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Glacier National Park…Grizzly Bears Change Our Hiking Plans!

After a day of riding the bicycle in  frigid temps we wanted to see what hiking opportunities there were.  A 13 mile hike that the guide pamphlet rated as moderately stressful and isolated seemed like the way to go.  After a good hour of hiking and taking some nice pics we ran into an obstacle:

Our first chosen path promised to show us a microcosm of what Glacier NP was all about. We were supposed to see 3 glaciers and be able to touch one of them but….
We wanted to make sure we were not one of those casualties discussed in the signage!
For whatever reason we had decided to carry our bear spray canister just in case. We had not practiced with it but were aware of how to use it after reading the literature on it.
From a safe distance we noticed what looked like a “moving rock”. We kept watching and discerned it to be a brown bear eating it’s lunch. We had seen a black bear on the side of the road yesterday while cycling but these grizzlies were much larger in stature. Can you pick it out?
Here is a closer shot. We did inch a bit closer making as much noise as we could but our noise did not seem to phase the bear.

The grizzly did seem to move up the slope and away from the trail after a while so we ventured even a bit closer until……..we saw another grizzly eating behind a tree.  At that point we decided to abort the hike and leave them to their lunch.

This was a nice view we had on the way back to the truck.

We decided to take two more hikes, each one around 4 miles.  We hoped we could still share the park with its wildlife and be a bit safer at the same time!

By mid afternoon the haze and clouds were burning off and the temps reached 60 for a while. We were a bit intrigued by this rock structure apparently blowing off steam if you look closely.
There were lots of good pictures to be taken on these two hikes.

We did employ the scooter to help us get from our second hike up to Logan Pass to find the beginning of the trail that went to Hidden Lake.

The tunnel went by a bit faster today on the scooter!
A quick look at the map as the lake still remained “hidden” after an hour of walking.
Laurie thinks she has the lake in her sights.  Is that a small glacier in the background?
It really was worth the walk! Beautiful lake.
So pretty it deserves another photo.
We did find a passerby to take our photo together.

Here are some other nice pictures we took on the way back to Logan Pass.

 

And finally, a nice panorama shot of St. Mary Lake near our campsite.

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