Saturday, September 26, 2020

Glacier National Park, Day 2, 3, and 4 Dense Smoke and Then Rain


We were so excited to see Jen, Eric, and their Friends and when we arrived Eric helped us to carry our suitcases inside before we met everyone for a careful social distance hug. They already had their plans for the next day, hiking the Highline Trail and we opted to hike the Hidden lake Trail.

The next morning, they got up and left at four am. It is a two-hour drive to Logan Pass and if you do not leave early you will not get a parking spot. Their hike was about twelve miles long, too much for us, and so we slept in.

Now the Hidden Lake Trail is a short hike. Its normally about four miles round trip but the bottom half was closed due to grizzly bear activity. Perhaps you saw the people being chased on the news with a bystander yelling at them to not run! That is the trail we wanted to hike. The bottom half was closed as the bears were still in the area, but it did not matter.

Leaving at seven am we it took us about two hours to reach Logan Pass.  It was not the first time we had been in Glacier National Park as years ago we took a family trip. Hat time it rained so hard and even snowed and we never could see the mountains on the other side of the valley.


This time it was the smoke and it was so dense that we only spotted the outline of the mountains as we neared the pass. Arriving at Logan Pass we could not find any parking spot and there were cars driving around like a flock of vultures, waiting to pass. WE left the flock and drove back down the steep acrophobic road stopping at several spots.

McDonald Creek runs along the road and we looked for likely fishing spots. We had stopped at the ranger station and asked about fishing as we hoped to catch two rare fish, a west slope cutthroat trout and a bull trout. The stream was too shallow in most of the stretches, but we got lucky.


At one stop, the Cascades, another car stopped and asked if we had seen the bear run across the road right behind us. Making an about turn we didn’t’ drive far before we saw stopped vehicles and we saw the black bear.

It was floating in a deep pool enjoying the cold sauna. And it spotted me as I started to take its images. It stared at me as if to say, I hate people and finally waded out on the other side of the creek. I ran back to the car switched out the lenses for my 103-305 mm zoom and hurried back to a crowd that was watching the bear.


Zooming in I got some of my best images of a black bear, and this was a huge boar! It looked around at all the people, not many compared to Yellowstone bear crowds, and finally yawned before it walked into the woods. A bear on the first day!


When we arrived back at the VRBO cabin, the others had already arrived and were celebrating their successful hike. They showed us images of a bighorn ram and mountain goats, much of the wildlife is habituated to people, but hey were jealous when we told them we had seen a bear!

The next day we tried to again drive up to Logan Pass. The smoke was a little better and we could at least see the outline of Bishops Hat. We did not spot any wildlife, so we checked out some more fishing spots. One of the spots looked promising and so we got out the fly rods and tried but to no avail. Not only did we not get a rise but we never spotted any fish in the heavily fished stream.


We also tried, and failed, to get a parking spot at the Avalanche Lake Trailhead. It is a much shorter hike than the Highline Trail and the fishing is supposed to be good there.

The rain moved in and so we spent day four in the cabin, only venturing out to visit a rock shop. The rock shop, Keholes Rock Shop, had collections and specimens that went back to the nineteen twenties. It was a real surprise and is the best rock shop we have ever seen. It even had a full-size cave bear fossil skeleton. Suffice it to say we spent way too much money. Clear skies


1 comment:

  1. Great bear pics. We did Logan Pass on our cross country bicycle trip years ago. Love Glacier. Stay healthy.

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