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Geoff and Jenn's 1997 Glacier NP Trip
Day
4: Menagerie of Glacier Hikes, Part 1
We awoke to find that yet again, the cheese left inside the car had been eaten during the night. We were stumped (more later).
With hopes of hiking around Logan's pass, we headed up the Going-to-the-Sun road again, this time at a much more leisurely pace. We stopped at the well known picture spot over looking the island (Wild Goose? Wizard Pt?) on St. Mary's Lake.
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The next stop was at the Sunrift Gorge, just off of the road. It reminded us both of Oregon's own Oneonta Gorge, except this one you could not hike in.
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We also hiked down the river some and took a few photographs, including one that took 15 minutes to set up, with mediocre results.
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After the Sunrift Gorge, we stopped at an
overpass to look at some "butter and eggs" wildflowers.
Everybody else was looking at the phenomenally inspiring grand
view of the U-shaped valley below us, while Jenn and I focused on
a 8 inch plant named after a breakfast meal. Eventually we got
around to the view and snapped a few more photographs.
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Upon reaching Logan's pass, the Cavalier still seemed
to be doing OK, leading me to believe that the intense
downshifting for breaking caused her recent high-revving
antics. We spent some time munching on a quick lunch,
while watching the clouds steadily roll in. |
| At the Visitor Center, we saw a beautiful big horn sheep not far off the road; I went and took yet another "see that dot there, that's a big horn sheep" picture. |
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We then decided to take a quick trip down the highland trail. We witnessed from above, a mountain goat and her billy crossing the road below us. Naturally, the humans were just as peculiar to watch as the goats. Upon rounding the final alpine corner, we hit the sheer rock cliffs of the trail, taking a quick picture of us peering over the edge to show to Jenn's mom to make her nervous.
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From a distance we could also see several more
bighorn sheep grazing just above the trailine ahead of us.
Anxiously we headed on down the trail, only to find that it went
significantly below the sheep. We decided against going off trail
to preserve the alpine meadows. As a reward we got to see a
horny, er.. hoary marmot. I tried to give him my Marmot fleece
jacket, but he did not appear to be interested.
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On the way back, we saw two "aww, its just a" deer. We shared a mutual staring contest with them, just a few yards away from us, until some loud tourists with their bear bells came around the corner, and two women with their two terrier mutts came around the other. Cacophony followed, resulting in two bounding deer.
By this time the clouds really began to be rolling in, and by the time we got back to the car, the clouds were rolling through. Seeing nothing but white, we decided to call off the much anticipated Hidden Lake hike, opting for playing poker in the tent instead. (But that was not our fate).
Skip to the Next Day (Day 4 part 2), the Previous Day (Day 3), or the Glacier 97 Table of Contents.
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(c) Geoffrey Peters, intangibility.com, 2002. For more information
regarding this web page, please contact
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