First Glacier Trip: August 26 - August 31

[MattE]

So after all the useful info this board provided in planning this trip there was no way I wasn't going to put together some kind of trip report as requested. We took ~1000 pictures and 30+ videos over the course of our time there, so it'll be a while before we have to time to go through and edit\upload all of them, but I'll throw in a few for now and post links to the rest later.

Wednesday, August 26

Landed at FCA around noon and immediately had our hearts sink, wife was nearly crying looking out the plane window during the approach. Smoke was just obscenely terrible -- visibility in Kalispell was no more than 1/2 mile, hurt to breathe while outside. Couldn't tell there were mountains in the area at all. Picked up our rental car, gathered supplies at the Whitefish Super1 and Sportsman's Ski Haus, got lunch at the Bulldog Saloon (meh, I like dives but probably wouldn't go back), and headed out to the park. Luckily things got progressively better smoke-wise as we headed east; by the time we got to Logan it was still pretty hazy, but clear enough to at least breathe properly and get some decent views around.

Got to St. Mary Campground around 6, pitched our tent, made dinner, then turned in for the night at like 9. Just before midnight my wife wakes me up with a nudge, whispering "There's something outside...." A minute later I hear heavy breathing from the direction of the path between out site and the nearest restroom, followed by progressively louder snorting and slobbering sounds as what by that point was clearly a large bear proceeded to make its way around our site munching on chokeberries. At one point it literally brushed up against our tent and stood there chowing down for a minute or two before it finally headed off down the camp road towards other sites. Pretty scary laying there in the dark in a mummy bag trying to decide what the best course of action would be should the grizzly 1-2 feet away decide to get interested in the tent itself for some reason. Thought about using the car keys to honk the rental car horn, but by the time I had that idea and located the keys in the dark, he'd already moseyed on. It's my understanding that they closed St. Mary to anything other than hard-sided campers for the rest of the season the next day.

View Across Lake McDonald on Wednesday


Near Heaven's Peak


St. Mary campsite


Thursday, August 27

Got up at dawn, then packed up and relocated to Many Glacier; no problems getting a site, MG didn't fill till late afternoon the whole week. Made breakfast, put together our daypacks, and started walking down to MGH and the Cracker Lake trailhead around 10. Was still extremely smoky, but the last weather\smoke forecast I'd seen at the time predicted that it would get a little better every day with rain over the weekend, so I tried to order things so that we were doing more visibility-independent hikes first and that worked out fairly well.

I can definitely see why so many people have mixed things to say about the Cracker Lake hike. The entire trail is pretty much paved with horse manure, and the first 4.5 miles or so are in very dense forest and offer virtually nothing to see aside from a few spots near Cracker Flats and some overlooks of the Canyon Creek drainage. The last 1.5ish miles after you cross to the west bank of Canyon Creek and climb into the vale holding the lake are pretty breathtaking, though. When we got up to the head of the lake there was a horse party just finishing up their time there, and after they left we more or less had the promontory near the backcountry sites to ourselves for a while before we moved down to the shore to have lunch. The smoke haze actually caused a rainbow to form across the cirque near the mine, which hopefully I can get to show in some of the photos we took. The blue of that lake is only comparable to some parts of the Caribbean I've been to, just unreal. Looks like a fake back drop in some of our pictures. Hike back was long and uneventful, got back to camp around 6:30.

View Across Swiftcurrent Lake to MGH on Thursday


Sun Getting Low Over Swiftcurrent Lake


Lake from Near Lunch Spot


On the Promontory Near Head of Lake

- Rainbow in top left

Approaching the Lake -- Rainbow Faintly Visible Top Center


Friday, August 28

Morning broke much, much clearer than either of the previous two days. Set out to do Iceberg Lake via Shangri La around 8:45, and the first half of this hike ended up having almost all of the wildlife we saw during the week -- stopped at Fishercap Lake for a bit to watch a cow moose, then as soon as we got out of the trees on the first part of the Shangri La trail saw a huge bull moose grazing on the other side of the creek maybe 30-40 yards away. We also saw an entire herd of goats grazing and napping on the side of Mt. Wilbur, and a lone bighorn sheep grazing on the talus field above Shangri La Lake itself.

