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Glacier National Park

Montana's Glacier National Park, located on the Canadian border, is home to the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road, one of the top 10 scenic roads in North America.

Montana

2002, 2019

About The Park

Glacier was a park that was high on my list of parks that I want to revisit and I did so in 2019. It’s a bit off the beaten track, located in northwestern Montana along the Canadian border. The name on the National Parks brochure is Glacier-Waterton Lakes International Peace Park. The Waterton Lakes portion is a Canadian National Park. The two parks are contiguous and straddle the US – Canada border. It’s also a world heritage site.

Waterton Lakes is only accessible from Canada and is a much smaller National Park than Glacier. Waterton Lakes borders Glacier National Park on its very remote northern border. These parks are practically inaccessible to each other from within each park unless you are truly motivated and an experienced backpacker. You have to cross the border into Canada to drive into Waterton Lakes.

Glacier National Park has less than about 70 miles of road in a park that is 1,583 square miles (4100 km²).  With the Going-To-The-Sun Road comprising about 50 miles of the total you can see that that leaves a very small amount of road remaining in a rather large park. What this means is that most of the park is wilderness that will not be seen by 99% of the 3.3 million annual visitors.

The main attraction of Glacier National Park is the spectacular Going-To-The-Sun Road.  This engineering marvel is easily on any list of the 10 most scenic roads in North America. It traverses the heart of the park from East to West crossing the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, elevation 6,646 feet (2026m). It’s a two-lane road with hairpin turns, ongoing construction since 2007, and due to the snowfall is only open generally from mid-June to mid-October. Logan Pass can get up to 80 feet of snow and just to the east is an area known as the Big Drift which has recorded 100 feet of snow.  Given the amount of snow that has to be moved off the road it’s not hard to see how it takes about 10 weeks of plowing to get the road open in the spring.  In 2011 the road did not open until July 13!  No matter what time of the year you go you need to check the status of this road with the National Parks Service Glacier website.  Wildfires closed part of it in the summer of 2018.

The highlight of the Going-To-The-Sun Road is the famous Garden Wall.  This is a steep alpine escarpment into which the road is carved making a graceful descent into the valley below. It was an unusual design for its time and a beautiful sight to behold. The road is named for Going-To-The-Sun mountain, a dramatic peak located East of Logan Pass opposite the Jackson Glacier overlook. The road crosses the center of the park and is slow-going. Even if you don’t stop for pictures, which is hard to do, you’ll be lucky to average 25 MPH. If you plan to take it out-and-back, and you don’t get an early start, figure on a late dinner.

This amount of snow, the freezing, thawing, and avalanches take a terrible toll on the road and there’s been ongoing construction since 1983. The avalanches frequently take out the guard rails, small stone walls and occasionally small boulders, positioned to keep cars from going over the side. The result is a lack of protective barriers in certain places where the drop offs can be significant.

The park currently has about 25 glaciers, down from around 150 about 100 years ago, but most of these are in the back country and require considerable effort to get to. The best opportunity to see a glacier from the road is from the Jackson Glacier overlook on the Going-To-The-Sun Road between Logan Pass and St. Mary’s on the Eastern side of the park.

If you don’t want to drive the Going-To-The-Sun Road yourself there are a couple of tour companies that will do the driving for you.  Red Bus tours uses refurbished original red touring motor coaches that once were the preferred way of touring the park back in the days when people came to the park on the Great Northern Railroad. This can be a particularly good option because parking areas along the Going-To-The-Sun Road can fill up early. This is especially true at Logan Pass with its visitor center and hiking trails.  Another operator, Sun Tours is run by native Americans.  

Additionally, Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road Shuttle System is a free hop-on-hop-off shuttle along the Going-To-The-Sun Road and is run by the National Parks Service (information can be found on the National Parks Service Glacier website).

A seasonal hiker’s shuttle is run by Xanterra and charges a fee.

The weather can be highly variable. Warm and sunny can change to cold and blustery very quickly. Just outside the park boundary, the town of Browning, Montana holds the world record for a temperature drop of 100°F in one day (+44° to -56°).

Wildlife

The remoteness of the park helps to support a substantial population of grizzlies, black bears, wolves, lynx, bald eagles, mountain lions, mountain goats, elk, bighorn sheep, and many smaller species. Hiking trails frequently have warnings about grizzlies (and occasionally mountain lions) and you should know what to do if you are lucky enough to encounter one.

