When we woke up in Post Falls the next morning we had ash on the rig from the thickness of the wildfire smoke. It was only a four hour drive to Glacier National Park which would put us in around noonish…not when we typically like to enter parks. We decided to set our expectations low and enjoy a scenic drive. Our original plans had us exploring the visitor center for the dam on whose reservoir we were camping along but it’s been closed for several years so into the national park we went.
The entrance gate had a bit of a line but nothing too ridiculous and we made our way to the big attraction for the park which is the Going the Sun Road which takes you to the Logan Pass visitor center. It’s a very popular destination as many hikes through the park start there as well as being known for wildlife viewing. I had given us four days to travel Going the Sun Road, explore Logan Pass, see the famed mountain goats and big horn sheep, and pop over the border to Waterton Lakes.
We enjoyed the very scenic drive that is Going the Sun Road. Lots of vistas, mountains, a few waterfalls (although not at their peak like we saw them on our last trip to the park in early spring when the falls were epic).
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| Heavens Peak |
We got to the top of Logan Pass and pulled into a very chaotic parking lot. The park service has been trying to figure out the choke points for visitors and try to even out the flow accordingly. This year they put in a three hour parking limit 24/7 at Logan Pass to stop it filling up with hikers hiking the longer trails before dawn and created shuttles for those hikers to access from both sides of the park to access the trail heads.
Again keeping expectations low we pulled into a row and started slowly rolling down looking for a spot. I saw some ladies hop into their car so we waited a bit to see if they were just dropping something off or leaving. When the car didn’t emerge I decided to be big and brave and walk over to them to see if they were in fact departing. They were very nice and said they absolutely were they were just grabbing road snackies. I hopped back in our rig and waited for them to finish sorting themselves and once they were gone slipped into the spot. I went and figured out the ticketing system.
Once everything was sorted we headed to the visitor center and noticed rangers with spotters pointed up the side of a mountain. I pulled my binoculars out and was so excited to see big horn sheep! I have been to Rocky Mountain National Park five times and have NEVER seen one there!
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| My first glimpse of big horn sheep in the wild |
We went into the visitor center and I of course got my stamp for my park book. We then checked in with the ranger for conditions for the Mt. Oberlin trail. Nothing exciting to worry about just snow and rock scrambling so we filed that information away and proceeded to the gift shop. After securing my treasures in my adventure bag we headed out behind the visitor center to the Hidden Lake Overlook trailhead. The trail down to the lake itself was closed due to bear activity but with our time allotment we weren’t planning on that route anyway.
The trail started off on pavement, progressed to boardwalk, and then the snow fields…oh my. The hike itself was fine but the snow fields were brutal. With the volume of people traversing them the sun beating down they were extremely slick as they were just at the melting point. Mind you this was a managed trail too. It made us start to rethink our Mt. Oberlin plans. We saw lots of mountain goats just off trail and several kids too! I was getting to see pretty rocks and animals!!!
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| Ground Squirrel |
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| Marmot |
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| Mountain Goat |
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| Mountain Goat Kid |
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| More Mountain Goats |
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| Cheeky Chipmunk |
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| Big Horn Sheep |
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| More Big Horn Sheep |
On the return trip of the hike we got to a steep section of the snow field and I decided that in the best interest of not falling I would be better served by sliding down it on my butt so that’s exactly what I did. My hiking trousers held up their end of things and dried quite nicely. Once we finished the hike we decided that Mt. Oberlin was no longer on the itinerary as it is an unmanaged mountaineering trail and with the managed trail being so snowy and slick that we should skip the mountaineering trail.
Once we got back to the visitor center where we started our three hours were nearly up so we headed back to the rig to then head back down Going the Sun Road to then head to camp. We had covered my itinerary in an afternoon so now we needed to figure out what we were doing Sunday and Monday.
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