Trails of Glacier

Hello hello 👋🏼 Hope your day has been awesome. If you didn’t see my last post, we were in Glacier National Park, arguably one of the most beautiful places in America. I mentioned how we went on a bunch of trails, and here I’ve put together a few of the best ones.

Johns Lake Loop

This was a nice hike for beginners. It took us some nice views of Lake McDonald, Johns Lake, and the river. It went through the Middle-Earth type woods which were very lovely.

Highline Trail

Anybody remember Ophir Pass? A friendly reminder. This trail was basically the human version of that, but with the added danger of high winds. Luckily the rangers were thoughtful enough to put a rope.

It did have some nice views though :). We went about a mile then turned back. If you’re wondering why Lily is wearing a pancho it’s because she forgot her jacket and it was all we had 🥶.

Cedar Trail/ Avalanche Lake

Probably the busiest trail, we waited a week for the crowds to die down so we could get some peace.

At first the trail is a boardwalk in the woods, this is the Cedar Trail. It will turn off so you can go to Avalanche Lake, but you can keep going straight and it’ll loop back around to the parking lot.

See that blue water? A little ways down from it you can turn off to go to Avalanche Lake, which was a longer and more strenuous hike than the Cedar Trail (no more boardwalk lol). It’s mostly wooded, but once you get to the lake well, see for yourself.

🤩

Saint Mary Falls

Okay so this was a very long hike. I think we went five miles/three hours. We could have gone longer, but a storm was brewing and we did not want to hike in the pouring rain. Been there done that:

Overall, it wasn’t a difficult hike, just long. We thought it was going to be a mile. We passed by Baring Creek,

Baring Falls,

Saint Mary Lake,

and eventually, Saint Mary Falls.

While it was a longer than usual hike, we enjoyed it and it was very beautiful.

Hidden Lake Trail

We waited a while to go on this trail. Apparently there was “aggressive bear behavior“ on the trail so it was closed for a bit. Eventually though, it opened up and we we’re able to hike it.

The trail first starts on an uphill boardwalk. I never thought a boardwalk could be tiring but I was wrong 😆. After a mile or so there was a little waterfall and next to it, guess what? Snow! We must be professional high-altitude hikers now, we hiked til we reached some powder 😁.

Lily was happy and started throwing some snowballs at me.

At the top of the hike we were at the Hidden Lake overlook, but we couldn’t go any further due to “aggressive bear behavior” (when are bears not aggresive?). The views were spectacular.

*Cue angelic music* Also, on the way back there were these sweet grouse right by the boardwalk, and you can see him starting to turn white for winter. (Update- this is actually a White Tailed Ptarmigan! Thanks Gdad 😉)

Well that was our hiking experience in Glacier! Hopefully we’ll have even more beautiful places to see in the future, because that set the bar!

Love y’all

-R.D.

PS

“Can I come too?”