Today we had an early 6:15 wakeup call so that we could get ourselves from St. Mary over to Many Glacier in time for the 8:30 am guided ranger hike. The Many Glacier area is known for having some of the park’s best hiking trails and phenomenal views. Ranger Kara took a group of 13 of us on the Iceberg Lake hike, one of the most popular hikes in the park.
After warning us that we might see bears on this hike, she showed us this tree which some bear has used as a scratching post. Big, big claws. Then, a little further along the trail, she pointed out another tree that had been ringed with barbed wire by bear researchers. When the bears rub up against the tree, the wire catches tufts of fur which can then be DNA sequenced by the research team. They’ve used this technique to calculate that there are roughly 340 grizzly bears that make their home here in the park. Black bears don’t get the fancy DNA treatment since they’re not an endangered species.
Well, we didn’t see any bears of either kind on the hike (the ranger claimed to see one off in the distance but no one else saw it, so we won’t count it as a bear sighting in our weekly stats). But we did see some male bighorn sheep and a few rocky mountain goats (the symbol of Glacier National Park) up on the hillside.
The hike started out pretty steep, but leveled off to a less strenuous grade after the first half hour or so. Luckily there were frequent stops as the ranger pointed out plants and mountain peaks of interest. Overall the hike was 7 miles, with a total elevation gain of 1100 feet. It would have been a longer hike, but the last mile or so of the trail was covered in steep sloping snow, and the ranger said she wasn’t allowed to lead us any further. We could have gone on by ourselves, but Iceberg Lake is still covered in snow too, so there wasn’t much point – especially since we’d already seen the fantastic view of the Ptarmigan Wall, a thin wall that has been carved down both sides by glaciers.
Even though most of the hike was fairly level, some of it wasn’t easy. For much of it we were hiking uphill through snow banks (so, so glad to have the waterproof boots instead of our tennis shoes!). There were a couple of steep avalanche chutes that we had to cross as well. Basically you really had to watch your footing or else you would be sliding down the mountain in free-fall for several hundred feet. There isn’t any danger of avalanche on the trail this late in the season, but the broken tree trunks in the photo are evidence of at least one avalanche here earlier this year.
We have really loved visiting this park, especially at this time of year since there is so much snow up on the peaks – it feels a bit like we’re in an American version of the Alps. Most of what you see in these photos is snow that will melt by midsummer. The actual glaciers are hard to make out at this time of year, since there’s still so much snow on them. In order to be a glacier, the ice field must be 100 feet thick with a surface area of 25 acres, and moving – if it’s not moving it’s not a glacier. An alarming fact is that the glaciers in the park are all shrinking – and fast. In 1910 there were 150 glaciers in the park; now only 37 remain. Scientists predict that these will be gone by the year 2030. So if you are planning to come see them, you might want to schedule your trip sometime in the next 18 years or so. But even without them, this will still be one of the nation’s most beautiful parks, in my opinion.
Today will be our last full day in the U.S. for a little while. We plan to cross into Canada tomorrow morning to see the Waterton Lakes National Park, which meets up with Glacier at the U.S.-Canada border.
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