Our plans for the second day at glacier was to drive the 'Going to the sun road', and hike the HighLine trail. Going to the sun road is 50 mile very scenic drive through the mountains. It can be accessed from the east entrance at St Mary or the west entrance at West Glacier. We chose St mary, thinking we could watch the sunrise over St Mary lake when we start the day. The scenic road can be done by park's free shuttle system too. They are free and make stops at all attraction points along the route. Since we had to reach the other side of the mountain, we took our car.
The highest point on the route is Logan Pass which is home to two very beautiful and breathtaking trails, Hidden Lake trail and HighLine trail. The 12 mile HighLine trail is carved through the Garden Wall mountain ranges, you walk through a very narrow trail which is made right through the mountain. Though a lil scary this is a highlight of Glacier National Park.They also have a hand rail hung to the mountain, so if you feel uneasy you can hang on to it and walk.
We started our day by 5:50AM. We entered the Going to the sun road from St Mary. Since we started really early the road was not too crowded and we could stop and take pictures in between. The first stop we made was at wild goose island to view the iconic sunrise over St Mary lake. By the time we reached the island the whole mountain was red in color. A pretty sight.
The road has so many pull outs where you can stop to admire the view. We took it slow and made so many steps while driving up. Beside St Mary lake.
Another pull out from the road. I think the mountain peak behind us is Mt Wilbur, not sure though.
As you drive through, you would enter a small tunnel built just through Pegan mountain. They have a similar but bigger tunnel at the west side too.
From the tunnel a short drive up took us to Logan Pass. Logan pass is the highest point of going to the sun road. It has a very big parking lot and visitor center. Logan pass gets real busy from 9 Am to like 4PM. So if you are coming by car you have to make it to the top before 9AM or you can take the free shuttles. We reached there by 8AM, welcomed by a herd of bullhorn sheep. We parked our car and watched them fight for some time.They hit with their horn when they fight, it makes a loud noise.
By 8:30AM we started on the highline trail. Our initial plan was to hike halfway and come back to Logan pass and do the hidden lake trail. We stuffed our bags with water,food,snacks, camera and Bear spray.One thing we forgot to pack was-bug spray. That was real necessity, and for missing that out we had to pay a huge price along the way.
The trail goes right through the Graden wall mountain range. This name accounts for the huge variety of wildflower meadows the mountain has. The trail is famous for its steep and narrow pathways.We walked through alpine meadows and entered the rocky area. The pic below is just before starting the trail on the rocks.
As we progressed i felt like it is over rated for its steep trail. I am scared of heights but I did wonderful. I felt a chill when i looked directly down, but other than that you will be so awed by the beauty around you. Given a chance I will do this again in the blink of an eye. You can hold on to the hand rail, when you feel scared. But we didnt even need it most of the time. I used them when I had to give space to people who were coming from opposite side, or when I wanted to look down and enjoy the view. Otherwise it is not scary at all.
Wherever you look you would be seeing mountains,that too just the mountain peaks since you are hiking at such a high elevation. You see numerous small waterfalls and streams and walk through the streams. We felt so lucky to experience all these, to be at such a beautiful place.
The look at the trail from some points will blow your mind. Though it looks steep once you reach there you wont even be thinking about how steep it is. It is just spectacular. I have seen this kind of trails only in movies.
More dramatic areas of the trail.
At the top of the switch back, this is what you enter into. Beautiful views of mountains on both sides of you. Extremely pretty!
We had our lunch here, well part of our lunch. We sat on one of the rocks, beside the creek and enjoyed the view,and ate well refueling ourselves. Our initial plan was to end the hike at this point and return. But after reaching here we did not want to turn back.We have never done a hike in 2 digits :D, our longest one ever was 8 miles.But after thinking for a while we decided to go for it.
As we hiked along, we walked through meadows of wild flowers, and bear grass.It was splendid and I cant describe them enough. We photographed few of them.
The mountains seemed countless. Wherever you look you are surrounded by mountains. After seeing the mountain goat at the starting of the trail, we didnt see any other wild animals on this trail though,except squirrels.
As you hike from mountain to mountain, the views change. The angle you look at them changes, and it opened up many beautiful feautures. A view of Lake McDonald,trapped by mountains, from highline trail! This was one of the other spots we have planned for this day.
More bear grass blossoms and us!
after almost 6 miles we saw Chalet, far away. This is like a hikers hostel. They have bunk beds and few rooms the hikers can rent and spend the night at. They dont have running water though! For people who are not staying there,they can go and rest inside, and have food.
After this point, the trail was extremely buggy. Extremely. This is when we regretted not carrying a bug spray. Mosquitoes and flies all around. So we couldnt rest in between and we had to hurry to chalet to escape the flies. We reached the Chalet in 7.6 miles. We had the second portion of our lunch there.
We rested at chalet for 30 mins, We had food and admired the beauty of the mountains. After we were all set to continue our hike, we started climbing down. This is the picture we took just before the climb down stated. We had no idea what awaited us!
Once the climb down started we realized how tough it is. You climb down 2000ft in 4 miles. That is very very steep. The trail is in so many switch backs, I dont know whether it is good or bad. Because i felt like this 4 miles was never ending and so long. We didnt even stop for a single picture, our feet hurt, legs hurt and the descend was too intense. We met a ranger when we started the descend and chatted with her, she passed us and hiked down. We never met her again on our way, that explains how tired and slow we were. I think if I do this trail again, I might turn back at HayStack Butte, or I will even hike to Chalet and turn around making it almost 15.2 miles! This descend was real brutal.
Some people take the trail in opposite way, so they climb up this steep 2000 ft in 4 miles, at the starting of the hike and then enjoy the views till the end. I personally prefer climbing down than climbing up. So I think we didnt make a mistake, but the last 4 mile was a fun killer.
As I said, no single picture of this area! Mostly the trail was through forest and the views of the mountains were limited.
At the end of the trail there was a small glacier creek. We reached the creek by 3:30PM. We went down the bridge and rested our feet in the ice cold water. It felt heavenly. We washed our face and rested on the rocks for like 30 mins. It definitely helped us to erase that tough memories of the descend from chalet :D
From the creek we went on to the shuttle stop at 'The loop'. The free shuttle took us back to the Logan Pass where we had parked our car. With so much pain on our legs we drove to Lake McDonald. We passed through weeping wall(mountain side with countless small waterfalls), and east side Tunnel.
At lake McDonald,our plan was to view the sunset over the lake. But our legs were on a strike and didnt move an inch even if we wanted to :D We went to the lake side to get a quick view.
From Lake McDonald we drove to our hotel at Seelay Lake. It was 1 hour drive from Lake McDonald. You would be driving through FlatHead National Forest. The road was deserted and we saw at least 6 deers crossing the 70/80mph highway. We have to be really careful while driving here, and we felt so glad that we didnt wait for the sunset. The early you start the earlier you cross the forest.
Next day on 7/26/2016, we woke up really late letting ourselves rest. This was our last day at Glacier national park. We started driving to Helena airport at around 9AM watching the beautiful meadows and bidding good bye to beautiful Montana.
thanks for posting, appreciate your insight, has been helpful
ReplyDeleteThank u so much!
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