Up early again, we drove over to the visitor center to park the RV. By not staying in the campground another night, we freed up the space for another RV and also enabled us to get on the road after our hike so we’re a little closer to our next destination – making tomorrow’s drive a little shorter.
At the visitor center, we walked over to the 7:00 am express shuttle stop and were the first ones in line. A few more people joined us on the bus and then we were off to Logan’s Pass. The ride up to Logan’s pass was a steep and beautiful one. We were going from forest to alpine ecosystem. Our plan was to get off at Logan’s Pass and hike the Hidden Lake Trail. It was 1.7 miles each way with an elevation gain of a little over 500 feet up on the way in. We had heard that sometimes mountain goats and big horn sheep could be seen on this trail. When we arrived at the pass, we found the trail head and started up. It was challenging for me – especially because some of the steps were tall, but I went slow. The air was also thin – we weren’t quite as high as Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain, but we were above 6000 feet. The trail was not very busy that early in the morning so I had time to stop and take some photos. Some other families asked me to take their photo and at the top of the trail someone took a photo of us as well. Near the beginning of the trail, we saw quite a few pikas – little groundhog-like animals. We also saw one on the way back down from our hike, and it was chirping, so we took some video of that for a little while. We also saw a marmot near the beginning of the trail – which are bigger, like a white woodchuck or beaver. It was interesting to see these new types of alpine animals. Just before we reached the Hidden Lake overlook at the top of the trail, we looked up the slope and saw a few white mountain goats among the rocks on the slope. Then we also saw several big horn sheet there too! I was so happy to finally see some animals.
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We had been hiking with bear spray most of the trip, and to be honest, I was glad to not have run into any bears while hiking, but at the same time, I was a little disappointed that we hadn’t really seen any other animals, except for the elk and moose early in the trip. (We did see lizards in Utah I guess, too). Seeing the goats, sheep, marmot, and pikas made my day.
After spending some time at the top of the trail viewing the Hidden Lake we started back down. (You can hike another 1.2 miles one-way down to access the lake, and some people were going down with fishing poles). As always, going back down was much easier than the trip up had been. We made it to the bottom and saw an eastbound shuttle boarding so we hopped on it. We wanted to go two more stops to the east to Gunsight Pass and the Jackson Glacier overlook. In the 1850s, over 150 glaciers had been identified in the park. Now, only 25 remain, and those 25 are expected to be gone by 2030. Scientists say there is no possibility of reversal and that Glacier National Park will soon be glacier-less. Glaciers and snow cover are different. Glaciers are thick sheets of slowly moving ice that are essentially always there. Snow cover is just snow that comes and goes with the seasons. It melts but doesn’t move. We wanted to make sure we saw and captured photos of some of the glaciers before they were gone. Most of the glaciers can only be seen by taking long, back-country hikes deep into the park, but one of the rangers had suggested that we go to the Gunsight Pass stop to see the Jackson Glacier. We got off the shuttle at Gunsight Pass and gazed upon the glacier-covered mountain peak in the distance. I took some photos and hubby some video. We explored the area a bit and found a trail that led under the road with some pretty stonework. Then we walked back to the bus stop to catch the shuttle back to Logan’s Pass. Once back at Logan’s Pass, we stopped in to the visitor center to browse around before catching the bus back to the west side of the park.
On the way down to the west side, we stopped at the Avalanche Creek stop to hike the Trail of Cedars – a quick little trail that led to a little waterfall with the clearest water. After that hike, we rode all the way back to the west side to Eddie’s Restaurant for lunch. After lunch we did a little last minute shopping and then went back to the visitor center to get the RV and head out. It was about 2:00 pm and we wanted to get a couple hours of driving in before dark.
We drove five or so hours through Montana (including the Native American Blackfeet Reservation), and found a place to stop for the night. Mountain Acres RV was a quiet little park with full hookups in Lewistown, MT. We cleaned and organized the RV which had gotten quite messy in the last few days. I did some dishes and we had a late, light dinner and took showers. I worked on editing some photos and writing this journal before going to bed. By driving today instead of spending the night in Glacier NP, we would be able to sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning.
