Glacier National Park

Logan Pass view

Glacier National Park has been on our list of places we must visit, and knowing the the glaciers there will be gone by 2030 (if not sooner) put it near the top of our list.

The scenery is stunning, and as I went through my 500+/- photos, I was hard-pressed to choose just one to symbolize the grandeur of the park.

So, I recommend that people visit the park, but if you want to see glaciers, you must work very hard to do so.  One glacier, Jackson, is visible from the road (at a distance), and another, Gem, has been downgraded from glacier to non glacier (think poor Pluto) because it's too small.  Otherwise, one must hike quite a ways, usually with some strenuous uphill at altitude to see the other 20-some glaciers.  This year is particularly difficult to appreciate the glaciers because the snow pack was 180% of normal and the ice packs are covered in snow and look like the surrounding snow fields.  So, we didn't really see much in the way of glaciers, but we did admire and appreciate what the glaciers have created in the valleys and lakes.

We entered the park on the west side, having flown into Kalispell (which is a big enough city to have a Costco), and the first lovely lake one sees is Lake McDonald.  I photographed the lovely water with the rugged peaks in the background and oohed and ahhhed, and as we went through the park for 7 days, I had to promise myself I would organize my photos immediately upon returning home since we were to see and photograph many more beautiful lake and mountain scenes.  And waterfall upon waterfall.

The first three nights we spent in West Glacier, an outpost just outside the park with a motel, restaurant, gift shop, two gas stations, a grocery store, an adventure company and a few other necessities.  No internet, no phone service.

At the end of seven days we asked ourselves if we had missed email, Facebook, etc., and really, we hardly noticed the technological absence.  Perhaps it is because we grew up without the tether that we could easily revert back to (near) solitary existence simply by being in such a magnificent place and spending our time hiking, photographing, reading and searching for huckleberry pie.....

I have chosen some of my favorite photos from Oregon and Glacier and put them on my Picasa site (link on the left).