Hiking to Grinnell Glacier

“It’s glacier day it’s glacier day it’s glacier day!”

I hadn’t gotten my North Cascades National Park glaciers, and I hadn’t gotten my Olympic National Park glaciers, so – with no forest fires or thunderstorms threatening this time – there would be no negotiating about my Glacier National Park glaciers. Grinnell Glacier was today’s mission, and I would be starting the hike unexpectedly well-rested. It was, of course (thanks to our last-minute upgrade in sleeping plans), hours after sunrise by the time I was doing my glacier dance.

Fortified by a breakfast of slimy oatmeal (same breakfast we’d’ve had without the upgraded sleeping plans), we stashed our bags in the car and headed out to the Swiftcurrent Picnic Area trailhead at the jaunty hour of 10:25am.

Many hikers choose start this hike by taking the ferry across Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine, cutting off two miles. Those hikers, however, thought to make reservations on the ferry many months ahead of time, or were willing to wake before 8am to try for same-day tickets. We accepted the extra two miles of hiking as the fee for having devoted all our preparation efforts to other, less-fruitful causes, and began at zero. Catching the ferry to cut the two miles on the way home would be a much less complex affair with our seats literally guaranteed as long as we were at the dock by 5:15pm.

No problem.

The first two miles of trail was almost completely deserted and utterly lovely. I traipsed happily along, refusing to waste any more time regretting the time lost to previous, ill-advised planning efforts.

Laura stands on a trail in the bottom right of the frame, with the teal waters of a glacial lake to her left. A sheer rock mountainside rises above them, stretching into a hazy blue sky.

“Maybe today is the day we’re finally going to find huckleberries,” I mused while we paused for Dustin to retie his recalcitrant shoe laces. “WAIT!” My hand shot out and returned a moment later with a pair of huckleberries. It was as if my optimism had willed them into existence.

Laura crouches along the trail on the right side of the frame, reaching into a tangle of green bushes at the left.

“Are those definitely huckleberries?” Dustin asked. “Not whatever-those-other-thing berries were?” We’d been disappointed the day before to discover that the grand bounty of things we’d thought to be huckleberries along the Poia Lake trail were actually their more abundant and less-tasty cousins, the serviceberry.

A forefinger and thumb push apart a patch of small green leaves to reveal a cluster of three small purple serviceberries. — Serviceberries. Also purple and edible, but they have a weird little tuft on the end where the flower used to be, and they aren’t very tasty. The bears like ’em, though, so the bears can have ’em.

“I am a hundred thousand percent sure,” I said, and promptly demonstrated my certainty by tossing the huckleberries into my mouth. They exploded with happiness and I might have whimpered a little from the joy.

Laura's cupped hands are in the center of the frame, filled with a pile of plump dark blue huckleberries.

We spent the next five minutes rustling around in the bushes, pulling up a solid handful of perfectly ripe berries. Someone’s peanut butter sandwich got evicted from its plastic bag so we could save a few berries for later. (I honestly can’t remember what became of the sandwich… stuffed in with the chips?)

Laura walks along a trail on the right side of the frame. To the left, a spruce and fir forest covers a valley floor, with a rocky mass of mountains rising above it. — Well-supplied with huckleberries, now up we go!

Traffic on the trail picked up noticeably after we reached the end of Lake Josephine, where the ferry was letting off a group of passengers. In my happy place of everything being okay today, I decided to enjoy the people watching along with the scenery, since the people were impossible not to watch anyway.

A line of about a dozen people pass each other on a mountain trail in the middle of the frame. A rocky slope is to the right, while the hazy outline of a cliff rises above the scene in the background. — What’s surprising is that, despite the number of people on the trail (and there were a lot), I never felt crowded. In spaces this grand, there’s space for a lot of people.

A bright teal glacial lake sits at the bottom of a valley. A waterfall cascades into the lake down hundreds of vertical feet of rock on the right side of the frame. A half-dome-shaped rock face looms over the scene at the center of the frame. Hazy blue sky is visible above. — Glacial flour (very finely ground rock particles) causes most of the lakes in the park to glow turquoise in the sunshine as the floury water reflects the sun differently. It’s gorgeous.