The climb up the cliffs to the lake itself was pretty fun and the trail was surprisingly active; 3 or 4 other pairs of people passed us at various points as we sat and took pictures from different levels of the cliff bands. Despite the haze we had some decent views to the east\southeast.

After eating lunch at the side of the basin lake, we climbed the hill over towards Iceberg and started down the scree field, where we lost a lot of time on what had otherwise been a pretty quick-moving hike even with the climbing; my wife discovered on this trip that downhills, especially steep ones, bug her out for fear of losing her footing, and she more-or-less inched down the entire decline on her butt or sitting on her heels. Finally made it down and after much psyching up took a quick swim with a group of girls from Missoula and a guy from Texas who were hanging out near the far edge of the shore. Brisk! But really not terrible, kinda like tearing a bandaid off haha. Dried off and headed home; return hike was uneventful, and smoke had started to roll in more heavily through the afternoon so we didn't get too many good scenery shots.

Female Moose


Bull Moose



Looking up creek to cliffs


Looking up at Mt. Wilbur from near first climbing notch


Goats!



Shangri La Lake


Sheep!


Cresting the Shoulder


Looking Down from the Scree


Near Iceberg



Saturday, August 29

A somewhat hazy morning, and we set out on the trail to Grinnell Glacier right around 9. We caught and passed the ranger hike being led that morning about halfway up the trail. I have no idea how anyone in that group that day was enjoying themselves -- group was something like two dozen bear-bell-bedecked, comically-over-or-under-prepared lollygaggers crawling along at 1 MPH strung out over 1/5 mile of trail. Ranger was having to stop to let the stragglers catch up every few minutes, and the huddle any time he tried to say anything was large enough I doubt most of the people in the group were able to hear him anyway, or get pictures that didn't have 10 other people in the foreground.

Made it to Upper Grinnell Lake a little before 12 and had the area really mostly to ourselves, so we sat at the lake overlook right where the trail meets the lake for a bit and just took in the sights and took some photos. Took some time to rock-hop across the lake discharge stream over to the edge of the glacier itself, and by the time we got back the ranger hike and several other large groups had made it to the lake and things had become quite crowded. The wind had also picked up sharply, so we ate a quick lunch and got back on the trail heading home. Afternoon got pretty hazy and overcast pretty quick, so we boogied on home and made it back to camp around 4:30.

Got cleaned up and drove out to the Two Sisters Cafe for dinner. Wife had the fried chicken and huckleberry margarita, I had a bison chili cheeseburger, we split corn cakes for a starter and I got the huckleberry cheesecake for dessert. Everything was really good. A tad pricey, but hey, good food in the middle of nowhere with limited other options comes at a premium I suppose. Definitely a neat little place and I'd absolutely go back again.

MGH from far side of Swiftcurrent


Mt. Gould


Approaching Grinnell Lake


Grinnell Glacier Panorama


Standing on the retreating edge of Grinnell


Sunday, August 30

It drizzled a little overnight, and that bit of rain was just enough that Sunday morning was phenomenally clear. Caught the first hiker's shuttle to St. Mary and then the next park shuttle to Logan so we could start the Hockey Ref hike. It was a little chilly and breezy out, but the forecast of 75 and sunny initially held true and things warmed up nicely as we got closer to noon. The views along the entire Highline were spectacular. We got to the spur trail to Grinnell Overlook around the same time as several other people that had been on the shuttle buses with us, and we started up as a group around 1:30.

