9/14/14
Our second full day in the park, we get up at 6 am. We have a full day ahead of us. Three hours of driving to the northeast section of the park, Many Glacier from Columbia Falls, obtaining additional information to decide on which hike to do, 5-6 hours of hiking, and 3 hours of drive back all need to fit into 12-13 hours. When we arrive at Apgar village cafe for breakfast, it is barely 7, and we discover that this café is closing for the season today. We have a great breakfast and secure a sack lunch with another turkey sandwich, an orange and potato chips. We’ve learned our way around here, it looks like all the area eateries are into providing sack lunch to hikers, a first for me in any national park I’ve visited. Perhaps due to the scarcity of services available within Glacier.
After obtaining information on where we can have breakfast the next day, we fair good-bye to our pleasant server and head up to the Logan Pass and beyond. Yes the road is indeed open and past the weeping wall, the scenery really gets wilder. As we move to the Big Bend, we see many more of the avalanche paths scarring the face of the mountains. Apparently, when enormous amounts of snow go into an avalanche, they uproot trees and boulders among others, one book says “like tooth picks”, to pile them up at lower elevations. Soon after leaving the bend, we see the engineering marvel of the last century: Triple Arches that carry the weight of the entire section of the Sun Road.
Just before we arrive at Logan Pass, we come across a sheer wall rising up above the road. Garden Wall was apparently carved the way it presents itself to the viewers by two immense glaciers from both sides. On the west side of it, with the milder and more moist conditions, a variety of perennial wild flowers, some of which may be 50-60 years old bloom from end of July till September. Since, the park has already been somewhat scorched by the storm of last week, we will be able to see tomorrow only some of the remaining flowers in bloom. Most plants and flowers will be either wilted with freeze and defrost or gone to seed. We don't know yet, that we will actually walk along its east side most of the afternoon in just a few hours.
Finally, we are at the infamous Logan Pass, sitting across from Mount Oberlin at 6646 feet elevation saddling the Continental Divide. Continental Divide is a range of mountains starting in Mexico and running the entire length of North America till Alaska and Yukon in Canada. The last 110 miles of the 3100 mile of the Continental Divide is in Glacier National Park. The significance of this divide is enormous since it determines the water flow and drainage in two halves of Northern America, on the west of the divide to the Pacific Ocean and on the east to Gulf of Mexico. Mount Cleveland, the highest peak in the park is also visible from Oberlin outlook at the pass. Another unique feature of the pass is the big snow drift that may rise up to a record of 98 feet!
Greg identifies the trailhead for the High Line trail that we will do tomorrow, the most scenic of all trails in North America Greg read online somewhere, we are yet to see with our own eyes. We move on toward Many Glacier. After passing through the East Tunnel, we come across Siyeh Bend, which is well known for its wild flowers and trailheads leading to Piegan and Siyeh Passes, which we won't have time to do this time. However, we take a quick look at the over 10,000-foot high Siyeh Peak and Blackfoot Glacier in the distance before moving on further only to see another impressive glacier: Jackson Glacier; the closest we will come to a glacier other than the one that we will see in the afternoon:
Jackson Peak is the sixth highest in the park. Majestic, profound, but disappearing, is this the fate of our earth, or is it man-made? In early nineteenth hundreds for instance, Jackson and Blackfoot Glaciers were one single glacier, which became two distinct glaciers in 1939. Why did glaciers that have survived just fine, millions of years shrink to a quarter of their size in just 100 years? Greg being an environmental scientist is extremely concerned about this phenomenon and its origins: Man-made he thinks so do I. Just as we dwell on those worries, we come across a group of people on the roadside, looking at a certain direction with intent…
We know this social body language: Wildlife is in the visual field! We park and join the crowd, indeed about hundred yards below the road within the bushes is the head of a grizzly, having her breakfast; pays no attention to us, the head goes up and down coming out while chewing on her pick. It certainly gives one a thrill to be so close to a grizzly but yet, so far… At another such stop, the spectators tell us they see a black bear up on the slopes hundreds of yards above us, but alas without the binoculars I planned to take along but forgot to do so, we cannot identify what they see. Yet, we will see mountain goats and bighorn sheep on the trail this afternoon adding variety to our wildlife experience.
