Hiking Glacier National Park
Be ready to be inspired by jaw-dropping, gorgeous views that you can’t find anywhere else. Glacier National Park has got to be one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever been. The views were incredibly stunning and even though we only spent a weekend there it was well worth the 10 1/2 hour drive.
Choosing Our Hikes: Erik and I put quite a bit of thought into which hikes we would do and why. As we get deeper into our journey nomadding something I wanted to emphasize was building to more and more intense hikes. For the first day, we chose the Avalanche Lake Trail hike. This is a 6-mile, 700 ft elevation gain hike that was generally considered to be a pretty easy hike. On the second day, we chose the Granite Park Trail hike. This is a considerably more difficult hike sitting at 8 miles, 2500 ft elevation gain. If you are choosing to hike Glacier make sure to check out AllTrails. I swear by this app for understanding how the hikes are, what intensity they are, and the best climb.
Day 1: Our first day was a mix of travel and hiking. We were driving from Bozeman and left about 7am in the morning, hoping to get to our campsite around 1pm and then head into the park. This plan faltered as we stopped for breakfast, walked around Missoula, and picked up some supplies/lunch in Kalispell (the biggest town nearest West Glacier). We got to our campsite (we found one on Hipcamp) about 3pm. After pitching camp it took us about 15 minutes to get into the park and another 30 to get to our hiking trail. This meant we were heading up the trail much later than we wanted. We kicked it up the trail hoping to get to the top as soon as possible. We couldn’t believe what we saw once we reached the top..
The view was incredible. We had found ourselves at an open shallow lake that was surrounded by beautiful mountains and multiple falls springing down that led into the lake. Was truly an incredible experience. If you do end up going here I feel like it is a right of passage to wade in as the water was super shallow and there is an easily accessible few rocks to stand on and take some great pictures. After we wrapped up at the lake we flew down the mountain as nighttime was starting to descend on us. We quickly made it back to our car and headed back to our campsite for the night.
Day 2: Waking up early (7:30ish) we got up and quickly packed our stuff. We only had two days in Glacier and we were going to make the most of it. After packing up it was close to a 50-minute drive to Granite Park Trail which was our next destination (pretty far east into the park). We stopped quickly to grab a coffee at the West Glacier cafe (they have a cafe/gift shop/general store for anything you forgot and/or need) and then drove on through. After the 50-minute drive (which was also insanely beautiful) we landed at “The Loop”. This is a scenic turnaround where there is plenty of parking available.
From here we moved on up the Granite Park trail. Now this trail is no joke, it is pretty much a straight 2,500 vert. climb from where you start up to the Glacier Chalet where we ended, but it was 100% worth it. From the top, you can see the valley stretching either way and the huge mountains that surround you. At a steep pace, it took us about 1 1/2 hrs to do the hike up to the chalet which was about 4mi up. Once we got to the top there were plenty of picnic tables to hang out at and enjoy our lunch (which mostly was snacks/protein bars/apples/etc.).
After we hit the top we headed down taking an alternate trail through the Highline Loop, then made it to our car and headed back for Bozeman!
Tips for a Weekend Trip: When it comes to tips, I think the biggest one we may have learned is how booking a campsite can be extremely annoying, especially at the end of the season. Since we decided to do this in late September most of the campsites were closed, so we had to find an alternate (Hipcamp). While not a bad solution it definitely wasn’t the same as camping inside the park. The national park system does have a great system for this as well (you can check it out here). Other than that I think it’s just planning ahead! As with everything the more you know what you’re bringing/need, the easier it will be to handle whatever comes your way. Till next time!
Best,
B
Thanks for reading!
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Another way you can help me on my nomadic journey is to use any of the below links for any of the different tools I mentioned above to sign-up!
- Hipcamp: Think AirBnB except for camping. I’ve found this useful in off-seasons where public campsites are not available.
- AllTrails: A guide to everything trails. This app is awesome as you can download offline versions of trails in all different types.
- Roadtrippers: This is great for anyone road tripping, unfortunately not great functionality for flying between places, but it does great at what it was originally built for. Also if you choose to get the subscription use this code to get $5 off: BTR5QTP
