A long, hot search for glaciers

©2012 Lydia Hinshaw

Early in the hike, looking west

Looking back, east toward the prairies

Gem Glacier above, Grinnell below

Upper Grinnell Lake beneath glaciers

Salamander Glacier

 MANY GLACIER VALLEY,  MT -- Seeing Glaciers in Glacier National Park requires some work.

  Almost daily I explain to passengers on my bus that the patches of snow they see on the mountains are just that, patches of snow.  A glacier is a deep, frozen and moving (slowly) mixture of ice and rock that is carving its way down a mountain.  In Glacier the glaciers are shrinking and disappearing. In 30 years, they may all be gone.

 Last Saturday, we hiked the Grinnell Glacier trail, one of the most scenic and popular in the park.  From the end of the trail, three glaciers are visible:  Grinnell, Gem and Salamander.

 Getting to the viewpoint is tough.  The trail is 5.3 miles long, and the last quarter mile is the worst, very steep with occasional stone steps more than a foot high.  This last "hump" hides upper Grinnell Lake for an agonizingly long time.

 It was a very hot day, and Prince Charming decided this last steep part was too much for him, so he waited for me on a bench in a shady rest area at the foot of the final climb.

 The whole vista of the three glaciers was too vast for my point-and-shoot, the tiny camera I take on longer hikes, so the pictures above show bits and pieces of the scene.

 The hike back down, in the heat of the day, felt even longer than the hike up.  And the whole experience felt much more difficult than it did when I did the same hike seven years ago.

 We slept well that Saturday night.