Hike, Bike or Horseback Ride through Glacier National Park

Today you’ll discover why Glacier National Park is in the Top Ten of the national parks visited each year:  EPIC landscape!!!  Incredible hiking, biking and horseback riding trails to discover said epic beauty!!!

With over a million acres and 700 miles of trails, you can’t run out of amazing things to do and see.

We cover trail safety when hiking in grizzly country (don’t worry – I was a bit myself until I did the research).

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002: Hike, Bike or Horseback Ride through Glacier National Park

It’s always a good idea to let a grizzly bear know you’re coming up the trail. We’re visiting grizzly country. I’m about to go on a three-week adventure, spending 24 hours a day together, camping and hiking with a woman I just met one evening and only for a three-hour dinner. What could possibly go wrong? We will be exploring the many ways you too can have an exciting active adventure vacation at the majestic Glacier National Park. I met Venti while checking in to a hotel one fall Sunday night on the outskirts of Bourdeaux, France. Like me, she opted for the more reasonably priced business district hotel five miles from town as all of the reasonably priced hotels in the city were booked with weekend tourists. This hotel was on a bus line, making it an easy commute back the next day when the reasonably priced rooms were available again. While checking in, I asked the desk clerk what time the restaurant opened as the place seemed dead. This was, after all, a hotel that catered to local corporations and it was a Sunday.

He told me it wasn’t going to open at all tonight. There were no restaurants or even shops I saw on the short walk from the bus stop. The lady in line behind me said, “You speak English?†“Yes,†I replied. Venti, the woman behind me, is an Australian expat living in Wyoming. She suggested we go to dinner together and I readily agreed. The clerk recommended we go to an Italian place a short walk away. When we arrived and saw the unimpressive strip mall exterior, we braced ourselves for an uninspired dinner. Seeing how there were no other options, we headed inside. It was like going through a magic mirror. From that bland exterior, we were escorted to this charming outside patio with a beautiful garden. Our meal, the wine and the service were outstanding. Venti and I became fast friends over our leisurely dinner.

The Glacier National Park adventure is great for anyone looking for superior landscape views and endless trails. Share on X

Fast forward six months, Venti and I had only kept up lazily on Facebook. That spring, she told me she was planning a three-week hiking and camping adventure in Glacier National Park. Would I like to join her? I found Venti fascinating and even though I didn’t know her well, I decided to jump at the opportunity. We are both pretty well-traveled. She is way more traveled than I am. I figured that meant that we both knew how to roll with the punches when things go wrong, which as you know, some things always does go wrong when you travel. Regardless, I considered this an experience in and of itself and it would be an adventure on top of me getting to see a part of the country I’d never been to. Yes, Venti, I would indeed like to join you.

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

Because of snow, for most of us, the best time of year to visit Glacier National Park is July or August, even as late as mid-September. Snow keeps many of the roads closed into June, then the snow can start closing them back up in September. Glacier National Park, or GNP as I’ll call it from now on, is in both Montana and the Alberta section of Canada. In 1932, through efforts of the Rotary International, the two country’s national parks joined together as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. UNESCO has declared both parks a Biosphere Reserve and their union a World Heritage Site. However, they are managed separately. On the US side, it is called GNP and in Canada, Waterton Lakes National Park. This means that you have to pay fees on both ends. Before I forget, you need to bring your passport if you want to visit both sides, even if you are a US or Canadian citizen.

 

What exactly is a glacier? Glaciers are the glob of snow, ice, water, rock and sediment that move under the influence of gravity. They get bigger when winter snows create more snow and ice but retreat when the summer heat melts more than was created over the winter. The glaciers have been in retreat since the last Little Ice age ended in the mid-1800s. There were once 150 glaciers in GNP, but now it’s down to 25 active ones. The active means they are still moving forward and backward, but pretty much these days they are moving backwards. When glaciers melt and refreeze, they scour the earth and move the material like the rocks, soil and sediment to another location. When I was a child on Long Island, I remember a teacher explaining that the reason the northern half of Long Island was hilly and rocky was due to the retreating glaciers pulling that rock and soil I talked about.

The glaciers never ventured far enough south to make it to the southern, flatter part where I lived, so there’s the less rocky half. It’s funny the odd trivia you remember. One cool thing about glaciers is that sometimes rivers flow through the glaciers into rivers or lakes. When the glaciers scrub the earth and rocks, the abrasion between the rocks creates sediment. This sediment can be so finely ground that it becomes a powder and it stays suspended in the water. The sunlight then interacts with the sediment and can create this otherworldly milky turquoise color. When you go to Glacier, it’s a good idea to have a plan. Luckily for me, Venti did all the planning so all I had to do was show up. I’m starting to get to like someone else planning my trips for me. Glacier National Park is huge. It has over one million square acres and over 700 miles of trails and all of it is gorgeous.

