Two weeks in Glacier

We pulled into Two Medicine Lake campground on the southeastern side of Glacier National Park at 6:30am on August 1 and scored an open campsite! “It didn’t used to be like this,” we heard over and over from veteran Glacier campers. For a week, I had been monitoring the National Park Service website posting of the “fill time” for each of Glacier’s 13 campgrounds. The campgrounds often filled by 8:30am or 9am, but some filled as early as 7am, including Two Medicine on some days. So we rose before dawn to get a site. (“The early bird….”) A special bonus was capturing a rare image of non-morning-person Lorrie standing at dawn (!) with jagged peaks in the background, all reflected in the calm waters of Two Medicine Lake.

Our campground saga is one consequence of the surge in visitors to the park, now a familiar story from our visits to other parks this summer. We heard from a ranger that visitation is up by 30 percent over last year, straining park infrastructure built for far fewer people. Glacier does have a shuttle system along the popular Going to the Sun Road, but unlike Zion National Park, where the main road is closed to all but shuttle and bicycle traffic, there are still too many cars and too few (and too small) shuttles in Glacier plying the road…and bicycles are banned from 10am to 4pm ☹).

Well, there are good reasons for Glacier’s popularity. While we have gushed over the natural beauty of other parks, we found Glacier to be even more spectacular. The mountains are stupendous. It has a great variety of superb hikes, beautiful alpine lakes for paddling, and remnants of the last of the glaciers that shaped the landscape and gave the park its name.

Over 150 glaciers were visible in 1850; today there are less than 25, and they are expected to disappear entirely by 2030. On one hike, we climbed to a point overlooking the Grinnell and Salamander glaciers, now only a quarter of what they were just a few years ago. The park newspaper recounted other ways that climate change is affecting the park. Warmer temperatures over the last 30 years have pushed the subalpine tree line higher up the mountain slopes, shrinking the habitat for the specialized flora and fauna that thrive in the harsh climate at the higher reaches of the park. More precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, reducing the snow melt that replenishes lakes in summer, which in turn warms lake waters. This has an adverse impact on native aquatic flora and fauna and facilitates invasion of opportunistic non-native species.

We ended up spending two weeks in Glacier so we could visit several areas of the park: Two Medicine in the southeast, Goat Haunt in the northeast, and Bowman and Kintla Lakes in the northwest. We hiked over 65 miles, paddled our kayaks six times on four lakes, and yes, we also drove the 50-mile Going to the Sun Road through the center of the park and hiked the popular Highline Trail from Logan Pass. We could have stayed longer if it weren’t for the calling of the eclipse. ?

Two Medicine Lake is in a beautiful region of the park, and being at some distance from Going to the Sun Road and the very popular Many Glaciers area, its trails were less crowded. Our favorite hike was the long loop from the campground over the Pitimakan and Dawson passes. It deserves a place among our favorite hikes. At almost 16 miles, it is our longest day hike so far, including beautiful stretches along exposed high ledges. It would have been even better if we could have hiked it over two or three days with backcountry stays along the way. But as with the campgrounds, competition is stiff for backcountry camping passes not reserved months in advance. The variety of wildflowers along the route was stunning– like walking through miles of botanical gardens carefully arranged to show off the wildflowers among rocky features and alpine woods. I loved the large stretches of pink fireweed and white beargrass, which was particularly exuberant this year. We paddled our kayaks on the beautiful Two Medicine Lake twice, which made Lorrie very happy (me too!). Once we paddled to the end of the lake to the trailhead of a short four-mile hike (complete with moose-sighting). While we were hiking the afternoon wind came in strong, and we had to paddle back to camp against a stiff headwind that threw up whitecaps that sprayed us with cold water as we forged ahead and Lorrie whooped with delight! We have had that experience a few times now, and I am very impressed how well our inflatable kayaks track in such conditions.

After a week in Two Medicine, we scored a backcountry permit to stay for two days at Goat Haunt at the far northern end of the park. Goat Haunt sits at the end of Waterton Lake, which extends into Canada as part of the world’s first binational peace park. To reach Goat Haunt, you have to either hike for a couple of days through the park or drive into Canada and take a boat on Waterton Lake back across the border into the United States. Goat Haunt has a tiny “Class B” border control post. Only citizens of the United States and Canada may use this route to enter the United States; visitors from other countries may get off the boat to pose with the “Welcome to the United States!” sign and take a bathroom break, but then they must get back on the same boat and return to Canada.

Goat Haunt is an unusual backcountry campsite. You pitch your tent inside a basic shelter, and you can enjoy the nearby bathroom with flush toilets (for the boat passengers!). Still, it was very quiet once the last boat left each evening. We did two nice hikes there to beautiful small lakes ringed by mountain peaks and paddled our kayaks on Waterton Lake. During a morning paddle, we watched a bear on the rocky shore for over five minutes from the safety of our kayaks. He watched us too—so cool!

The third area we visited was the northwestern corner of the park, accessible only by rutted dirt roads. We found ourselves virtually alone on beautiful Bowman and Kintla lakes, although on each lake, we were fortunate to enjoy mid-lake visits with other fellow paddlers who shared stories and tips about wilderness canoeing and kayaking in western North Carolina, Ecuador, and Alaska.

While this is a blog about Glacier National Park, I have to mention tiny Polebridge, Montana, located just outside the park on the banks of the Flathead River. On our way to Bowman Lake, we pitched our tent at a backpacker’s hostel in this “off the grid” town, powered by solar panels and propane. Polebridge has attracted a wonderful mix of hardy free-spirited settlers (including self-called “hippies”). The village has a historic “Mercantile” that now also includes a bakery with delicious fresh huckleberry bearclaw pastries (!) and a saloon featuring live outdoor music in the summer. We were treated to the music of Montana bluesman Kevin Van Dort, including “Fishing Shoes.” We loved Polebridge!

Fields of fireweed