God Makes the Good Stuff

Glacier National Park is located in western Montana and it became a National Park in 1910. Before it became a National Park, the Flathead and Blackfeet American Indian tribes inhabited the area. The park is over 1,000,000 acres and it borders Canada with the Continental Divide crossing through the park. We’ve learned that Glacier is a very remote park with limited cell service, grocery stores, and wifi throughout the area both within the park and outside the park. We packed lots of food but not enough considering the limited resources of the area, but we’re making do with limited resources!!

The Going to the Sun Road is the most popular attraction in the area and it needs a reservation to access the road. Once you obtain a reservation pass, you can access the road and all of the hikes and places along the road. It’s a 50 mile (one way) road that cuts straight through the park with roads that have limited curves and only one extreme switchback at “the loop”. For more timid passengers, going through the park from east to west is less scary as you’re on the inside of the mountain next to the rock walls, rather than closer to the road’s edge. But you still have to go back on the same road (unless you choose a longer route outside of the park).

Here are a few views from the road…

We are staying on the east side of the park in St. Mary, which is a small town right outside the St. Mary park entrance. It’s much less crowded than the west side, but there are far few facilities in the area as a result of that. The Going to the Sun Road (GTTS Road) is named after a Native American and the Going to the Sun Mountain at the beginning of the park (from the east side). The road crosses the Continental Divide at its highest point (6656 feet-Logan Pass) and it took almost 20 years to complete (1932). This year it didn’t open til July as snow was still on the road!! It takes months to clear the road for visitors but the views were amazing! In the original design for the road, there were 15 switchbacks but one long, straighter road was actually used instead of the switchbacks. There’s only one, at “the loop”. The current road “performs its work more silently”.

More views from the road…

Stone wall throughout the park created with stones from the mountains.

Lake McDonald is the largest lake in Glacier and it’s 10 miles long and over a mile wide deep. It fills a valley formed by a combination of erosion and glacial activity. It’s best known for its beautiful, colored rocks by the shoreline. The day was hazy and the pictures weren’t the best, but you get the idea!

Jackson Glacier is the 7th largest glacier in the park and you can actually see it from the road. In order to be considered a glacier, the ice must be larger than 25 acres and be moving. There were lots of snow patches in the mountains that we saw on the drive, but this is the only glacier we could see. You could hike to this glacier but it’s a 15.4 mile hike and takes an average of 7 hours to hike!

Another photo from the GTTS Road. The one photo shows how a large fire burned many acres of the park. Because it didn’t threaten any structures, rangers let it burn as that’s good for the rejuvenation of the forest. In 2015, a scenic portion of the GTTS Road was burned. There is still evidence of this fire today and visitors can see it “front and center” as they enter the park. Below is a picture of the fire evidence.

**Forest fire along the Going to the Sun Road**

Another section of the park is called Many Glacier and you don’t have to have a reservation pass to enter this section of the park. This section has a hotel (Many Glacier Hotel) which is a Swiss Alps style hotel on Swiftcurrent Lake. There are beautiful views of the lake, hikes around the lake and to a glacier, and it’s just a great place to relax and maybe see a bear or a moose on Fishercap Lake. We were lucky enough to see a black bear on our first day and we were near our Jeep and I had my telephoto lens on so we caught some great photos of the bear and of the lake.

Below is Fishercap Lake where we will try to find the moose that likes the lake! It was a beautiful and tranquil setting with a short hike to find it.