Nature has adorned Glacier National Park with the finest living gemstones. Her pointed peaks are studded with dazzling opal snowfields, blue topaz lakes, emerald spruce trees, and amethyst wildflowers.

Conservationist George Bird Grinnell christened this “unmapped corner” of northwestern Montana the “Crown of the Continent” in 1901. Crown is an apt title for this ruggedly regal terrain.

If a raindrop falls on the park’s 8,020 ft tall Triple Divide Peak, that tiny droplet will eventually flow into one of three saltwater oceans… the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean. This rare hydrological feature makes Glacier NP the queen mother of North America’s watersheds. This wonderland sparkles with 762 crystal clear lakes,172 unyielding mountain peaks, and 563 gurgling streams. 

Glacier is much more than another pretty U.S. national park… the park has been coronated on the global stage as a world heritage site, biosphere reserve, and international peace park. 

The famous Going-to-the-Sun road is the sole route cutting through the entirety of Glacier National Park. This 50-mile engineering marvel was designed to elegantly blend in with nature. But that wasn’t always the case.

The road engineer George Goodwin had originally proposed building this transmountain highway the most efficient way possible, with 15 switchbacks up the steepest mountain pass. Upon reviewing the plans, landscape architect Tom Vint was aghast… he felt that the road design would marr the panoramic scenery and look like “miners had been there.” Vint petitioned for a less distracting roadway design and offered an alternate route that would require only one switchback.

After stewing on the matter, National Park Service Director Stephen Mather ultimately sided with Vint’s proposal and found money in the budget to accommodate the more expensive but less obtrusive road design. This choice would influence infrastructure planning and other “parkitecture” decisions in the future. 

Sheer cliffs, unpredictable rockfalls, short construction seasons, and snowy conditions made constructing the Going-to-the-Sun road a formidable challenge. To reduce disturbance to the natural environment, the road was constructed using only small blast explosives. The retaining walls, guardrails, and culverts were fashioned out of rough-cut limestone and argillite.

The project’s surveying team frequently climbed 3,000 ft each morning to take measurements and used rope suspensions to dangle over nauseating heights. The work was so difficult and unpleasant that the surveyors recorded a 300% turnover within the first three months, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

After 12 laborious years of planning and construction, the Going-to-the-Sun road opened to the public in 1932. Today, the hugely popular transmountain highway continues to be a major tourist attraction. Due to heavy snowfall, the roadway is only open for a few months out of the year.

Recently, the historic roadway underwent a monumental $160 million of structural reinforcement from 2017 through 2019. Even with modern equipment, these road repairs are no easy feat!

EXPERIENCING GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

Ironically, Glacier National Park is not the best place to see glaciers. The park’s 26 glaciers are rapidly receding… Today’s remaining glaciers can really only be seen through quality binoculars or via long and strenuous hikes. Glacier National Park’s namesake ice formations can be tricky to distinguish from snowfields, especially since most are nestled in shadowy crevices along Continental Divide. Among the lower 48 contiguous states, North Cascades NP, Mt. Rainer NP, Olympic NP, and Grand Teton are actually much better locations for glacier viewing. (With more than 300 active glaciers, Washington’s North Cascades NP is actually the most glaciated area in the United States outside of Alaska.)

Despite this sad misnomer, Glacier National Park is jaw-droppingly beautiful! Words cannot properly encapsulate the emotion that comes from touching the icy water dripping from the Weeping Wall or smelling the fragrant hanging blooms on the Garden Wall. 

Adam and I were delighted to spot baby mountain goats at Logan Pass and moose through binoculars at St. Mary’s Lake.

We had a less fun encounter with magnificent but aggressive bighorn sheep on the Highline Trail (if you read on until the very end). 

HIGHLINE TRAIL

BETTER WITH FRIENDS

Our friend Amanda was volunteering at the Mount Brown Fire Tower Look-Out, so we hiked up to meet her on her last day of rehabilitating the historic structure. She warned us that the 10 mile round-trip trek was one of the more difficult trails in the park… but after our Grand Teton hikes, we were raring for a new personal record. The Mount Brown trail involved an excruciating 4,200 feet of elevation gain in just 5 miles! Climbing 30+ strenuous switchbacks was a challenge, but the struggle made the vistas that much sweeter. A portion of the forest had burned recently, so Lake MacDonald was highly visible through the trees. When our aching feet finally returned to the truck, we celebrated our new PR with craft brews and delicious fried chicken sandwiches from Backslope Brewery. The following day, our friend Amanda offered to share her love of ponies with us by taking us riding for the first time. Our first horseback riding experience was magical. It was a true gift to be able to experience the world at a trot, astride a beautiful silver mare named Pearl.

Less developed than some of the other big national parks, Glacier NP is a true wilderness gem. With 700 miles of trails, it would take a whole lifetime to really see Glacier NP. We had a marvelous time exploring some of her wonders for the first time and cannot wait to return. Next time we hope to see the Canadian Waterton section as well as Many Glacier, when those sections re-open.

~Safe Travels, Nathalie

 MISADVENTURES-

Plenty of signs warn hikers about the threats posed by grizzly bears at Glacier NP. Turns out that it’s the SHEEP that you really need to worry about! 