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Going To The Sun Road

GNP is America’s seventh most popular national park, plus the landscape is so impressive that it quickly became named our eighth national park. The park has several entrances and five different visitor’s centers. The most popular entrances are on the east side, St Mary’s and Many Glacier. On the west side is Apgar. Up north in Canada, there is one in Waterton. There are a couple of other smaller entrances with minimal facilities. There is also a huge visitor’s center at Logan’s Pass, which in the middle of the main road. That main road through the park is one of the world’s engineering marvels. It runs from the west in Apgar, east to St. Mary’s, and through the popular and very busy Logan’s Pass. The road is called Going to the Sun Road. It is 50 miles of some of the most scenic beauty in America. This road is the first to have been registered in all of the following categories: National Historic Place, National Historic Landmark and Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Before Going To The Sun Road opens in the summer, the area around Logan Pass may have 80 feet of snowdrift. We’re talking snow around eight stories high. This makes it one of the most difficult roads to maintain in the country. Late winter avalanches have pretty much destroyed every guard rail they’ve experimented with so in some places, they have pretty much given up putting them up. It can take crews ten weeks to plow this scenic drive and the road is usually open by mid-June. However, in 2011, it didn’t open until mid-July, the latest in its history. Because of the hairpin turns, vehicles are not allowed to be longer than 21 feet, including your bumpers. That doesn’t make a difference whether you’re driving a solo RV or have a vehicle towing an RV or boat. During certain hours, mountain biking is allowed along this scenic route, but because the road is so busy, I personally would only do it with a tour group so that you have the front and back van to protect you from driving visitors who are paying more attention to the scenery than to the road. The road is pretty skinny even without the scenic distractions. My recommended tour companies are in the free cheat sheet at ActiveTravelAdventures.com if you’re interested.

 

Grizzly Bear Watching

“Kit, what about those grizzly bears? Isn’t it dangerous to hike or bike around bears?†I have to admit, I was a bit nervous myself. On the East Coast where I live, we have black bears. Unless you are in a national or state park where they don’t hunt bears, the bears tend to fear humans so I consider it a treat whenever I see one. They have lots of black bears in GNP, but also one of the highest concentrations of grizzlies on the continent. What do we do? The main thing is to use the common sense practices the rangers tell you and you’ll be fine. Here are a few key points. First, you need to know the difference between the two types of bears as the bears have different personalities and have different personal space requirements. The grizzly bears have an obvious shoulder hump. They have a dished face, rounded ears and large white claws. Not that you’re going to get that close. Black bears have no hump, a straight dog-like muzzle, pointed ears and dark claws.

This fact is really important. You cannot tell the difference between the types of bears by their color. There are brown black bears and black grizzly bears. Go with the body shapes and other identifiable features I mentioned. From a distance, I find the hump and snout the most easily recognizable traits. When hiking, make human noises like, “Hey, bear,†cadence that I started with when you are in an area of tall vegetation that could hide a bear, when you’re around any berry patches where they may be feeding or before any sharp bends in the trail. Your goal is to not surprise a bear. Believe me, the bears don’t want to mess with you either. According to a ranger, the bells that are commonly sold to alert bears that a human is present don’t work, so don’t waste your money. In fact, the captain on the ferry over to Crypt Lake told us that sometimes the bells attract bears, wondering what the heck the noise is. You should, however, carry bear spray. The airlines won’t let you pack it on the plane so unless you’re driving in, wait until you get there to buy some. They confiscated mine at the airport on my return flight and told me that they’d give it to the boy scouts.

When the glaciers scrub the earth and rocks, the abrasion between the rocks creates sediment. Share on X

One other thing to note, the rangers are on the ball out there and they close any trails where they know of current bear activity. If you want more details, you can read my What to do if you encounter a bear in the woods. In my research, in the last thirty years, I found only two fatalities from bears in Glacier. One was a man who spooked a mom with her cub and the other was a mountain biker who may have brought out the bear’s chase instinct. You never run from a bear. If you’re going to move, you back away slowly. Considering Glacier gets over three million visitors a year and it celebrated its 100 millionth visitor a couple of years ago and 70% of all Glacier’s visitors hike, I think you’ll agree that with appropriate safety precautions, you will be fine and the treat will be in seeing a bear from a safe distance.