Lodging

There is ample lodging in the park some of which was built by the Great Northern Railroad. The railroads built lodges and ran lines into national parks as a way of generating business.  It was a symbiotic relationship benefiting the public, the National Parks Service and the railroads.

Glacier Park Lodge

The Glacier Park Lodge, like the El Tovar Lodge in the Grand Canyon (built by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway), sits right across from the railroad station.  Many of the spur lines have long since been abandoned. A National Parks Service paper on the history of railroads and the National Parks can be read here.

The Glacier Park Lodge is known as the Big Tree Lodge due to the giant three story high lodgepole pines that hold up the roof and dominate its spectacular lobby area. Even if you don’t stay at this lodge it is certainly worth taking the drive to go and see it. There are interesting displays in the lobby of the park’s early history and the stars from Hollywood’s golden era that stayed there.

Many Glacier Lodge

Between the two trips we spent four nights here and spent two nights in the Many Glacier area at the Many Glacier Lodge. The Many Glacier area, on Swiftcurrent Lake, surrounded by glaciers was far more scenic and with some nice hiking trails. The lodge wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the Glacier Park Lodge but more than adequate. National parks lodges can vary fairly widely as far as modern conveniences, amenities and price but the bottom line is you always want to stay in the park if you can. Not having a TV, or Wi-Fi, or phone service can be a refreshing experience when surrounded by the magnificence of nature. Unfortunately the public demand for connectivity has permeated most of the National Parks and getting away from it has become more of a rarity.

Hiking

Glacier has numerous hikes all over the park from very short wheelchair accessible paths to multi-day backpacking adventures. I can only comment on these two that I recently did.

Hidden Lake Nature Trail

The Hidden Lake Nature Trail, located behind the visitor center at Logan Pass, is a beautiful and easy hike with a boardwalk for about the first half-mile. It is fairly level, 460’ elevation gain, and about 3 miles round trip to the Hidden Lake overlook. It is another 2+ miles to hike down to Hidden Lake. The trail is a good place to encounter mountain goats and see bighorn sheep. The scenery is spectacular and completely out in the open. Parking can be difficult despite the large lot. *Note* In 2019 the trail down to Hidden Lake was closed due to significant bear activity. Check the NPS website (link below) for information on trail closings.

Apikuni Falls hike

A short but rewarding hike in the Many Glacier area is the Apikuni Falls hike. It is short out-and-back hike that is about a 1.7 mile round trip  but a steady climb through a forest up to the falls. It’s a good hike on a hot day because it is completely in the shade until you get to the falls.

Rafting

When I was there we took a half day rafting trip down the Flathead River. For the most part this was an easy float but scenic and removed from the cars and people. The picture in the photo gallery was the one point on the trip where there was a possibly class 2 rapids and they had a camera person situated where they could get the action picture. The picture looks good but it wasn’t typical of the trip. If you’re looking for white water rafting I’m sure there are places in the Glacier area where you can find it but this wasn’t one of them.

 

A Bit of Garden Wall History

A Ranger told me an interesting story about the construction of the Going-To-The-Sun Road. The engineer who conceived the idea of the Going-To-The-Sun Road was overseeing the project and intended it to descend into the valley at the Garden Wall using a typical switchback design. Stephen Mather, the director of the National Park Service, visited the area with the engineer and a landscape architect. They rode up on horseback and looked over what became known as the Garden Wall. The engineer pitched his switchback design but the architect saw it differently and envisioned a long sweeping road carved into the side of the Garden Wall. This was a more radical design and a more expensive approach but Director Mather liked it and chose to do it that way. The engineer was not happy about that and to make his point he offered his resignation over it. Director Mather accepted it. I was able to corroborate the basic details of this story here.

The road was completed in 1932 and generations of drivers have benefited from the vision of the Director and his architect.

Glacier National Park Photo Gallery

Other Resources

Glacier National Park on the National Parks Service website - NPS.gov

Glacier National Park - Wikipedia

Railroads and the National Parks

Other National Parks Within a Day’s Drive

Yellowstone National Park You can see the Old Faithful geyser, mud pots, steam vents and magnificent wildlife in this park which is 455 miles and about a 7.5 hour drive to the south.
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Updated 02/11/23 7:04 PM

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