Each year, it’s a major multi-million dollar ordeal to get the road reopened, and often rebuilt, for the summer season. (Missoula's free alternative weekly newsrag - you know, the ones mostly useful for listing where to eat in town - questioned spending all of this money on this treasure. Silly.)
It gets covered by feet of snow, and avalanches erase the road and cover it with fallen trees. As road crews work from either side to connect the reopened road, their progress is front page news in the local paper. Every park employee, from ranger to gift shop clerk, knows how far you can go on this vital road, because they‘re sure to be asked by visitors, especially those too dense to notice the road‘s status being posted at the entry gates.
Alas, the road wasn’t fully open when we were there. So, to see the east side of the park, we needed to take Route 2, the southern highway, around the peaks and to the other side. This takes about two hours, a long and scenic trip.
The east side of the park is much less populated and touristy than the west side (not like the west side is built up anything near the other parks we’ve visited.) So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the one food concession open in the east side of the park was closed for lunch when we got there, forcing us to drive eight miles back out of the park for lunch.
The effort was worth it though, as there are some great hikes on the far side. We hiked to St. Mary’s Falls, a short and popular hike that goes to the trail's eponymous falls
as well as Virginia Falls.
Both are spectacular even though, once again, we wound up hiking in the rain.
There are also lots and lots of wildflowers, blooming during the brief growing season:
Saturday was a particularly pleasant day in the park. We saw a lot of things, and even more impressive, it didn’t rain all day!
We started with a hike around St. John’s Lake, which then follows along MacDonald’s Creek. This creek shimmers in blue-green and seems to have a waterfall every half mile. (Kayaking is allowed most places in the park, except for this creek. Still, it was way over our heads (literally.)) As Yellowstone has geysers, Glacier has waterfalls. It makes sense, since the glaciers both formed the geology that causes waterfalls and feeds them as they melt.
We then drove to the terminus of the open section of Going To the Sun Road at Big Bend. This was a beautiful drive, despite people tailgating (once they passed, they didn’t go faster.) The drop off is very steep, making it scary. (They ban large vehicles on this road and trailers, and rightly so.) To add to the fun, parts of the road were covered in loose gravel, including the corners, and some of the stone wall railing was wiped away by the winter’s avalanches. Good stuff. (As someone with a very recent motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license, I’m impressed by those who ride up the road. It has all the hazards we were warned against in training.)
Still, the view is worth it. Waterfalls come out of the rock face, and during the spring melt, dump water on your car as you drive by.
You can walk on the closed section of the road, allowing you to take in the sheer vastness of the topography. Mountain goats leaped across snow fields above. We spent a while there before driving back down.
We then took a lovely boat ride on an old wooden boat around Lake MacDonald:
The day ended with a great meal at Belton Chalet, a restored lodge across from the Amtrak train station in West Glacier. Given that this is a tourist area, and is in the middle of nowhere, we were impressed that the salmon and pork were cooked to pink (not hard) in the middle and that everything was highly flavored, bordering on spicy.
Off to Missoula (again) on the way back across Montana.
Tom
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