Unfortunately around the time we were getting to the Overlook itself is when the entire day started to go sideways on us, probably the most or 2nd most I've ever had a backpack or day hike go. We were a few hundred feet from the overlook when the wind REALLY started to pick up and I saw some dark clouds suddenly form on the horizon and start to move in from the west. I knew we needed to get down quickly, but my wife's downhill skittishness reared again (particularly with the wind up to what it was) and by the time we got down off the Overlook trail it was almost 2:45 and starting to rain lightly.

We booked it to the Chalet, and in the 15 minutes it took us to get there things went from 'Wind and light rain" to "Hail and horizontal torrential rain" along with a 20-30 degree temperature drop. Wolfed down our lunch in the crowded dining room (lots of other day hikers filtering in to take shelter) and I tried to evaluate our options for getting home. Backtracking the Highline was right out; looking back to the south there were active thunderclouds that had totally engulfed the trail. Same could be said of The Loop, which also obviously would have left us terribly far from MG with a limited amount of time to hope to catch a shuttle or ride. The majority of the Swiftcurrent trail was on the leeward side of the mountain, the clouds seemed to be partially thinning or breaking up as they headed east after the Divide, and that trail ended at home, so we let a ranger hiking back down from the Lookout know what we were doing and headed down the pass trail.

The pass itself was INCREDIBLY windy and just getting dumped on with rain, but the east side and the descent down the switchbacks was much calmer and mostly in a light drizzle. Still, conditions were such that things needed to taken patiently to be safe, and when combined with my (now very scared -- again, downhills, especially with the drop) wife only being comfortable inching along at points, it took us 2.5 hours to make it down the switchbacks to the meadows on the lower part of the pass trail west of Bullhead Lake. At that point things had abated enough and we were happy enough to be off the mountain that we actually took a few minutes break to stop and take in the waterfalls coming off Swiftcurrent Glacier, which were in thundering rain-fed glory at the time.

Unfortunately being off the mountain still meant we had another 4+ miles to go, it started raining steadily again somewhere near Bullhead, and after hours of fighting the good fight the light rain gear we'd had in our daypacks finally started to yield to the wet. Last couple miles were done with flooded boots, increasingly damp clothes, wife hitting the point of exhaustion, and a tweaked MCL of mine just becoming increasingly stiffer and more painful. Honestly, those last few miles along the nature trail near the lakes were tougher and more miserable than coming over and down through the pass had been by far.

Finally shuffled back into camp like a couple of drowned rats right around 7, changed into warm, dry, clothes, and went over to the Motor Inn for dinner. Half the campground seemed to have that idea that night with the rain still coming down off and on, so we killed the 45 minute wait with a few well-earned beers from the camp store. We split a 16" bison meatball pizza, and honestly it was surprisingly good, especially given that I'd been expecting pretty much cafeteria-grade Ragu-on-cardboard. Definitely reasonably priced, too -- pretty much no reason to ever just get the personal-sized one when the large is like $7 more for 5 times as much pizza.

Panorama Near Start of Highline


Heading Towards Haystack


Looking Back Towards Logan


Marmot!


Grinnell Overlook
- Didn't dare move in for a better pic with what the wind had gotten to.

Looking down the Swiftcurrent valley


Waterfalls coming off Swiftcurrent Glacier


Monday, August 31

Last full day. The original plan had been to try for the summit of Piegan, or at least the Pass, but it was still cold, windy, and clear but extremely overcast with low clouds on the east side, my wife was still feeling drained from the previous day, and a lot of our gear was still wet or damp. So, we took our time breaking camp and sorting through our remaining supplies in the morning, ran boots and other damp stuff through the dryer in the Motor Inn laundry, and then took our time driving back along the Sun Road, stopping at pretty much every pull out to get new pictures minus the smoke haze we'd had on Wednesday and plus snow on the tops of virtually every peak. We thought about doing the hike to Hidden Lake, but it was only in the high 30s and windy at Logan and the wife just really wasn't game for it. So, we kept going down the Sun Road, took lots more ceiling-on-the-world-type pictures, walked the Trail of the Cedars, and enjoyed the much warmer and sunnier weather lower on the west side -- by the time we got down to Apgar in the mid-afternoon, it was in the high 60s and sunny, so we parked the car, grabbed some ice cream from Eddie's, and hung out by the lake shore and wandered the different shops for a while before finally driving back into Kalispell around 5. Saw a bald eagle fishing out over the lake.