Adam and I hiked about 14 miles of the Highline Trail round-trip. We turned around at the 7 mile mark, so we’d have sufficient daylight to make it back to our truck at Logan Pass. The trail was fairly busy throughout the day, but as the late afternoon sun began to wane, we started to encounter fewer people on the trail. The wildlife were all too glad to reclaim their territory from the noisy humans. Ground squirrels chirped happily, beginning their dusk rituals. A herd of bighorn sheep that we had seen as teeny specks through our binoculars earlier in the day, began gently foraging on the tender grasses several yards away from the trail. It was a magical moment.

But as we approached one of the steepest and narrowest sections of the Highline Trail, we encountered a group of four male bachelor bighorn sheep blocking the trail. 

BIGHORN SHEEP ENCOUNTER-

What’s so scary about sheep, you may ask? Well, male adult bighorn sheep typically weigh up to 250lbs and they have formidable curved horns that weigh 30 lbs. Bighorn rams commonly headbutt one another to signal dominance during mating season. These confident animals can charge at speeds of 20 mph; their shock-absorbing skulls can withstand 800 lbs of force. 

Yeah. These animals are no joke. 

We joined a group of two other hikers at this bighorn sheep trail blockade. We patiently waited the animals out for a long while, but the bighorns continued to graze in the middle of the path. Our options were limited. We were weary after hiking for 11 miles and there wasn’t a safe alternate route back down to the trailhead, due to the steepness of this trail section. To further complicate things, the sun was starting to go down and this was a far too dangerous trail to hike at night. Finally, we decided to play some music through speakers, hoping that the sound would encourage the sheep to move off the path. It seemed to work! To our immense relief, the four rams got annoyed by the electronic pop music and jumped off the path. We enthusiastically made our way down the trail at a brisk pace, hoping to put plenty of distance between us and the herd of loitering rams. 

Alas, our freedom was short-lived. After we walked about 50 yards down the path, the four rams jumped back on the trail surrounding us! Now, our small group was in a worse predicament than before… we were truly trapped on the Highline. One bighorn sheep blocked the path forward and three sheep blocked the path behind. To our left? A massive rocky outcropping. To our right? A steep sloped cliff. We were literally stuck between Rams and Hard Places. 

It was a tense situation. We immediately pulled out our canisters of bear spray, ready to use them if the situation escalated… but we were not certain if the peppery spray would actually work on the sheep or if it would just make them mad. 

Gingerly, we moved forward in single-file, searching for a place to get off the narrow trail, but the ram in front just took his time walking along and nibbling on plants. He didn’t seem to be particularly concerned.

The largest male was confused by our presence and the rhythmic music. He stalked us from the rear at a respectful distance, pausing every so often to tilt his head at us quizzically. We finally made it out of the steeper section and into a more densely vegetated area. 

Within minutes, though, the rearmost male ram was exhibiting progressively more uneasy behavior. I squeaked. 

Adam immediately won husband of the year by moving to the back and shielding me.

We kept stealing glances behind us, praying that the ram would lose interest. Then, suddenly, the dominant male ram lowered his horns, pawed the ground, and charged Adam from behind! Adam nervously shouted “Jump!” Upon this cue, the two of us jumped off the trail into the sloped bushes on our right. My heart beat anxiously as I clung onto those shrubs for dear life. With a face full of leaves, I couldn’t see what had happened behind me on the trail.

A few heart-pounding-seconds later, Adam shouted out a muffled “I’m okay!” I was immediately struck by a wave of gratitude. Thankfully, the ram hadn’t followed through on his charge. The two other hikers that had been stuck in this ram blockade with us, knelt down to give us a helping hand out of the bushes. They told us that the bighorn sheep had been startled by the sudden flailing of the bushes and ran away.

COMPARING NOTES IN THE PARKING LOT-

Adam and I practically jogged the final 3 miles back to our truck. We spoke with another party who said that they had encountered the same group of aggressive rams in a more open clearing, right after us. Two of the hikers were able to climb to safety on a large rock… the other two hikers said that they froze in fear on the trail and also got charged by a bighorn sheep. But thankfully, the ram changed his mind and veered off trail at the last second. 

The thing about “bluff charges” is that you never know if you should call their bluff, until after the fact! Our bighorn sheep encounter truly rattled us; we spoke to the park rangers about it and they said that the sheep can be quite bold. 

Experiences like ours are not uncommon in a park as wild as Glacier NP. A few years earlier, a man encountered a grizzly bear on a precipitous 15-story ledge on the Highline Trail. The adrenaline-pumping encounter was documented by a photographer with telephoto lens! 

It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of false security in some of the more crowded national parks. But this experience was a good reminder that these vast expanses of nature are not theme parks, they are untamed wilderness. We are merely visitors.

OUR FAVORITE PLACES

#1: Highline Trail (a breathtaking 7 to 15 mile hike on a narrow path overlooking plummeting cliff-drops and cresting the Garden Wall)

#2: Going-to-the-Sun Road (scenic 50 mile drive through the park)

#3: Mount Brown Fire Tower (strenuous, high elevation gain, 10 mile round-trip hike to a historic fire tower overlooking Lake McDonald; tower is still used for migratory bird counts)

#4: St. Mary’s Falls (pleasant 2.9 mile stroll meandering through scenic
waterfalls with views of the lake)

4,500 miles traversed and 9 national parks explored