I personally got lucky three times. Once from the car, we saw a mama grizzly and her cub in the meadow. When bears are near the road, you’ll get into what’s called a Bear Jam, much to the park ranger’s dismay. They keep telling all of us that we’re supposed to keep driving when we see wildlife. Like that’s going to happen. We also enjoyed watching a black bear from the safety of our car for about 30 minutes on another day. When outside of a vehicle, you are considered safe if you are at least 300 feet from a bear. The most thrilling encounter was one day after lunch, sitting next to a lake, I got chilly after eating so I moved over to a sunny log. A couple of minutes later, I saw a grizzly come out of the woods towards the lake, maybe 800 feet away. There were several dozen hikers at this section of the lake during lunchtime. As the grizzly casually ambled towards us, we all watched with joy. As it got a little bit closer, when it got to be maybe around 400 feet away, we all headed back to the trail and away from the bear as a precaution. What a thrill.

 

I also saw plenty of wild goats. On a hike up to the Hidden Lake Overlook, there was a ton of them. There was still some snow on the ground. As Venti and I hiked up, a couple was eating their lunch on a large boulder and had no idea that on the meadow just a few feet behind them, a couple of wild goats were also enjoying their grassy lunch. The goats seemed fairly tame, but you are supposed to keep a distance of about 75 feet, which everyone pretty much ignored. I personally felt safe close to them. It is a good idea to follow that guideline if you come across the Big Horned Sheep. These impressive sheep like to be up high. On this trip, I only literally saw a sheep’s butt. I wouldn’t have even seen that except for the fact that a small group of them were on a cliff above our trail and they were disturbing the rocks and pebbles as they fed. We obviously looked up to see what was causing all the debris to tumble on top of us. What if it was just Big Horn Sheep’s butt? I love seeing wildlife and I’ll take seeing sheep hiney if that’s all I can get.

Abundance Of Wildflowers

Not only is the wildlife in abundance in Glacier, but I can honestly say that I have never seen such a variety or abundance of wildflowers in my life! I’m a plant person. I once owned a wholesale plant nursery and I have a pretty good eye for and knowledge of plants. The funny and cool thing about Glacier is that the growing season is so brief. It seems that all of the wildflowers burst into bloom around the same time. We were there in mid-July. It was crazy that flowers I know to be spring wildflowers where I lived were blooming alongside other plants I know to be fall bloomers, such as asters. These plants seemed to have evolved to all have this boisterous floral keg party at the same time and literally have to make hay while the sun shines. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting any flowers that far north, but the alpine meadows were loaded with them.

When you go to Glacier, it’s a good idea to have a plan. Share on X

I must say that seeing one fabulous view after another of these meadows was a highlight. I read there were over 1,000 kinds of wildflowers here. It was incredible. In fact, they have a tall wildflower there called beargrass, which at the top looks like a white Christmas bell or pompom. That was in such profusion and I am talking acres upon acres of blooms that I have never seen anything like it. Colonies of this wildflower generally only bloom every five to seven years. In 2017, we were told that we were lucky enough to see the largest mass of beargrass blooms in 30 years. The mountainsides were sometimes covered in them. Despite the name, the bears don’t eat them and they aren’t even a grass. They are quite beautiful and I am so grateful to have seen them at their peak. Up in Siyeh Pass.

Another one of my favorite wildflowers is the delicate-looking glacier lily, which is also a favorite of the bears. It was hard to pick a favorite because everything here was one beautiful, riotous burst of color in every nook and cranny of the trails, especially on these alpine meadows. As I said, I am a plant person, and after many days of hiking, I became concerned when I saw only two small clusters of a very pretty perennial I call Bee Balm or Monarda when most of the wildflowers I had seen had hundreds of clusters throughout the trails. I was worried because this lovely plant is in the mint family and it’s very invasive. I thought that some hiker had inadvertently let loose some seeds that may have gotten snagged on their backpack from home or something like that, and that the plants would crowd out the native species like some kind of kudzu.

I was relieved when I met a retired teacher along a special trail to see the Upper Grinnell Glacier. On this trail, there’s a lovely viewpoint just above the glacier and it has a bit of a beach that you can hike down to if you’d rather hang out down there. When the light hits the glacier, it can play tricks on your eyes, giving it a surreal appearance. My eyes didn’t quite what know what to make out of some of it. This trail is about an eleven-mile total hike and I would call it moderate. Happily, on the way back from Grinnell glacier, I met that retired teacher who hikes Glacier every year. That particular day, he was hiking with a twenty-year-old student he had met the day prior who, like himself, was also traveling solo. I ended up joining them for a few miles. This teacher was so knowledgeable about the park and its plants, plus he had an excellent color flower guide with him. I was grateful to see that the Bee Balm I had been worried about was indeed a native of these mountains, but I’m guessing the cold must somehow keep them in check.

