Six Weeks in the Mountains: Part II, Glacier National Park (Many Glacier Area)

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September 3:  Before we packed up to leave, the sunrise at Two Medicine forced us out of bed once again:

Many Glacier was an easy two-hour drive from Two Medicine.  The campground at Many Glacier was nicely shaded, but (unlike Two Medicine) the trees blocked the views of the surrounding mountains.  As soon as we had set up camp, we took a short hike to Apikuni Falls, scrambling over some rocks and boulders to get to the base -- Felice assumed her usual position of worship in front of the falls:

September 4:  We caught the 9 AM boat across Swiftcurrent Lake to the Grinnell Glacier trail. It was a fairly strenuous hike (8 miles and 1600 feet of elevation gain).  The morning started out cloudy and cool, but the clouds burned off as we climbed, revealing the deep blue-green Grinnell Lake far below us.  From different vantage points along the trail, the color of Grinnell Lake kept changing, depending on the lighting. It went from turquoise to aquamarine to emerald and back again, all day long; the extraordinary color is caused by the "glacial flour" suspended in the water, which absorbs all of the color in sunlight except for blue:

As we climbed up toward the glacier, we saw bighorn sheep grazing in a meadow below the trail:

Nearer to the glacier, above treeline, two rams perched on a rocky ledge above us:

One of them turned his head toward us, casually posing for his picture:

A busy marmot scurried amongst the rocks:

The last ascent up to the glacier itself was pretty steep, but it was worth it; the glacier tumbled down a hillside into a milky blue melt pool with a scattering of small icebergs:

We walked out onto the rocks surrounding the outlet stream -- behind us is the toe of the glacier:

As the glacier retreated, it exposed the rocks that it had sliced.  The concentric rings in this picture are cross-sections of fossil stromatolites, mats of blue-green algae formed hundreds of millions of years ago in a shallow warm ocean and then entombed in sandstone.  The layers of rock were then uplifted when the Rockies were formed and were later carved by the glacier:

This shot shows the bedding planes of the sedimentary rock, which are gently tilted, forming a shallow border for the body of the glacier:

Throughout our travels through the Rockies, we were struck not only by the height of the mountains but by the yawning space of the valleys -- all of that air between the mountains had once been rock that was slowly pulverized by the glaciers and then washed down the rivers to form the whole Mississippi Delta.  We eventually realized that the Rockies are sort of like music -- just as music requires some silence between the notes, the craggy mountains are even grander because they are separated by deep chasms.  In this view toward the south, notice the huge U-shaped valleys left by the vanished glaciers, thousands of feet thick:

This view is to the east, toward Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Sherburne.  In the far distance, on the left side, note the curving lateral moraine, a huge tapering gravel and rock ridge deposited by the side of the glacier after the last Ice Age:

September 5:  This was our day to drive the entire length of the Going to the Sun Road, from St. Mary to Lake McDonald and back again.  The morning was gloriously clear:

On the way back from Lake McDonald, we stopped at at Logan Pass and hiked the Highline Trail for a few miles out toward Granite Park Chalet.  Although the trail was cut into the side of a cliff, there were cables strung along the rock face; we held onto them as we traversed the ledge:

Felice managed to conquer her vertigo and enjoyed the hike in spite of it:

On our way back to Logan Pass, we ran into a family of mountain goats, who were completely unafraid of us, calmly grazing:

We kept backing away from the goats on the trail, but they kept coming nearer: 

Just as we got back to the parking lot, the goats obligingly walked behind the sign for Logan Pass:

Late that afternoon, on our way back to Many Glacier campground, we ran into a "bear jam" on the road; we soon discovered that there is a group of grizzly fanatics who patrol the roads in this area, lugging around their enormous lenses, hoping for the perfect photograph.  These "bear groupies" had spotted a grizzly on the beach near the lake.  The bear seemed uneasy, frequently sniffing the air for danger.  One of the "experts" told us that there was a larger grizzly in the bushes and that this middle-sized bear felt threatened:

Soon thereafter, he slowly walked into the lake and started swimming across.  Late that evening, after we were safely buttoned up inside the trailer, it rained hard for most of the night.