Just to really put a cap on things, we checked in at the Super 8, and not 5 minutes later had to evacuate the building because a short-circuit in an outlet on the first floor had started a fire in the wall between two rooms. Hadn't unpacked our bags even, so we threw them back in the car, walked across the street to the Montana Club for dinner and drinks (run-of-the-mill bar-and-grill, $5 margarita Mondays made the wife happy though), and waited out the fire department giving the building the all-clear.

Lake McDonald shore


Ice cream!



Young buck


Hotel fire


Tuesday, September 1

Not much to say -- took the rental car back, shuttled back to FCA, started our cross-country trip home. Definitely like FCA as an airport, though it's really hard to dislike tiny airports in general. Always fun to breeze through security in about 90 seconds and then actually walk across the tarmac and up rolling stairs onto your plane like it's 1960 again.

All-in-all things definitely worked out better than we originally expected given the weather forecasts and smoke leading up to our trip and even through our first day out there. Some more clear days would have been great, but we got to appreciate a number of the vistas all the same. I had to drop to my hiking C list because of wildfire closures and I'd love to explore some of the North Fork and areas like Gunsight Pass -- we'll absolutely be back, just a matter of when.

[indiana hiker]

Sounds like quite a week. We were there the week before and it was really smokey. Seems you made the best of it. Good moose shots. We have not seen a moose in park for two years. Guess our luck has run out. We used to see them on multiple occasions. Hope you can return and do some of the hikes you missed and also have clearer skies. Just checked the webcams and snow in park now and part of the road closed due to this. Thanks for the trip report.

[teapot57]

Thanks for sharing your trip report! I'm glad you had some great hikes despite the smokey conditions. Don't worry about dropping back to your hiking "C List". It gives you another reason to come back to Glacier. And if I learned anything over the last few years of hiking in this park, it's that you can plan all you want, but you just have to go with what Mother Nature has in store.

I love the shirt you are wearing in the Lake McDonald shot (The Mountains Are Calling and I Must Go). Where did you find it?

[MattE]

I love the shirt you are wearing in the Lake McDonald shot (The Mountains Are Calling and I Must Go). Where did you find it?

http://www.teevogue.com/collections/skiing-snowboarding

[July Guy]

Thanks for the report. I see a photo labeled "Badger!". The animal in the picture is a Marmot.

JG

[trevbo]

Sounds like you had a good trip. That's quite the nightmare scenario of having a bear outside your tent the first night. At least the bear had lots of berries and was not interested in checking out people's tents.

[al_in_al]

It looks like our trips overlapped - I really liked seeing what the trails you were on looked like during that time. I was at Cracker Lake the day before you, and looks like I had less smoky conditions. I was also on the Highline the day before you, and it was awful - you lucked out that morning (not so much in the afternoon). I was going to head up to Grinnell Overlook the same afternoon as you, but saw the rain coming and thought better of it.

[PJ]

Talk about an exciting first trip with a bear in your camp! Glad it turned out well and there were plenty of berries. I think you did a great job coping with tough circumstances with the weather, smoke and motel fire. A trip you'll always remember. I hope you get to return and are rewarded with bluebird skies and perfect temperatures - and bears seen from a distance in broad daylight.

[scott-atl]

I had heard they closed st Mary campground for bears. Exciting and scary night.

[MattE]

Most of the pics that aren't trash have been added to that Google Drive folder. I added commentary on where they were taken\what is in them on most of them as best as I could tell from maps and such; please let me know if you catch one that needs correction.

We've got some pretty good GoPro vids in spots, too, but I still need to edit a lot of those.