For this particular stretch of that hike, I felt like I had my own botanist giving me a private tour. I just love how you meet so many cool people while adventure traveling, and that this mutual love can bring together such disparate people as a college kid, a middle-aged woman and a retired professor. Another superb hike is the Swiftcurrent Pass, which is about seven miles each way to a scenic overlook of a chain of three glacial lakes. At the pass, you will intersect the Continental Divide so be on the lookout for hikers. For the hardcore, you can add an additional 1.4 miles up switchbacks to the Swiftcurrent Lookout or go see the Granite Park Chalet. At the top of the pass, you’ll see a chain of three glacial lakes connected by a single stream. They call this lake Paternoster, which is named after the Latin for the prayer, Our Father, since the lake chain resembles rosary beads.

Not only is the wildlife in abundance in Glacier, but there is also a variety or abundance of wildflowers in it. Share on X

Weather Window At Glacier

At Glacier National Park, you can go into the backcountry and backpack or you can day hike as we did. You can horseback ride, there are lots of trails. You can mountain bike or even take a rafting trip. There are also boat excursions if you need a rest day. Because of the stunning landscape with the large variety of ways to explore it, Glacier National Park is very popular and the weather window is so short to see it all unless you want to mess with the snow. This creates two problems. Number one, it’s crowded. That’s one reason I wasn’t so worried about bears because the open trails were so busy, it was unlikely a bear would come near them. The road gets congested and the parking is difficult. If you want to park at Logan’s Pass in the middle of Going to The Sun road, you’d better get there pretty early. Venti and I preferred to park at the main entrance and used the free shuttle to get about the park. It runs several times an hour.

Waterton

Number two, lodging. If you want to stay in the park, you need to either get one of the early online reservations or get there when they open and hope to get a spot. We chose to camp just outside the park most of the time or we stayed in a basic motel outside of the entrances. Inside the park, there are some magnificent historic lodges that are also an option. The hotel at Many Glacier on Swiftcurrent Lake is not only a nice place to stay but do go in and have a drink after your day’s adventures. There are also some basic chalets within the park. Generally, the lodging is very basic but there is usually at least one higher quality accommodation if that’s your thing. Remember that I mentioned that Glacier joined with Canada’s Waterton park? Do try to see both while you’re up there. It isn’t that far of a drive between the two. From Many Glacier, it maybe is an hour and a half and that includes going through customs. Don’t forget, you need a passport these days.

At Waterton in Canada, the campsite access is similar to the US side. You have to get there early to snag a spot or you can stay in town at one of the hotels. There’s a little village campsite that looked busy and annoying to me or even the historic Prince of Wales Historic Hotel which overlooks the beautiful Upper Waterton Lake. This impressive lodge was built by the railroad company in the mid-1920s during the Prohibition Era. It was built to lure tourists who would then use the railroad. It has a magnificent view of the lake from up on a very high bluff. Waterton itself is a charming host town of less than 100 full-time residents. It has several cute cafes and ice cream parlors. There are some day hikes on 120 miles of trails from the town center where you can see waterfalls and beautiful red rock. Plus, there are several mountain biking and horseback riding trails.

There’s this historical old ferry boat, very colorful red and white, the M.V. International that’s been in service since 1927. You can use that ferry as either a tour of the lake, as a shuttle to the Goat Haunt area trails or take it across the lake to hike the Crypt Crater. Outside of Waterton, there’s also a Bison reserve you can drive through. If your lungs are up to a fairly steep ascent, the 10.7 mile or 17.2 kilometer hike up to Crypt Crater is a must. The name comes from the 600-foot waterfall that flows underground like a crypt before it comes out of the headwall into the valley below. I would rate this a 3.5 star hike. Be aware that there is a 675 meter or 2,214-foot elevation gain, so you need to have pretty good lungs and take your time. National Geographic has named the Crypt Hike as one of the top twenty most thrilling hikes in the world and it has also been called Canada’s best hike. The ferry boat will shuttle you over to the trailhead. You’ll have to book separate one-way shuttles on the ferry, but if you get your time wrong, don’t worry. The captain will still get you back on a standby basis. Plan at least six hours for the hike.

