Molly and I went on a trip this past week to Glacier National Park in northwest Montana, along with two excellent dudes that Molly went to high school with at Manual in Louisville: Nathan Busse, who now lives in Denver, and Reed Thompson, who now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. They were excellent travel companions and demonstrated high standards with regards to preparedness and hiking fitness.
Here are some random thoughts and things that I'd wished I'd known before the trip:
- The train was a good way to get there, but don't do it because of the views. I'm glad that we did it, but I'm glad we flew back.
- It's great that the glaciers exist, and it's a damn shame that they won't in a few years, but the glaciers themselves aren't very imposing in their current state. They've been diminished to the point where most are just a little bit of ice on a far-off mountain. You should definitely go to Glacier, but don't feel like your experience will be a bunch different in a few years after the glaciers are completely gone.
- In order to see much of the park, you're going to have to do quite a bit of driving, so having lodging right in the park wasn't much of an advantage. We probably paid more than we needed to on hotels by trying to stay in or very near the park.
- The exception to this rule is the Many Glacier Hotel, which is majestic and also located right at the trailhead for a bunch of great trails that you'd have to drive a substantial distance to if you're not staying in the park.
- There are a lot of alpha predators hanging out, which is a little unnerving. We carried bear mace the whole time, and camping in soft-sided tents wasn't allowed in a lot of the park because of the risk of bear attacks.
- The western 2/3rds of the Going-to-the-Sun Road (the main east-west route through the park) was closed to public traffic because of wildfires near Lake McDonald, as were the hiking trails in that area. There were still plenty of things to see and do, but we weren't able to do some of the iconic hikes like Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake.
- The eastern side of the park is pretty depopulated, visibly impoverished, and not fancy at all -- much of it is within the Blackfeet Indian Reservation -- and a lot of the roads are in pretty rough shape. The western side of the park is where much of the cheesy tourist stuff is located, and it's more directly connected to Whitefish and Kalispell, larger yuppie-ish towns with more amenities. I was glad we had enough time to spend in different parts of the area to get a better overall sense of things.
Glacier National Park: Day 1
Glacier National Park: Day 2
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