park.  We'll have to return at some point for Two Medicine, Kintla and Bowman Lakes, and the southern parts of the park.

We saw lots of deer, lots of marmots, 5 moose, no bears.

Glacier 2016 Part 3 - Going to the Sun Road, East side waterfalls

Day 4 we left Fish Creek campground and moved over to the east side of the park.  The west side is forested with many mountains, the east side along the Going to the Sun Road is more prairie and flatter (not all of the east side is flat - just the bit we were camping at).  We packed up and started driving the road across the park - expecting to take most of the morning to do the 30 mile drive (there are a lot of opportunities to stop and take pictures).  As we got started, the morning was calm, so Lake MacDonald was reflecting the mountains beautifully.

The drive over the Going To The Sun Road is beautiful, showing different views of the valleys, small waterfalls, snow fields, and a view of Jackson Glacier on the descent.  Some pictures on the way:

The Big Bowl near Logan Pass

Valley on the East Side

Jackson Glacier

St. Mary Lake

Logan Pass was our preferred break point for lunch, and maybe a hike - but the parking lot was full so we proceeded past.  Again, we chose to just head for the campground and eat lunch there.  We had reservations in St. Mary campground, on the no-generator loop.  Again we found that the picture on Recreation.gov was misleading - finding that the tent pad would just fit out tent, but that there were a lot of exposed roots in the area we would be sleeping.  This took a little creative arrangement to get people positioned between the roots, so everybody would be fairly comfortable.  We also had a conflict between the screen room over the picnic table and the fire pit again, but left the screen room over the picnic table in this site.

After lunch we walked over to the St. Mary visitor center (about 1/4 mile away) and took the shuttle up to the Sunrift Gorge trailhead.  The gorge is a point where a creek comes down to St. Mary Lake, passing under the road, and has a deep, narrow gorge that it flows through near the road, along with some  waterfalls.  From this trailhead a trail goes down to the lakeshore, with a stop at Baring falls near the lake.

Sunrift Gorge

Baring Falls

St. Mary Lake

The trail then went along the lake shore to the west end of the lake, then crossed to follow the creek to another set of falls - St. Mary's falls.  The trail along the lake passed through an area that had a fire the previous year, so lots of burned trees, and not much shade.  It was interesting to see how much undergrowth had come in - grass and flowers were filling in everywhere.  We saw two bucks in this stretch feeding on the grasses among the burned trees.

We returned to the road after St. Mary's falls and returned to camp and dinner.  Along the way the bus driver stopped along a meadow where a number of other cars were stopped - apparently there was a grizzly in the meadow, though we didn't see anything.

In the evening we went to another campground for a presentation by Jack Gladstone, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and singer, who told some of the history of the area in song.  Returning from that I took a few pictures of the nearby mountains in the setting sun.