"I'm sitting in the dappled sunlight, looking at the pine trees and listening to the breeze blowing through the aspens. This rugged, isolated, beautiful place can't help but change each being who travels through here."
We spent this past summer working at Glacier Park Lodge in northwestern Montana, on the southeastern edge of Glacier National Park. We approached the area from the east through flat barren plains. Then out of nowhere the mountains appeared, rising up from the earth, carved and molded by glaciers over the last 7 million years.
We lived and worked on the Blackfeet Reservation, where we heard the ancient stories of a proud people, who still occupy part of their native lands. Unfortunately, those lands are no longer home to the great herds of buffalo, iinnii in Blackfeet, which is a synonym for life itself. When the buffalo were eliminated from the west, the Blackfeet way of life ended. On June 26, 2023, a small herd of buffalo was released near Chief Mountain. These bison are genetically related to a small group that was saved from slaughter in 1873, bringing hope for the future to the Blackfeet nation.
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| Members of the local Blackfeet nation came to bless the opening of Glacier Park Lodge for the 2024 season |
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| We attended the opening ceremonies of The North American Indian Days in Browning, Montana, which is about a 15 minute drive from Glacier Park Lodge |
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| The regalia worn by the dancers was beautiful and intricately made |
We were in the small town of East Glacier Park, with its one gas station, a few motels, some restaurants and souvenir shops. The "res dogs" roamed free and seemed like they were having lots of fun. The staff made sure they were well fed and loved. One in particular liked to sneak into the lodge and hang out at the front desk, or anywhere else that the staff didn't ask her to leave. The dogs were mostly very well behaved and only asked to be pet by people who offered them attention. We also saw free range cattle and horses on our drives.
On our free time, we had the privilege of exploring Glacier National Park, which the Blackfeet people call "the backbone of the world." We hiked about 300 miles on over 30 different trails to pristine lakes, roaring waterfalls, and beautiful wildflower filled meadows. | ||
| This is one of our early sesason hikes. The peaks are still snow covered. In the middle is my co-worker and friend, Kendra, and our hiking buddy (and "personal trainer" - she walked fast), San, from Thailand! We are at Grinell Lake.
 Rockwell Falls is in the Two Medicine part of Glacier. I think I hiked the 7 miles roundtrip to these falls 4 times over the summer. By the end of the summer there was very little water flowing on the upper part of the falls. |
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| One of our favorite stops on the Going to the Sun Road was Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island. |
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| Hidden Lake with Bearhat Mountain behind it. On one of our hikes to this lake, the clouds were so heavy that the lake was literally totally "hidden," but we still had a nice hike! |
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| Aren't these 3 cubbies cute!!! |
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Mark really wanted to see grizzly bears!!!! Glacier didn't disappoint us!! We headed out on a long hike this day, just the 2 of us at first. Luckily we were able to hang out with a bigger group of hikers when we saw these beauties! Mark asked a grizzly expert where we could find some grizzlies. He said Siyeh Pass trail, and sure enough, they were there! A bear hug! |
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| Siyeh Pass was also a beautiful hike, unfortunately we encountered 30 to 40 mile an hour winds going up the switchbacks, so we didn't go all the way up to the highpoint of the trail. Going to the Sun Road views  On the Highline Trail  The fields were full of fireweed  This was late in the season, and the clouds were hanging low More amazing animals  This big guy was hanging out beside the trail. We watched him eating, then he lay down for a rest. We wondered if we would have noticed him if he had already been lying down!  See how well he's camouflaged! |
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| This gorgeous guy is molting, he's shedding his winter fur coat! |
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| The mountain goats were soooooo cool! |
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| This guy was hungry, and not at all afraid of people! He was way too close to us with his big horns! Did you know that each of his horns can weigh 15 pounds! The huckleberries, thimble berries (they look like red raspberries, but the plants don't have thorns) and service berries (saskatoons, an important berry to the indigenous peoples) were plentiful most of August and September. I developed what Mark called " hand to mouth disease"! As we hiked my hand kept grabbing berries and putting them in my mouth. I called them grab and go berries, because if I stopped too long to pick them my fellow hikers would become impatient with me. So I became skilled in grabbing them, and I just kept going most of the time!
