One Day – Glacier National Park

This is the third in my series of posts covering images taken within a single 24-hour period. I feel more comfortable calling it a series now that it actually has three entries. In addition to the photos, I will include some of the travel, planning, and technical aspects of these trips. Today’s entry covers the evening of September 11, 2019 though the afternoon of the next day. The subject is my first visit to Glacier National Park in Northern Montana.

I usually travel alone or with another photographer when I make these trips, since most people aren’t big fans of waking up well before sunrise to hike in the dark to the places I want to shoot. Even if that is right up your alley, you’d also be signing up to potentially wait for a few hours for the light to be just right. As a birthday present this year, my wife offered to travel with me to a spot I wanted to visit and to also be a good sport about some of these hardships. Selecting Glacier National Park was easy – I had wanted to visit for years and I knew it would be beautiful. We also both wanted a chance to spend some time in Montana and see some of the state. We had a great couple of days with some beautiful weather, lots of wildlife, and that gorgeous scenery. We’ll be back.

We flew from San Jose to Kalispell, which is just west of the park. Our hotel was in Whitefish, which is the next town north. Whitefish is a cute resort town which we really liked. It serves as a gateway to Glacier in the summer and as a ski resort in the winter. We stopped in the Buffalo Cafe for lunch and really enjoyed it. The food was great and they serve breakfast all day which always works for me. We then checked into our hotel, the Best Western Rocky Mountain Lodge (which was fine but nothing special), and took off for sunset in the park.

Hidden Lake

My plan for our first day was to drive through the West entrance of the park and up the Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass. This would give me a chance to scout some locations for later in the trip and put us in a good location for sunset. The Going to the Sun Road is the only road that traverses the park, crossing the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. It is also a narrow, winding road that will tease out any fear of heights suffered by passengers in the car. Of course there are stunning views around every corner as sampled above.

From our hotel it was a 30 minute drive to the park entrance in West Glacier. I stopped at Lake McDonald to scout locations for sunrises and sunsets (more on that later), and then we headed up the road. I stopped a few times for pictures along the way and we eventually made it to the visitor center at Logan Pass.

My goal for sunset was Hidden Lake. I had seen pictures of the lake surrounded by mountains and knew it was right up my alley. The forecast was promising for a good sunset as well. The hike is a relatively easy 1.5 miles to the overlook. The first portion is uphill but there are great views all around, providing lots of excuses to catch your breath. I stopped at one point to capture an image of the Garden Wall.

A little further up the trail I photographed a scene looking down the canyon toward the Eastern side of the park. I liked the dry steam bed leading into the scene as well as how the light played on the mountains in the area. I figured if the sunset at Hidden Lake was a disappointment, this might be a good backup spot. That didn’t end up being necessary.

We made it to the Hidden Lake Overlook, and I decided I wanted to head a little further down the trail. I was hoping this would give me a view that put Bearhat Mountain more to the right in the image (rather than centered) and which allowed me to look down the lake rather than across it. We ended up in the spot below, which satisfied what I was looking for. The clouds were moving nicely across the scene so I took a photograph every once in a while when the light looked good on the peaks or the clouds lined up particularly well. My favorite of these images is shown below.

While waiting for sunset, a hiker came up the trail and let us know there was a bear below us. I moved to a clear spot and was able to see it before it disappeared into the woods. I hadn’t realized I’d captured it in a photo until I looked closely at the bottom-right corner of the image above. You can see it in the cropped image below.

Sunset was really nice, if not spectacular, and the mountains across the lake did briefly glow red as the last light hit them. After this we hiked back to the car and made our way back to our hotel for the night.

Lake McDonald and Going to the Sun

My original plan for the next day was to get up really early and drive across the park for sunrise at one of the eastern lakes: Two Medicine Lake or Swiftcurrent Lake. Both lakes have some great looking mountains that catch the first light from the sun. The sunrise forecast, though, didn’t look special and in fact looked much better the next day – so I opted for some extra sleep and sunrise at the much closer Lake McDonald. From there we would drive through the park to Swiftcurrent Lake and hike the the Grinnell Glacier Trail.

We arrived about 45 minutes before sunrise at McDonald Lake. I went to a spot I found when we scouted the area the previous afternoon and tried taking advantage of some rocks near the shore as a foreground. I adjusted my polarizer to let some of the colorful rocks below the surface show through while also getting some reflections of the clouds swirling around the mountains.

The clouds in this direction never really picked up the color of sunrise, but we did get a nice glow off to the left so I shifted my composition to take advantage of that. Most images I’ve seen of Lake McDonald really focused on the mountains in the east. I didn’t feel like that was the best option this morning and I just went with the conditions that were there. It was a beautiful morning and we had a chance to watch an otter play in the lake in front of us too.

