Moments in Montana: Exploring Glacier

This week was a bit out of the ordinary as I took a day off from work to travel to Glacier National Park with one of my best friends from South Dakota for the weekend. She drove almost ten hours on Wednesday to meet up with me after I got of work and we made loose plans for a Thursday-Sunday trip in Glacier and the surrounding area.

On Wednesday I had a very long day of work due to hike that was around 14 miles upwards 4000+ feet to the top of Steamboat Mountain in the Rockies looking for some of our more rare alpine plants: Cardamine rupicola and Erigeron lackschwetsii.

We found a couple of bear signs on the way as they were probably also enjoying the ripe service and huckle berries along the trail. We got back to Helena late but the trip was successful and my coworker was nice enough to clean up my messy data inputs on the way back since I was driving.

Somehow things worked out almost perfectly timing wise as my friend Jess got in around the same time as I did and we managed to met up at Winco to get groceries. After loading up the cooler we went pack to camp and had a late dinner before packing up and calling it a night.

On Thursday we got an early start and departed camp by 6:30 for the northwest. We stopped in Missoula for coffee and pasties at DRUM where we each got a raspberry oat bar and I got an oat milk latte while Jess had an iced dirty chai. Such a nice treat to start the trip!

We drove up along the eastern side of Flathead Lake where there were cherry stands very 15 feet and huge swaths of orchards patching the landscape.

It was smoky and hard to see any mountains but we stopped for a picnic lunch near Big Fork and still managed to enjoy the tiny view. We also went in to the forest service office at Big Fork to get some maps and info on dispersed camping.

We ended up heading to Hungry Horse Reservoir, which is part of the Flathead National Forest. The damn was very impressive and the reservoir was very large and beautiful. We found a place to disperse camp and attempted to find a trail to hike but nothing was marked and the list of trails in the area we got at the visitors center did not come with a map… so we ended up just walking down to the lake and swimming for a bit. We had a nice dinner with a view of august he mountains and decided to go back to the lake for an evening dip to ward off the heat before setting up our tent and calling it an early night.

Friday we were up at 4 when the moon was still in the sky. We hadn’t been able to get reservation tickets for the west glacier entrance but it was still possible to make it in as long as we got the there before the gates opened at 6 am. We made it there at 5.

We drove in the dark and smoke and fog to get to the first trailhead where we had tailgate oatmeal for breakfast and instant mochas to keep us awake. Eagerly we started up the trail to Avalanche Lake which was absolutely gorgeous! We got there just as the sun was rising and managed to beat the crowd of tourists that arrived as we were heading out.

For our next adventure we decided to drive over to West McDonald Trail on a dirt path on the far side of the lake. The trail was not the nice lakeside walk we expected but instead a high shrubby old burn area so we decided to turn around after a mile out and went to the Apgar visitor center to get some advice. After waiting in line for a while we got some hiking and camping questions answered by a very nice employee and picked up a few things from the gift shop.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road was the fasted way to get to the other side of the park so that’s what we did—which I would recommend for the views but not for two girls who are terrified of heights driving on a barely wide enough two way road with a couple thousand foot drop offs on either side. We did some sing-scream therapy to the radio to say the least.

We also got progressively annoyed with (stupid) people as the park got very crowded between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm, which unfortunately was when we were driving the road.

We stopped at St Mary’s Falls for a 4 mile out and back hike and quick dip in one of the lakes. Some cute snakes decided to sun themselves on a log in the water near us and we said hello while snacking on some slightly dusty berries we had found on the way.

Next was a quick stop at St Mary’s visitor center for some more camping advice before we left the park for the evening. There was no dispersed camping nearby so we went to the closest paid campground which was on the Blackfeet Reservation: Chewing Backbones where we were helped by a lovely group of staff and got an okay campsite but included water and showers and as a bonus.

Saturday morning we got up early again and headed straight into Many Glacier where there was about a thirty minute delay due to construction. We got to the trailhead and had another tailgate breakfast of oatmeal and coffee before loading up on water and snacks then hiking up to Grinnell Glacier.

It was around 11 miles round trip see the glacier and lake on the top and boy was it beautiful. The trial was pretty gradual until the climb at the end with a total of a little over two thousand feet of elevation gain. The path was bordered by lots of fun species of ferns, plants, berries, and various ground squirrels. When we made it to the top we had a sandwich summit snack and dipped our feet in glacial water. Which immediately went numb on contact and dissuaded us from jumping all the way in. Though I did throw a glacial snowball at Jess.

Unfortunately not everyone else on the trail was as polite or prepared as we were. We left at 8 am and yet again all the idiots seem to be out at 11. Almost everyone in the morning was well prepped with proper footwear, water, bear spray, etc and most were pleasant to hike with or around. The same could not be said for the later crowd. For an 11 mile hike there was a concerning amount of people wearing sandals, with no water or bear spray (even though there were signs of bears very close to the start of the trail and were in grizzly country) and had no concept of proper trail etiquette.

Anyways, because of humans not exhaustion or difficulty it took us almost more time to get down to the bottom than it took us to get to the top as we lost track or how many times we had to pull over or stop for people who didn’t understand trail etiquette.

Back at the bottom we had some (hard) raspberry juice and a picnic by the lake to unwind and release some tension from the trails of the hike. After relaxing for a while we decided to find a better lake to swim in and picked the next spot on our list: Two Medicine. We jumped in the lake and had a lovely picnic dinner before heading to the lower border of the park to find some dispersed camping on the Lewis and Clark national forest. We took some preventative measures to ward off bears as we were now staying in Grizzly country and had a slightly fretful night of sleep as our imaginations got the better of us.

Sunday we drove back into Two Medicine to hike up Scenic Point trail after our standard oats and coffee start to the day. The trail was pretty steep but beautiful, although the smoke from nearby fires steadily increased as the winds picked up and visibility went down severely.

Unfortunately we did not make it to the end of the hike as about a mile from the top a group of four full-curl male big horn sheep were chilling on the trail and were NOT happy to see us. One of the rams started pawing at the ground and looked like he was thinking about charging so Jess and I did a quick turn around and went back down the trail as quickly as we could.

We ended up hiking by the lake for a little bit before jumping in again and having our last picnic lunch on the trip.

It was around a 4 hour drive back to Helena so we stopped for coffee halfway (very bad coffee as only the gas stations were still open at 3 pm) and jammed out to some oldies music and listened to a shark podcast.

When we got back we did all of the boring tasks of cleaning up, unpacking and repacking (I had another work camping trip the next day), sorting through photos, making dinner, etc.

Overall it was a wonderful trip. I cannot count the number of times I laughed and sang and danced and acted completely ridiculous with Jess. It was so fun to let loose and go with the flow and not care about time or what we did other than having fun together. We were so often in awe in the surrounding scenery and I lost track of the number of “damn”s and “GIRL” and “OMG” and “ahhh that’s so pretty!!!”

We didn’t make it to everything on our list and we hadn’t gotten backcountry camping permits to do a trip out to Goat Haunt or up to Canada so we definitely need to return to the park at some point. I was a bit flustered to be around so many people as I’ve gotten used to the more solitary life in the woods and most of the hikes I normally do are nowhere near as crowded.

I’m a firm believer that the outdoors and hiking/fitness in nature should be accessible to all, and the $80 park pass was the most expensive thing on this trip other than gas money. I can think of many other beautiful places in this state, county, and world that are less crowded and more accessible so while I am so glad I was able to explore Glacier and get to experience park for the first time with one of my best friends I am also so excited to explore some of the less well trod paths in the future.