National Park Count: 41
Hey there Adventurers! I know I have said this before, but I am really trying to get caught up on my trips! Summer of ’24 included two amazing trips to see two parks, both of which have claimed the title of Crown of the Continent. We will start with Glacier National Park, National Park 41 for me!
To begin with, one should know that this park is widely considered to be the best park in the NPS system and the visit here generally happens in a small window in the later summer. A trip to Glacier National Park cannot be discussed without first discussing the ordeal that is planning, scheduling, and paying for a visit to this pinnacle park! The Sidekick was in tow once again. Southwest flies to the northeast, southeast, northwest, and almost every thing in between, but there is a sizable void in the north central part of the country. One could fly into Bozeman but there is a lengthy drive up to Glacier. So, we actually ponied up and *gasp* purchased tickets on other airlines to fly directly to Kalispell, MT. That was the easy part. The tough part was lodging. Camping was out of the question. She needs a proper bed for back issues, weather is suspect as hell that time of year, and I am not tenting out in grizzly country anyway! So the options are the in-park lodging, which isn’t cheap and is not easily available, or you lodge outside the park, which is also expensive, and requires lengthy drives in and out each day. We settled on in-park lodging, which was a hassle! I started booking the three main lodges in June of 2023. For the next roughly 6 months I kept canceling and rebooking, looking at the schedules nearly every day to achieve the goal of 5 consecutive nights in the park between the three main sections of Glacier National Park: Lake McDonald Lodge, Many Glacier Lodge, and Rising Sun Motor Inn. By around January or February, I FINALLY got our 5 nights! Those were 2 nights in the Rising Sun on the East side of the park, 1 night at Many Glacier, and then 2 nights at Lake McDonald. Stay tuned for a very big problem at Lake McDonald Lodge!
Ok, so its June and GO TIME! Our very first night in the area was in Kalispell. Upon landing we grabbed the car, got supplies, checked into the hotel and took the nearly 45 minute drive up to the visitor center in West Glacier just to get a lay of the land up there. We would not be back until the end of the trip and just wanted to make sure we actually got a chance to get to that visitor center during operating hours.
The next day we got up early and headed toward the east side of the park. We did not take the famous Going to the Sun Road for this segment. Rather, we took the highway that goes around the south of the park. I had read it was a neat drive, and we were going to an area of the park called Two Medicine in the southeast quadrant. The most sensible route was the one we took. Of course, being late June in summertime Montana, we ran into temperatures in the 30s and ice/sleet on the way! But once we got to Two Medicine the weather was a bit better. We took in the stunning views and then had a boat ride across Two Medicine Lake. This ride is a short cut to Twin Falls. After departing the historic boat it is about a mile or so hike to the falls. I have to say this area of the park was stunning, and I think more so than the rest of the park, maybe an unpopular opinion! When we got back to boat dock we ran into a cute goat family, the first wildlife of the trip! We also talked to a ranger in the small station here who had a legit Bark Ranger with him! After spending some money in the gift shop, we were off to our lodging at the Rising Sun Motor Inn in the St. Mary area inside the park’s East Entrance.
I want to spend a quick moment to point out that this side of the park is adjacent to the Blackfeet reservation. They are very much active in the administration of this part of the park and the names here are still their names. For instance, Two Medicine is a Blackfeet name, as is Sinopah Mountain in the same area. Blackfeet flags are present in this part of the park, and the visitor center actively makes reference to the Blackfeet tribe.
After checking out the visitor center here, we headed into the park to our lodge at Rising Sun. The lodges in the Rising Sun Motor Inn are very spartan, as expected. There is no cell signal, also expected. If you are driving a large vehicle, parking at your individual room might be tricky but there is parking at the restaurant and store and you can also find some sweet spots in that building to get wifi and/or cellular signal. (If you want more reliable cell signal, there was a good spot in St. Mary Village but you had to walk around a bit to find it!) What wasn’t really expected was how cold it was! Over night I about froze! Our lodge was a one bed, and I had brought along an air mattress, so part of that was being in the nook between the bed and wall with the heater on the other side of the room which did not allow heat to get to me, but the room was quite drafty, as well. It was late June, and I have been to Alaska earlier and later than this and not been that cold overnight!
The St. Mary Lake area is quite splendid! If you are on the east side of the park you aren’t going to miss it. There are plenty of great viewpoints of the lake and then as you go further up some amazing views of the mountains and the valley. There are waterfalls everywhere and even a viewpoint of a glacier along the road. Fun fact, there is a tiny island in the lake called Goose Island, which was the location used in the opening scene of the original The Shining movie!
Even though we were to traverse the Going to the Sun Road to Lake McDonald a couple days later, we got up the next morning and went ahead and drove up to Logan Pass anyway. Despite being late June, there were still many feet of snow at the pass and the spectacular Highline Trail was snowed in and closed. The pass sits at around 6600 feet elevation and is on the continental divide. The parking here is notoriously limited, and the visitor center and parking lot were jammed, despite the trail closures, so be sure to arrive early! The road only opened a few days prior to our visit, and it seems everyone was rearing to drive through even if they couldn’t hike. Despite missing the hikes here, the drive and the views are spectacular! We had lunch on a roadside pullout with maybe the best scenery one can find!
