Grinnell Glacier

Tuesday, we had another long drive to Many Glacier, leaving very early in the morning. Along the way, we stopped at Goat Lick Overlook to see the mountain goats. There were three mountain goats here that we could see, including a little kid, but they were too far away for a good picture.

From here, we continued the rest of the way to Many Glacier and first stopped at the trailhead for Apikuni Falls, just past Lake Sherburne.

This was our warm-up hike - it’s less than a mile to the waterfall, but fairly steep. From the trailhead, we could see up into the Apikuni Creek Gorge where the creek flows down from Apikuni Mountain, but the falls were not visible.

Although the trail was rather steep, there were nice views of Altyn Peak and the surrounding mountains.

As we approached the end of the trail, Apikuni Falls became visible. The waterfall is nearly 150 feet and really beautiful.

We could even see a small rainbow near the base. And the rocks all around the falls are a brilliant orange color.

We spent some time here, enjoying the falls and then started making our way back. I stopped near the top for some pictures of dead trees standing up – a testament to the difficulty of living in such conditions.

Once back at the cars, we made a short drive to the trailhead for our main hike of the day – Grinnell Glacier. The parking lot was full and we had to park on the road. This trail is popular and for good reason – it’s absolutely beautiful, my favorite hike of the trip. The trail begins heading around the west side of Swiftcurrent Lake.

Across the lake, we could see the beautiful Many Glacier Hotel.

After Swiftcurrent Lake, we walked along the west side of Lake Josephine.

The boat dock was across the lake and a few times, we saw the tour boat cruising across. On the far side of the lake, we could see some tall waterfalls tumbling down into the lake.

Once past Lake Josephine, the trail started to get steep - nothing too difficult and the beautiful scenery was a pleasant distraction. There was no shortage of stops for photos along the hike.

At one point, we stopped for a snack where several other people were resting. We talked to two ladies who were the wife and mother-in-law of the boat captain at Two Medicine, who we would be seeing the following day. From here, we had great views of Grinnell Lake and Grinnell Falls flowing into it.

This was the prettiest lake yet, a beautiful shade of blue. As the wind blew across the surface, the color changed in wild kaleidoscope patterns. The trail started to get more crowded from this point on. There was a good number of folks coming back as well as people going in the same direction as us. I tended to pass the people, then they would pass me when I stopped to take pictures.

And I stopped a lot. The wildflowers were blooming here and the views of the lake and waterfall were so gorgeous for a couple miles along the trail.

At one point, we passed a weeping wall, where water was trickling down the wall onto stairs on the trail.

We also saw a mother Columbian ground squirrel and one of her young.

She was calling out, presumably to locate her other baby. We also saw a bighorn ram far below grazing. He had a very impressive set of horns.

Near the end, we passed the group of teenagers from Michigan that we had seen at Iceberg Lake. They told us the water here was too cold even for them. As we approached Grinnell Glacier, I looked back and could see many of the lake we had hiked past on our way up - Grinnell Lake, Lake Josephine, and Sherburne Lake.

Once near the top of Grinnell Falls, the trail headed up via switchbacks, perhaps the steepest part of the trail.

But once at the top, we could see Upper Grinnell Lake, certainly one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I headed down to the lake’s shore and indeed, the water was incredibly cold. There was no way I was getting in, even for a moment.

I contemplated it though – the icebergs were near the shore and if I could have handled the cold, I probably could have climbed onto an iceberg. But the water looked a lot deeper – after all, even the dumb high school kids didn’t get in. Across the lake, we could see Grinnell Glacier to the left and Salamander Glacier high up and in the middle. Salamander Falls flowed down from the glacier into the lake.

The water was such a beautiful color and there were many icebergs floating in the lake. I really enjoyed this hike – we hiked past four lakes, each more beautiful than the last. We spent some time here enjoying the magnificent glaciers that unfortunately, may not exist much longer.

Once finished, we started making our way back. The views were just as great hiking back.

It started to drizzle around the time we got back to Josephine Lake, but just lightly. It never really rained hard and we saw a beautiful rainbow across the lake.

The weather had cleared up by the time we got back to the parking lot and we headed to the Many Glacier area for dinner. The pizzeria next to the motel turned out to be pretty good. Our dining experiences were much better at restaurants in the park than those outside. The pizza was good and I tried a Huckleberry beer, which was very tasty. So much so that Sandy, who rarely drinks beer, had one too. After dinner, we made the long drive home from Many Glacier one more time. On the way out, we stopped again at a traffic jam.

There was another bear on the hill just above the road. This one was a mama bear with her cub. They scavenged around for food for a bit then disappeared into the woods. Once outside the park, we stopped to see the Reynolds Creek Fire.

After this point, it was starting to get dark, so we finished the drive back to Hungry Horse and went to bed immediately.