October 1-5, 2020
Yes, there are glaciers here! We rented a VRBO only 2 minutes from the park entrance. It was an adorable 1 bedroom cabin with a full kitchen and room to move around. We loved it and everything about this park. If you ever visit you will understand why they named the main road through the park Going to the Sun Road. The road is about 50 miles long and winds through the park with many pullover spots with incredible views or trailheads for hikes. The east part of the park was closed while we were there because that part of the park is on Blackfoot Indian reservation and they closed it due to Covid. Therefore, there were a few hikes I really wanted to do that we could not access. But with 750 miles of hiking trails in the park we had more than enough to explore.
The first day we spent the day driving Going to the Sun Road and ended at Logan’s Pass where we hiked the Hidden Lake trail and Reynolds trail. Hidden Lake is an easy hike and very popular with lots of tourist. Reynolds is not a popular trail so we found ourselves hiking alone only encountering a few people who were heading back down as we were going up. At the higher elevation of this trail we had to walk through short areas of snow. When we reached the top but decided to continue along the ridge we were met by a very large mountain goat (see picture below) blocking our path on the trail. Imagine, me and my 2 teenage daughters alone on a trail in the middle of the glaciers staring down an enormous mountain goat who despite our making lots of noise refused to leave the trail. In fact, he began lumbering towards us down the trail. Not knowing what this creature might do, we slowly began to walk back the way we came. He continued to follow us for quite a ways before we eventually did not see him anymore. That will get your adrenaline going.
The next morning we got up early and hit the Highline Trail. This is a must do trail in the park. It is at least 20 miles long but our goal was to see a glacier and in order to do that we had to hike 8 miles of this trail to the Grinnel Lake Glacier Overlook. It was a beautiful and not too strenuous hike until we reached the last .85 miles that took us UP to the overlook. When I say up, I mean UP. It took us 45 minutes to travel less than a mile. But when you get up there, WOW is it worth it. We took a long break at the top, had lunch, took photos and chatted with other hikers before we began our 8 miles back. What wasn’t so strenuous the first 8 miles proved to be extremely challenging the second 8 miles. 16 miles of hiking for anyone is a challenge no matter how great of shape you are in. Needless to say, we all slept very well that night.
Our last day in Glacier we took a rest day (well deserved after that long hike). We slept in, caught up on school and emails and then headed back out to the park for some late afternoon photos at various pullovers.
Glacier is a gorgeous park with so much more to see. I will be back one day.
Mother and Daughter of all Trips 