Coming back to Rising Sun we hiked to the awesome St. Mary Falls, ran into a bear and her baby, and found a really amazing and super easily accessible spot that gives killer views at sunrise. This is the Sun Point Nature Trail area. We stopped here this afternoon and then came back for that sunrise view the following morning! The Guide Along app was once again an MVP on this trip, but even it didn’t offer this site as a stop. Don’t miss this spot! Literally, the best views of St. Mary Lake are found here!
Our next day was the trip up to Many Glacier. After catching sunrise at the Sun Point Nature trail, we headed that way. We had some mail to drop off and found a small post office in Babb, MT, but we were early and drove up to the border to wait for the post office open. After an awkward but brief drive onto Canadian soil with a Canadian border agent escort to fill in the time, we found ourselves at the Many Glacier Lodge. We immediately ran into goats and amazing views. Somehow, despite paying a reasonable price, we had a room with a balcony, lake side, on the second floor, pretty much the best room you could get! As we were only here that afternoon, this part of the trip was short but no less great! That afternoon we hiked around the lake a bit and ended up at Fishercap Lake to go looking for moose. Apparently moose frequent this lake and we found one! We were hiking and came across her (assuming a her, no rack in June) in the woods and followed her out to the lake and watched her swimming across. So cool! (also, a friendly reminder to stay back a good bit as moose are not to be trifled with!)
The next morning we had to ad lib. You can hike from the lodge to the Grinnell Glacier or take a boat as a shortcut. Well, getting those tickets was tough. I managed to get one persons worth of tickets, but we could not get the second set. You can standby, but there were a ton of people trying to do that. From the lodge, one boat crosses Swiftcurrent lake. From there you hike a bit to Lake Josephine and catch another boat. Then that boat takes you to a much shorter section of the Grinnell Glacier hike across Lake Josephine. However, as we only had one persons worth of tickets, we were told that we could hike all the way out and then both of us could one way back on the boats. So we hiked from the lodge all the way to the back end of Lake Josephine on the Grinnell Glacier Trail! It was about 3 miles or so. It was awesome. We ran into people coming the other way who were warning of a grizzly on the trail, so we decided to only go to the boat dock and come back. The remaining part of the Grinnell Trail was still snowed in anyway, and while on the boat coming back we could see bears very near that section of the trail, eek!
We departed Many Glacier early in the afternoon and made our way to the Lake McDonald lodge on the west side of the park. To make this trip we drove the much lauded Going to the Sun Road. We had suspect weather along the drive, but this is definitely a great drive, and well worth all the accolades! The only gripe was the weather had a lot of the drive fogged in, but when there were clear sections, it was spectacular. There were many view points along the way, and we stopped at a noteworthy spot called Red Rock Point, which gave awesome access to the raging creek running through, a cool spot to not miss!
We got to the lodge and had some problems. Not to get into things too much, we were in one of the buildings on the property, not the main building, but our room door would not open. A lodge employee was only able to get in by breaking through the window and even after that, was unable to fix the door. Additionally, another party was there and thought they had the entire building to themselves, and they were not particularly friendly about it. After a couple hours of waiting around (which we had intended to be spent exploring) we were told we would be moved into another building and given this huge area, essentially the entire second floor to ourselves, but we could only be there one of the two nights and then the lodge was to move our luggage to another room inside the lodge proper for the second night. It was a little more of a fiasco than what I wrote, but that is how it was resolved. It is probably an issue that rarely happens, but I feel like it should be known.
Despite losing the time that evening, we were still planning on hiking the Avalanche Lake Trail the following morning. This is a great trail, in fact the number one rated trail in the park, with an amazing payoff after 3 miles, making it a 6 mile roundtrip. There is also a nice walk of a mile or so at the start, the Trail of Cedars. Both make it a 7 mile trip. The Avalanche Lake Trail follows a really cool and scenic creek. Be mindful, as there were selfie induced fatalities on that creek around the time we were there. Avalanche Lake is spectacular. We didn’t have sun, but even so, it was still beautiful! Afterward we worked our way back to the lodge, hit some cool side spots on the way back, and did an evening hike along Lake McDonald before settling in to prepare for the trip home the following day.
Overall Impressions: This is a huge park with a ton to see and do. There was an entire gravel access part of the park that we were not able to visit due to weather and time (even in a 5 day visit!) and then a visit to the adjacent Canadian Waterton Park would push the trip to probably at least 10 days to do everything. Despite our trip being the end of June and top of July, weather and snow is still a consideration you must account for. And yet, even so, there are plenty of humans around to remind you how popular the park is. Overall Glacier is a gorgeous park and absolutely one of the great parks in our country. Must see and experience and I would absolutely go back.
The Adventurer’s Rating: 5 Arrowheads
The Parks Adventurer 