Glacier National Park - July 2007

July 17^th
We struck camp on Tuesday and set our sights on the Many Glacier area of the park. To get to Many Glacier, we drove up Going-to-the-Sun road and exited the park at the town of St. Mary. In St. Mary, we restocked a few food items and had a great lunch at The Park Café and then proceeded to Many Glacier. After setting up camp, we took a short, but steep hike to Apikuni Falls. The spray of the water felt wonderful to three sweaty hikers.

Apikuni Falls

On our return to the campground, we had our second bear sighting. There were two grizzlies feeding on the slope above the road, about 200 yards away. We pulled over and watched with our binoculars. A few minutes later, a ranger asked all of the onlookers to move along and we continued back to camp.

That evening we went to a ranger-led talk about the geology of the park held at the Many Glacier Hotel. It was a great talk and gave us good insight into the tectonic forces that created the great peaks and the glacial activity that carved them. The hotel itself is beautiful and looks out over Swiftcurrent Lake and into the park.

View from Many Glacier Hotel

Many Glacier Hotel

July 18^th
Most of the trails we wanted to hike in the Many Glacier area were closed due to heavy grizzly activity. We decided to hike into Bullhead Lake and slightly beyond to get a good view of Swiftcurrent Pass. The hot weather of the preceding days had passed making this day’s hike very pleasant. We saw a lot of the red Grinnell argillite that the ranger mentioned the previous night in addition to many great stands of aspen.

After the hike we headed out of the park and south towards the Two Medicine area. On our way through the town of St. Mary we stopped for another great meal, this time at the Two Sisters Café. We arrived in the Two Medicine campground in the late afternoon and set up camp. After dinner, thunder started to develop to the west and a ranger came around to relay the National Weather Service forecast: 60 mile per hour winds, golf ball sized hail, heavy rain and, of course, thunder and lightning. The weather hit us around 11 pm and the forecast proved to be pretty accurate, though the hail was not as large as they suspected.

Greta and I at Redrock Lake

Bullhead Lake

Kevin and I taking a break on the trail

Grinnell Argillite uplift with wildflowers

Swiftcurrent Pass