So far every national park I visited has remained in the shadow compared to Yellowstone in terms of wildlife among other features. As we move through the backcountry of Glacier, this notion of mine will only be confirmed one more time. Yellowstone is rich with its buffalos, its black and grizzly bears, deer, elk, moose, even its gray wolf, all of which I was lucky to encounter in one single trip over 5 days once upon a time. None of this variety at Glacier… I can’t wait to go back to Yellowstone one more time one of these days…
Gradually, as we descend, Lake St. Mary comes into view from different directions on the undulating Sun Road. Glacier National Park has an interesting service that I have not seen in other national parks: Chalets. Most chalets are located in the backcountry to which you have to hike. But when you reach them in season, you may have access to food and room to stay in. We will visit the Granite Park Chalet tomorrow, which will be a day after its closure for the season. We learn that it was around Lake St. Mary that the chalet services started way back then when the railroad reached the park. The one around this lake is accessible via a boat ride. In the earlier times of the park, the lodges were also accessible by a boat ride across the lakes they are located on.
Wild Goose Island is a lovely interruption in the middle of the lake. After a pleasant ride along the lake for quite some time, we veer toward north east and exit the park at St. Mary east entrance. We have to take Highway 89 up north to re-enter the park at Many Glacier entrance. To our surprise, there is no visitor's center at this entrance but Many Glacier Hotel staff functions as rangers! Two young men guide us beautifully and we make our decision: Grinell Glacier hike with its 11 miles length and mostly climbing up with a 1600 feet elevation gain may be too strenuous for our second day on trail at this high elevation, especially considering a total of 6 hours of driving time we have to take into consideration. Iceberg Lake trail that will take us to Ptarmigan Mountain Glacier via a 9.6 mile trail with 1200 elevation gain may be a better choice. We like our consensus decision and head toward Motor Inn to find the trailhead for Iceberg Lake.
It starts with, indeed, a very steep climb, but our travel book states this elevation gain is “almost” all of the elevation to be gained throughout the trail: wrong! It is not only nowhere near almost all, it probably isn’t even half of it! The entire trail consists of ups and downs, we agree in the end that the amount of net elevation gain may be 1200 feet but the total climbing is much more than that. We meet a very lovely couple on the trail. Jane and Chris from Helena, Montana. Chris is an information technology person, they are both into hiking and they do it well. We keep company for the good part of the trail and see the mountain goats and bighorn sheep together. Another group on the trail see a moose, but by the time we accommodate ourselves, it has already moved into the thicket of the woods; that’s wild life, we catch some and miss some.
Finally, after a 3-hour hike, we spot the blue of the iceberg lake at the bottom of the Ptarmigan mountain, on the chest of which sits the glacier with humility. As we approach that sliver of blue disappears to be replaced with a beautiful, serene small lake to the right of the trail, with no icebergs, though. However, we already know from fellow hikers that this is just a prelude to what is awaiting us. We push on, until after climbing over a ridge, the lake appears with its frozen surface and icebergs floating in it gracefully. Most of the current glacier is in the shade of the bowl created by a much larger glacier that disappeared over time into this very small, yet, still majestic remnant.
As we find a rock to sit on to observe this beauty during our lunch break, we are startled with a crackling sound that I had never heard before. Not surprising since I have never been near a glacier before. Greg figures out, the glacier is crackling; it must have been crackling like this for a long time: Its surface is full of wide open cracks. I wonder if these cracks may lead to further cracks due to new snow filling in, freezing into ice and widening the crack at some point. Greg tells me about Everest climbers telling stories about constant crackling they slept along with while climbing up to the Everest.
Ptarmigan Glacier and Iceberg Lake
I recall hearing a deep "boang" sound coming from the frozen Iowa River while taking a walk with my daughter's dog Zela in City Park one day last winter. However, this is different and much more chilling: As we get ready to leave the lake, we hear the glacier crackle one more time as if she says good bye to us. Hike down is much easier, another proof that we climbed quite a bit on the way up. We arrive back to Many Glacier Hotel much earlier than we expected: We deserve a glass of beer under the soothing sun on the deck looking at Swiftcurrent Lake and Mount Henkel.
Happy campers by Iceberg Lake, surface of which is frozen almost at all times
By the time we are relatively rested and relaxed, it is time to go back "home", how quickly we become attached to places that house us, as briefly as it may be. Both of us are calling our room 24 at Lake Meadow Lodge "home" now. We also make a note of how comfortable Greg is today on the infamously scary Going-to-the-Sun Road. We are back to our hotel by 7:30 and ready to enjoy a lovely dinner facing the sunset after a long day of rewarding hiking, promising ourselves to do the Grinnell Glacier hike the next time we come to the park. Whether we will be able to touch the glacier with our very feet or not then, is another story…
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| Mount Henkel from the deck of Many Glacier Hotel |
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| Sunset at our Meadow Lake Lodge in Columbia Falls |
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