September 6:   We noticed that there were lots of "thimble berries" growing near our campsite – these berries are similar to raspberries.  They are very fragile and have to be picked carefully.  They are tasty, although they are full of seeds:

Since it was still cloudy after the rainstorm, we decided not to go for a "view hike" in the high country; instead, we headed back to the Going to the Sun Road, to St. Mary and Virginia Falls.  This is St. Mary Falls:

And this is Virginia Falls:

The intricate structure of the falls can be seen in this close-up:

Felice spotted these colorful rocks in a small stream near the base of Virginia Falls, and I set up my tripod for a time exposure.  That's how much of our photography works – Felice spots the shot, and I take care of the technical side:

Later that afternoon, as we headed back down to the trailhead, the clouds lifted and we could see fresh snow on the surrounding peaks.  Since the Rockies are sedimentary, the various rock layers tend to trap the snow and to display those wonderful stripes, adding extra texture to the view:

Late that afternoon, the mountains were reflected in St. Mary Lake – that's Wild Goose Island in the middle:

September 7: We hiked up toward Swiftcurrent pass, past Bullhead Lake and Red Rock Falls.  It was windy and very cool, but we found a good lunch spot on a hill overlooking the entire Swiftcurrent Valley -- again, notice the U-shaped valley carved by the glaciers, and imagine this whole valley filled almost to the brim with dense glacial ice:

We ran across several of these really striking velvety-brown butterflies, with sky-blue spots and yellow trim – after a little research, I discovered that this was the "Mourning Cloak," which is the official state butterfly of Montana:

On the way down, we found another excellent huckleberry patch and picked some more of them, all the while looking around for bears.  We devoured the berries later in the day, mixed with vanilla yogurt and granola.

September 8:  We had hoped to stay longer at Many Glacier, so that we could take the Iceberg Lake and Ptarmigan Tunnel hikes; but both of them were closed because of bear activity. So we reluctantly packed up and headed north across the US-Canadian border to an RV park west of Calgary, Alberta, for some much-needed grocery shopping, laundry, and battery-recharging (literally – the batteries were getting low after many days of "no hook up" camping).  After a recovery day, we headed west to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, described in Part III. 

Six Weeks in the Mountains: Part I (Glacier National Park, Two Medicine Area)

(To enlarge a photo, just click on it; click "back" to get back.  To watch a video again, click on the counterclockwise arrow in the lower-left corner.)

We had visited the Rockies briefly in 1980 and again in 2005 for a bike tour, but we had never been able to thoroughly explore this amazing region.  So, after months of planning and arranging, we set out on a six-week odyssey in late August of 2012.  We had a very tentative itinerary; we didn't make any reservations, hoping to keep our options wide open.  It worked out better than we had imagined -- we never had any trouble finding good campsites, and we were free to change our plans from moment to moment, depending on the weather and our wishes.  (Admittedly, this probably would not have been possible during the height of the summer tourist season; but after Labor Day, everything changed for the better.)

The first four long days out of Southern California were unremarkable: chugging at 60 mph, towing the trailer straight up Interstate 15 northbound, through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Montana.  (Felice kept busy by poring over our guidebooks, which would pay off nicely later on.)  The only surprise was the constant strong tailwind from the south, boosting our mileage to an average of over 13 mpg.  That doesn't sound like much, except that we usually get about 11 mpg while towing.  As we rolled into Montana, we noticed quite a bit of smoke in the sky from the wildfires throughout the Northwest.  

We stopped on the fourth night in Prewett Creek, Montana, on the Missouri River on the east side of the Continental Divide, just before the river enters the prairies.  That evening, we took a pleasant bike ride along the river; you can see the smoke in the western sky behind Felice:

After dinner, we took another ride along the river road in the moonlight, startling a small herd of deer grazing along the roadside.

August 29: As we drove north along the east side of the Rockies, the smoke slowly diminished.  By the time we got to Two Medicine Campground in the early afternoon, the smoke had fully cleared.  We got lucky and found a campsite on the river, just north of Two Medicine Lake.  Almost the first order of business was setting up our snack and cocktail area:

Several of these waterfront campsites at Two Medicine were "pull-throughs;" in other words,  we didn't have to back in to our campsite, which is more convenient:

That night, the sky was clear and bright; we took a walk along the lakeshore, and the mountains stood out against the western sky across the lake -- the tall peak in the middle is Sinopah:

