I’ve come to realize that there are two basic types of hikers. Those that find a trail and hike it…when they are done, they are content to do something else, maybe something a little more lax. And…those that make a list of trails. They set out to do as much as possible, and as long as the sun is still up and they still have feet, they will continue hiking until they literally cannot take another step.
Derek and I are the latter.
We get a rush when we are out hiking, exploring, seeing beautiful, rugged places. As long as we are feeling “pretty good” we will keep trucking…because we are awful at relaxing and taking it easy. So we will push it to the limit until the sun goes down. Really, we don’t know what to do if we aren’t moving with intention.
That’s pretty much the story of our first day at Glacier National Park. We started with a single trail that we wanted to hike. Then we just kept adding things on to it. It’s easy to do here. The trails are all well marked and the whole park is just gorgeous. So we kept going. Kept exploring. Kept walking, and climbing, and descending, and hiking. I’ll just go ahead and admit that we over did it.
But boy, oh boy, was it a lovely over do. Here’s what our first day looked like.
We started by driving to Siyeh Bend via Going-to-the-Sun Road. {Fun fact…GTTS Road was featured in The Shining.}
Once there we started out on the Siyeh Pass Trail. The trail takes you, well…to Siyeh Pass. But it’s touch getting there. There’s just about 2100 feet of elevation gained along the way, and a lot of it comes up very quickly on you at the end. Really up until the rocky climb at the end, the trail ascends steadily and isn’t too bad. Along the way we had a close encounter with some lovely femail Mule Deer…which was just magical. We stopped at the top and had some lunch while taking in the view. Round trip this hike is just over 9 miles {from where we parked.}
After lunch we headed back out. When we got to a split in the trail we decided we were still feeling “pretty good” so we took the fork toward Piegan Pass. This one was less strenuous. Only about 1900 feet gained, 4 miles round trip. Unlike Siyeh, the Piegan trail ascends very gradually. The payout at the top is big. We got our fist glimpse at one of the turquoise glacial lakes in the park as well as an up close encounter with a group of lady big-horn sheep.
After we got back to our car our feet were tired, but we still had some solid daylight. So we decided to power through a few short hikes to see some waterfalls. If you are keeping track…we are up to 13 miles so far.
First stop: St. Mary’s Falls. This is an easy hike. Just shy of 2 miles round trip, it’s very well traveled by all levels of hikers. But there is good reason for that…it’s beautiful. Just look at the color of the water! So, stinking awesome!
After St. Mary’s we made the short drive to Sunrift Gorge. That’s a short hike up a series of stone steps, about 0.5 miles in all. Then we hiked downhill to see Baring Falls {that’s the bottom right photo above.} It’s another very easy hike, only about a mile round trip…but by the time we got to the waterfall, we knew we’d done a bit too much. By the time we got off the trail and walked back down the road to where we had parked we totaled a 17 mile day. Now, I’ve done more…but this was some hard hiking. {Or I’m a whimp. Or maybe a bit of both.}
By the time we got back to the park entrance it was way past dinner time and we were both pretty slap happy. But for me, that’s a good thing, because it makes all my jokes even funnier. Let’s just say we downed a pretty massive amount of food and topped it off with huckleberry cobbler a la mode. The kind of eating that would make Ron Burgundy “…not even mad. I’m impressed!” {If you don’t get the reference, you should probably go rent Anchorman stat.}
I’ll be posting more from our trip as the photos get edited. Hopefully more tomorrow. But it’s Sunday, the day of rest, so we’ll see.
Amy