After sunrise we drove the length of the Going to the Sun Road to St. Mary Village for some breakfast. I had no choice but to make a few stops along the way! The image below was captured on the west side of the pass. I really liked the way the clouds were swirling around Bird Woman Falls and waited until they framed the falls nicely.

My next stop was just beyond Logan Pass on the east side of the Continental Divide. Again I was drawn to the clouds and light playing on the mountains. I also made sure to include the waterfall in the lower right corner.

The Wild Goose Island Lookout is probably the most famous viewpoint in the park and with good reason. It is right off the road and provides a great view of Saint Mary Lake and the mountains behind it. It was still early morning when we arrived so we still had the benefit of some morning light. This was my favorite image, making sure that Wild Goose Island was not obscured by any of the trees.

Grinnell Glacier Trail

We stopped in St. Mary Village for some huckleberry pancakes and then made our way to Swiftcurrent Lake. I had done some research (which shouldn’t surprise anyone that knows me) and decided that the Grinnell Glacier Trail would be a great activity for the day. The full hike is about 11 miles round trip with 1840 feet of elevation gain. You can reduce that to 7.8 miles by taking two boats to cross Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine. Shortening the hike and adding four boat rides (two each way) was a no brainer, so I pre-purchased tickets for the boats a couple of weeks before our trip. It turns out that was a good choice as they were sold out on the day we were there.

After being dropped off at the far end of Lake Josephine, the trail follows some boardwalks around the lake before starting the climb. The first part of the climb was the steepest, but the hike was uphill the whole way. I was carrying a Canon 5DSR with a 100-400 lens and 1.4x extender on a camera strap outside of my backpack so I would be ready for any wildlife we saw. I also had a smaller Canon M6 with an 11-22mm lens clipped to my backpack strap to take pictures along the way.

After hiking for a while we got our first clear view of Grinnell Lake. There were a lot of clouds, but when the sun managed to peek through a gap and light up the lake, it glowed brilliantly. I took a few shots as we hiked and the one below was my favorite. For the record, the trailhead is at a lower elevation than Grinnell Lake. You can make out Grinnell Falls to the right along with Salamander Glacier above it. Our destination was just above and to the right of the falls.

Here is a closer view of Grinnell Falls taken from a spot just above it.

As we approached the end of the trail, we could look back and see the valley and lakes behind us. Below you see Grinnell Lake with Lake Josephine (where we started hiking) behind it and then Lake Sherburne behind that. Swiftcurrent Lake is hidden by the mountains.

Finally we reached Upper Grinnell Lake at the end of the trail. The view was beautiful, dominated by the turquoise water of the lake complete with icebergs. Grinnell Glacier is on the left with Salamander Glacier above. Salamander Falls adds the finishing touch to the scene.

Mountain Goats

As I mentioned above, I had been hiking with my heavy SLR around my neck with an even heavier lens attached so I’d be ready to capture images of the wildlife that frequents this area of the park. We had seen some bighorn sheep and mountain goats well above the trail, but nothing close enough to make a worthwhile photograph. Some of the other hikers mentioned seeing a bear near the trail, but we missed that too. So for the hike back down I put my camera into my pack to make myself a little more comfortable.

About a mile after we had turned around, we came upon a family of mountain goats that were on the trail. I quickly unpacked my camera and we ended up hiking with them for half a mile or so, sometimes having to step to the side as they ran past us.

My long lens was actually too long as the goats were sometimes less than ten feet away.

It was especially entertaining watching the two kids. At one point they stopped on the trail and started fighting each other. Seemed (mostly) playful…

At one point it looked like they had gotten stuck on a shear rock face. After moving gingerly along for a little bit, they simply ran down the rocks.

We got to a point where the trail was narrow and the goats weren’t giving us any space to pass. We followed them slowly for a while and then they stopped as there were hikers trying to come up in the other direction. After waiting for a few minutes I started to worry about getting back to the trailhead before the last boat left. The goats had moved a few feet off the trail and I decided to make my move.

I started walking calmly and purposefully passed the goats on the trail. Sandee followed me closely. The biggest goat above turned and definitely gave me a dirty look. When I reached the closest point, it put its head down and feinted a charge. Fortunately that is all it did and we went by safely. Nobody else took the chance, though, and it was probably another 20 minutes before the rest of the group was able to make any forward progress. Just past the goats we spotted a marmot so I had to take a picture of that too.

We made it back to the trailhead without any further excitement and relaxed by the lake watching some bighorn sheep high up on the mountain. When we got back to the car, there were some sheep on the road itself – I guess they were easier to find than I had thought. We drove back to Lake McDonald for sunset, but that is outside of the 24 hours covered by this post.

So let me know what you think… Any favorite photos? Questions about the park? Chastisement for almost getting attacked by a goat?