August 30:  We forced ourselves out of bed earlier than usual so that we could catch the 9 AM boat across Two Medicine Lake for a hike to Upper Two Medicine Lake. This was our first hike in grizzly bear country, and we immediately saw evidence of bears on the trail.  This bear was evidently on a high-fiber diet:

Throughout our trip, we wore special pepper spray canisters on our belts and carried bear bells.  Although we were never directly threatened, the presence of bears heightened our sense of alertness on the trail.  This was not really a bad thing; I think it made us more aware of our surroundings.  As we would hike, we would both scan the trail from side to side, looking for bears lurking in the shadows.  When the bushes got very dense or high, we would sometimes sing, usually a blues number: "Oh, Grizzly, don’t you eat me . . . .”

The hike to Upper Two Medicine Lake was not very difficult -- a good "starter" hike for the beginning of a long trip.  As far as we could tell, we were the only ones at the lake:

Late that afternoon, we took another short hike from the lower lake to Aster Falls:

August 31:  We managed to catch the sunrise lighting up the mountains across the lake:

This is the same shot, edited a year later in Lightroom -- this is more accurate than the one above:

Later that morning, the sky seemed a little bit smoky; so instead of taking a "view hike," we hiked to Rockwell Falls along the south shore of Two Medicine Lake.  Along the way, we saw a moose on the edge of a pond near the trail:

The falls were lovely, swirling over carved rock layers:

Here's a brief video of the falls:

At the base of the falls, there were still some wildflowers swarming with butterflies:

That afternoon, we saw a young bull moose in the bushes near a pond.  He trotted slowly down the trail ahead of us; we gave him plenty of room.

September 1:  Feeling ambitious, we again caught the 9 AM boat across the lake and then hiked to Dawson Pass, a fairly long hike (almost 10 miles round-trip) with about 2500 feet of elevation gain.  While crossing a stream, we noticed a fossilized ripple pattern from a muddy shallow seabed; the Rockies are sedimentary, rather than granite, like the Sierra:

When we got to the pass, the cold wind sweeping over the Continental Divide from the West had been funneled into a narrow channel by the mountains and was was blasting us at about 60 mph – it was difficult to stand.  Felice immediately decided that this was a good time to practice her "flying squirrel" routine:

Here she is in action:

I arranged the tripod, weighted with rocks, to take a shot of the two of us on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the Nyack Valley – note that our clothes are blurry because they were flapping furiously in the wind:

We were still feeling adventurous, so we hiked carefully up the flank of Mount Helen to about the 8000 foot level, just to the south of Dawson Pass.  The views were even more spectacular, stretching along the Nyack Valley into the interior of the park:

On our way back down, we found a group of pasqueflowers, sometimes called "mouse on a stick."  Supposedly, they were the inspiration for Dr. Seuss's Lorax:

Once we had gotten to a lower elevation (around 6000 feet), we found a nice patch of huckleberries – they were about knee-high, with reddish leaves. The dark blue huckleberries were hidden underneath the leaves. They weren't as sweet as ordinary blueberries, but they had an intense flavor:

Back at the trailhead, there was a general store selling soft-serve ice cream, which went very nicely with the huckleberries:

That evening, just before sunset, we noticed several other people in the campground with spotting scopes who were gazing intently at the hillside above the campground. We turned around, and there was a large grizzly bear prowling slowly among the huckleberry bushes a few hundred yards from us.  (On another evening, a black bear and her cub were on a different part of the same hillside, not too far from the grizzly.)

Later that evening, the moon illuminated the mountains across the lake: 

The Big Dipper peeked out above Rising Wolf, the mountain next to the campground:

September 2:   Early in the morning,  Randy (a gentleman in the RV next to us) was out for an early morning walk with his dog, Nikka, a special bear-hunting dog from Finland.  Randy and Nikka often work with the park service and the forest service to relocate or track problem bears. As Randy and the dog were walking along the creek near our trailer, the dog started barking furiously, and there was a grizzly bear, just on the other side of the creek -- Randy took this picture with a telephoto setting:

After that excitement, we then spent the rest of the morning running a few errands (laundry, propane, and groceries) in the nearby town of East Glacier.  That afternoon, we took a short hike to Running Eagle Falls:

That evening, we decided that after several days at Two Medicine, we would migrate northward to the Many Glacier area, described in Part II of this saga.