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| The Glacier Lilies were dainty and beautiful! I was so surprised when we found these still blooming at higher elevations later in the summer! We identified about 70 different wildflowers over the summer! |
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| Here we are in Waterton, Canada.We were fortunate to have the day off when the lodge offered an employee shuttle trip to the Canadian part of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park |
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| This is Medicine Grizzly lake. I love the bear grass flowers! This was a long hike to a remote lake. We passed only a handful of people! |
We are on top of Scenic Point. It was a big hike, but we had perfect weather, not too hot and not too much wind. We thought about doing this hike on many other days, but the weather needed to be just right to accomplish this one without turning back. |
| Another beautiful day. It was early in the season and there was still a lot of snow to hike over to get to Iceberg Lake, in the Many Glacier part of the park. |
| Avalanche Lake is one of the most popular moderate hikes in the park. Its only about 4.5 miles roundtrip, but trailhead parking is very hard to find! We circled around about 3 times before finding a spot! We were lucky this time! The hike was great until the clouds let loose on us on the way back! |  |
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| Having a little break. We took the boat across Two Medicine Lake to start the 5 mile hike to Upper Two Medicine Lake. |
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| Here we are at Bowman Lake, it's in the remote North Fork area of of the park. You need to drive over about 15 miles of rough dirt roads to get to this area. Mark didn't want to drive our truck up there but we lucked out. Two days before we were supposed to depart for Ohio, one of the shuttle drivers decided that he wanted to go up there. He needed some of us to go with him to justify thr trip. Kendra and I looked at each other (we had just been talking about how we weren't going to get up there) and volunteered to go along. Mark came too! |
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| This is a view from Mark's epic hike of the summer! You know, one that I wasn't willing to do with him! It turned into about a 20 mile hike, with too much elevation gain for me! He hiked out and back on the Highline Trail from Logan Pass and up to Granite Park Chalet. On the way back, he took a very steep spur trail to get this view of Grinell Glacier from above. |
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| Another view of Sinopah with some fresh June snow on top. This one was taken from the campground area at Two Medicine |
We worked at Glacier Park Lodge. The main lodge was built in 1913 and the annex was added in 1914. The lobby is beautiful, with 40 foot high Douglas Fir tree trunk columns towering up to the third floor. The builders knew when to harvest the trees so that the bark would stay on for over 100 years! The railroad originally built the lodge and Amtrak still brings guests from the east and west to stay there. Of course the historic building comes modern day inconveniences. Things like no elevators, no air conditioners, almost no cell phone service (poor wifi) and no TVs or refrigerators in the rooms. Some of these things made it very challenging for me and my co-workers as we checked people in at the front desk. We sometimes wondered why people didn't research the lodge, or read the reviews. Mark worked in the gift shop, where, by the way, they had the only air conditioning in the lodge.
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| This was the view from the lodge. The center peak is named Dancing Lady |
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| This is the lobby, I'm behind the front desk.You can see the Douglas Fir trees behind me.  |
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| This is the garden in front of the lodge. They asked for volunteers to help replant and we were happy to go help when we had spare time. The master gardener was a wonderful lady, and one of my co-workers transferred to the gardens, so we had fun getting our hands a little dirty with them. Also, for each hour we volunteered, we got a raffle ticket for a free night stay and dinner at one of their other properties in Whitefish, Montana. I was the lucky one who won the raffle, and we had a great mini vacation!! |
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| This little guy hung around the campground and dorm area for a month or two before moving on. We finally got a peak at him while we were walking home one evening. |
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| Here we are at Two Medicine Lake |
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| Anthony and Ben at the Lake McDonald Cascades |
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| Jess and Kari at Virginia Falls |
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| Jess and her mom, Heather at Lake McDonald |
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| The Grinell Glacier Trail. This was a big hike and absolutely my favorite hike!!! It's over 11 miles out and back with over 2000 feet of gain. When I asked the kids what hikes they wanted to do Kari said "Grinell Glacier". I was very hesitant to take them all on such a big hike, and I wasn't even sure that I wanted to do it myself. So the week before the family came, we got a group of co-workers together and up we went to see what it was like. Now, I will say that not everyone went all the way up (as I said, it's a big hike). We made it up to the upper lake and glacier and it was just WOW!! We hiked around the glacial lake for a couple more miles, it was so gorgeous! That first day there wasn't any ice floating in the lake, and the weather was great! We had a few more clouds and more wind on our second visit with the kids, but it was still so beautiful! So wonderful, in fact, that when I found out that 2 of our friends hadn't had a chance to do the hike, we did it for a third time. This picture is from that day! |
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| This is one of the red pools that we encountered near the lake. The red color either comes from an algae with a red pigment, or from mineral deposits. The glacier in the middle of the picture is Salamander Glacier, and the actual Grinell Glacier is off to the left of the picture. |
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| On the trail. |
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This is the view of Grinell Lake on the way down from Grinell Glacier.
The colors were amazing. It's called glacial blue from the presence of "glacial flour" which are fine particles of pulverized rock which absorbs and scatters the sunlight. So this hike has it all, glaciers, mountain lakes, multiple waterfalls, and sometimes big horn sheep and mountain goats!!!
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| We have come to the end of our time at Glacier National Park, where "the rivers sing and the mountains dance". The lodge has closed, and we will be looking forward to our next adventure. |
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| The buffalo were kind enough to pose! |
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| A beautiful badlands area |
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| These were super cool rocks are called cannonball concretions. |