The beginning of the trail goes through a few miles of woodland. Some of the edible berries were just starting to ripen, so we treated ourselves to a few along the way. Once through the woodland, you start a steep ascent through a rocky path with many switchbacks. You’ll pass two beautiful waterfalls about halfway up. Nearer to the top, you’ll have to hold onto a cable wire bolted into the side of the mountain as the path is only about a couple of feet wide with a very steep dropdown. It sounds scarier than it was. Shortly after that, you have to climb up a ladder and then hunch down and crawl through a four-foot-wide, 100-foot-long naturally made tunnel through the mountain. When you arrive at the top, you’ll find the beautiful crater lake. It’s a wonderful place for a picnic. There’s a path around it, so I went for it.

It was fairly easygoing until I was about three quarters of the way through. There was still a little bit of snow on the north facing side that had a pretty steep 40–degree angle. The snow was not icy, but if I lost my footing, I could have slid down that slope into the lake which was freezing cold and super deep. It would have been very difficult for me to climb out. However, it wasn’t slippery, just steep and I did have my sticks for balance. I wasn’t scared. I am a bit of a scaredy-cat, but I must say that I did feel a bit of a twitch. What I decided to do was to kick my heel into the next step area to give myself a solid foothold that I could use for the next step. This worked out well enough so that I felt comfortable enough not to turn back. One thing I like about this whole region is how the mountains just pop up out of the flat prairie. It’s so different than the mountains in North Carolina where we have foothills, where there’s increasingly large hills leading up to the big mountains. Here, you can be out in super flat prairie grass and then you see these jutting massive mountain peaks. I understand the term big sky now as you can see so much more and so much further than I’m used to.

Another thing about this region is the potential summer wildfires. Some were just getting started when I was there and one, the Sprague Fire, is raging out of control. Wildfires are part of the cycle of the forest. The fire residue recycles the nutrients of the dead and the living vegetation so the area can start anew. Many plants, such as the magnificent beargrass, do best after a wildfire. The clearings from fires allow for lush fresh new growth which also appeals to all the foraging animals. The smoke from the fires can be hard on the lungs and eyes, and the park will close the area if it gets bad. I must say that the smoke makes for some stunning sunsets. The particulates in the air make for a super red colored sunset. The smoke from wildfires can also create a haze that can obscure your long-distance views, but we didn’t have much problem with that. Right before your trip, be sure to go to the National Parks Services’ excellent website to check on any updates on both the snow and any wildfires before you head out.

America’s National Parks have been called America’s Best Idea. A guy by the name of Nagle had this to say in favor of starting America’s National Park System, “Europe had millennia of cultural superiority which we couldn’t compete with, but we could with nature.†When you visit Glacier, you’ll see just what he meant. Remember how I wondered earlier how things would go spending three weeks, 24 hours a day in close quarters with a woman I’d just met? It turned out my adventure travel theory is correct. There is a special kind of bond with people like you and me who do these kinds of outdoor things. Whether it’s the twenty-year-old college student, the kindly professor or my seasoned world traveler new Aussie friend, we all got along great and truly nothing did go wrong. The verdict on this adventure is that it is great for anyone looking for superior landscape views and endless trails. I’d put the average physical rating anywhere from between a 2 to a 3.5 out of 5. The comfort level, unless you are staying at one of the historic lodges, is usually basic two-star or camping.

Unless you are backpacking in the backcountry, every day is a day trip so you can make it as strenuous or easy going as you like. This vacation can be readily planned and executed on your own, although I would definitely recommend using a tour company for road biking adventures just for road safety reasons. Tour companies can also arrange your whole trip for you if you don’t want to mess with the hassle of getting campsites, etc. If you’re going to add Glacier National Park to your bucket list, you want to try to do so as soon as you can. The forecast is by 2030, the remaining 25 glaciers will have melted away, which is a shame. With or without the glaciers, this park has so many outstanding opportunities for all sorts of active adventure travel. I still would highly consider it with or without the glaciers.

Have you subscribed to Active Travel Adventures podcast? If not, it’s a great way to show your support for this podcast and to help other adventurous folks like yourself find the program, so please subscribe. If you need help doing so, just look at the link on the homepage of the ActiveTravelAdventures.com website. Please reach out to me at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com if I can answer any questions for you or if you have comments or suggestions. This is your program so I love it when you reach out to me to let me know what you want to hear. It helps me provide the content that you want to listen to. I appreciate it. Until then, adventure on.

 

Important Links:

• Glacier National Park
• Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park
• Waterton Lakes National Park
• ActiveTravelAdventures.com
• What to do if you encounter a bear in the woods
• Granite Park chalet
• M.V. International
• National Parks Services
• Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com
• https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bears/safety.htm – Bear safety tips

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