Built To Roam: Glacier National Park

The bad weather, which had overtaken us the previous day as we sprinted for our car in the Lamar Valley, was now forecasted to stick around for the next few days, coinciding perfectly with our departure from Yellowstone. So on that cold, grey Thursday morning, we said our good-byes to West Yellowstone, Montana and headed north for our final stop of the trip; Glacier National Park. I was especially excited and nervous for this destination and had been anxiously following the snow plowing updates for Going-to-the-Sun road for the past month prior to our visit.
One of the things I've learned (The hard way on multiple occasions) from planning trips is to do your research. You never want to get somewhere and find out the main road in a park is closed for construction, or that the hotel you booked is actually hours away from your destination due to a detour. And more often than not, in remote National Parks, this can be pretty common. Going-to-the-Sun road, for instance was at the earliest, best case, luckiest scenario, set to open on June 21st. We got there on the 20th....needless to say I was a bit worried. But as luck would have it, at 8:30 am on June 21 as we drove down the final stretch of damp open road, stuffing gas station muffins in our mouths, the entirety of Going-to-the-Sun road was officially opened for business. We were literately one of the first cars of the season to drive the road. It. Was. Awesome. One hundred times better than the best pictures (which are the ones taken by me, of course) can depict. It snaked up the sides of massive mountains, past, (and sometimes strait through) giant waterfalls, up above the tree line, into the clouds, past giant walls of snow, until we reached Logan Pass. The visibility at this point was maybe 25 feet, and it was snowing. We got out of the car and Nancy danced around a bit in more layers of clothing than were probably necessary. After the short snow day, we headed down the mountain and came out on the other side of the park, in the Many Glacier area where we had originally planned to hike to Grinnell Glacier, but after talking to a park ranger we learned the trail was still covered in thick snow. We decided to hike to Iceberg Lake instead and while I can't speak to how the Grinnell Glacier hike would have been, I would never change the decision we made. The trail to Iceberg lake was fuggin amazing, easily some of the best scenery I've ever seen surrounded us for the entire 9.7 mile round trip hike to the lake and back.
As we approached the final stretch of the hike, the groomed, rocky trail became covered by several feet of snow and navigating it was next to impossible. After 10 or 200 wrong turns we wound up at the shore of what we thought might have been Iceberg lake, and so we stopped to eat lunch. It was, at the warmest, maybe 50 degrees and sitting still just made it feel even colder. As we began to pack up and head back we saw a group of hikers coming towards us from further in than we had ventured. Following a brief conversation with them we learned that the real Iceberg lake was just a bit further up the "trail" and decided to go for it. There was no water, or icebergs at the lake, instead it was still completely frozen over and surrounded by a large snowfield.
Happy first day of summer.
But seriously, it was awesome. I can only hope to hike it again sometime once the ice has melted away to see it in all of it's glory.
On the way back we saw some mountain goats and as Nancy and I climbed up the side of a mountain to get a closer look, a little dude (pictured below) popped up and photo bombed my picture. We got back to the car around 4 pm and drove to the Many Glacier Hotel for a very interesting dinner.
Easily one of the best hikes I've ever done in my life. If you do get the chance to visit Glacier NP, go to the Many Glacier area and do this hike. Do eeeet!

P.S. We did a short hike the day we arrived in Glacier on the Trail of the Cedars. Good little hike and we got to see Avalanche Gorge.

P.S.S. 200 miles, Woooooot!

Mileage: 10.7 Miles