Glacier National Park

[boxerdogs]

Originally Posted by Chewy

What kind of things are you interested in doing while you are in The Park? Climbing, hiking, backpacking, wildlife viewing, wildflowers.....?

I'm a Glacier Park addict, so let me know your interests and I'll try to help with a plan.

I visit the park year-round, but my favorite times are the fringe seasons, when the crowds and the bugs are gone.

You will most likely want to visit after the Going To The Sun Road opens over Logan Pass. The pass can open anytime from late May to early July. But the last several years it has been opening in late June. This is partly due to the construction projects going on.

Here is the park web site-Glacier National Park (U.S. National Park Service)


And here is a Glacier Park discussion forum. This forum is not real active at this time of year. But you can search around the site and find some really good info. This site has some of the kindest most helpful people I've met on the internet. Glacier National Park Chat • Index page

Hi Chewy, saw your Glacier replys and it caught my interest. My wife and I will also be going through Glacier this August, travelling from Yellowstone to Banff. What are "must see/do's" in Glacier? Traveling/camping in Jeep JK, so pretty flexible in where we can go and stay.

[Chewy]

Originally Posted by boxerdogs

Hi Chewy, saw your Glacier replys and it caught my interest. My wife and I will also be going through Glacier this August, travelling from Yellowstone to Banff. What are "must see/do's" in Glacier? Traveling/camping in Jeep JK, so pretty flexible in where we can go and stay.

Sorry it took so long to reply. I completely forgot about this forum.

Well spring has sprung and the park roads are opening. This winter was a hard one here. We had record or near record snowfalls and there is still a LOT of snow in the mid and higher elevations. Due to the large amount of snow the roads have been opening later than usual.

Here is a link to the park website. Glacier National Park (U.S. National Park Service) The main links I check at this time of year are the webcams, current road status, and where are the plows. There is also some great pics of the road clearing on their Flicker site.

August is a prime time to visit the park. As such, you'll want to make reservations if you plan to stay at any of the hotels. If car camping you'll want to get a site as early as possible, especially in the more popular campgrounds.

I get a sense that you won't have a whole lot of time to spend here. If you only have a couple of days, the must sees are Logan Pass on the Going To The Sun Road (GTTSR), Two Medicine, and Many Glacier areas. These are all accessible by car.

A required short walk is the Hidden Lake trail starting at Logan Pass. This is a popular trail and is quite busy during August. But the views more than make up for the crowds. The wildflowers are breathtaking and the chances of photographing bighorn sheep and mountain goats is very high. Get there early for good parking, or better yet, take advantage of the free shuttle system.

If you have more time and are interested in longer hikes or climbs post up and I'll try to point you in the right direction.

Here are a couple of pics of the Logan pass area-

[blucher]

Glacier National Park

[hermit]

Those pictures would make great wall-size picture murals!

They're beautiful. It's hard NOT to do justice to the beauty of Glacier National Park, but you have an eye for framing a shot. Nice.