Laura stands on the left side of the frame, with brilliant magenta fireweed flowers blooming to the right. In the background, a waterfall cascading down rocky mountains is just visible. — The geology here is almost entirely sedimentary, resulting in mountains with many shelves. Dramatic cliffs boasting waterfalls appear every time you turn a corner.

Our late start meant I couldn’t quite manage the 5.5 miles to the glacier before lunch-starvation set in, so we pulled off the trail at a spot with a decent view and busted into our chip-flavored sandwiches.

Dustin stands in the middle of the frame, holding a yellow bag of snacks. His face is obscured by shadow, but you can see some damp marks on his t-shirt. A bright teal glacial lake and some tree-covered mountains are visible in the background. — There aren’t actually any decent views in this park – only magnificent ones.
Dustin, recently splattered by an ON-TRAIL waterfall, munches chips with Lower Grinnell Lake in the background. Somewhere behind me, a chipmunk was preparing to launch off my head in a failed attempt to steal my nuts while I was distracted taking the photo. (True story.)

Onward!

Streams of water fall down a rocky shelf in the left two-thirds of the image. In the right third, a smudge of bright white - the outlines of two mountain goats - are just visible. — Dramatic waterfalls, and dramatic goats!

Dustin stands in the center of the image, striding along a rocky trail. Some green bushes fill the landscape on either side, with some bigger mountains in the background. — And then we reached the top.

In the foreground, there are outlines of three hikers walking along a trail. The background, which dominates the image, is a sheer rock wall, with a mass of snow and ice sitting on a ledge at the top. Cascades of water stream down from the ice along the rock wall. — The cliffs and waterfalls did not get less dramatic as we got closer. Observe the people in the foreground for perspective on the drama. Sweet little Salamander Glacier sits at the top of the photo, producing said drama.

A panoramic view with a teal glacial lake, dotted with snow and ice, at the center of the image. A mass of rocky peaks rises above it. Some green undergrowth and a bare rocky plateau are in the foreground. — A panorama just as we come over the rise to reach the lake. Salamander Glacier is in the middle, halfway up the cliffs. Grinnell Glacier is all the way to the left, nestled into a nook of the rock shelf that now holds more lake than glacier.

No one seems willing to share how big Grinnell is these days – the last reported measurements were apparently in 2005, when it measured 152 acres, down from 710 acres in 1850 and 220 acres in 1993. Scale is hard to judge up here, but I wonder if it has much more than 60 now? Models say it – and all the other glaciers in the park – will be completely gone by 2030. Plan your visits now, kids. And, y’know, write your senators and tell them to start protecting the environment.

A badly worn sign sits on a pile of talus in the center of the image. The words, "Warning: Hazardous Snow Conditions, Glacier Travel Not Recommended" are just barely visible. In the background, you can make out some people along a rocky lakeshore, with a large glacier and rock wall immediately behind them. — A sign as you come off the trail says, “WARNING: Hazardous Snow Conditions. Glacier Travel Not Recommended.” Solid advice, except the glacier no longer starts here. Maybe twenty years ago when this sign was placed this was the edge of the glacier, but now you’ve got another half mile of rocks to traverse before you get there.

The rock wall of a cliff fills the background of the image, with a rocky plateau in the foreground. In between, you can make out a lake, a glacier, and someone walking toward them. — And so we traversed some rocks.

Laura is in the center of the frame, walking over some rocks that have water cascading over them. A lake sits just behind the cascade, with the bright white snow and ice of a glacier visible in the background. — Also some streams.

Dustin navigates the same rocks from the opposite view. The lake, dotted with snow and ice, is visible on the left. Rocky mountains rise above the scene in the background. The water from the lake cascades over the rocks and down to the right. — These streams started turning into waterfalls about 100 feet farther down.

Laura stands in the center of the image, proudly perched on a pile of rock, ice, and snow. Grinnell Glacier and the glacier's lake stretch to fill the frame behind her. — Here it is! The edge of the glacier! Somewhere under all that rock and mud, anyway. Grinnell Glacier: you have been collected.

Laura sits on a bare rocky patch looking at the camera. The blue/green waters of the glacial lake are immediately behind her, with the ice-topped mountains rising above. — Time for glacier-gazing and snacks.

Can I take a minute to talk about geology? Yes, the glaciers are disappearing. It’s heartbreaking and NASA has some fascinating information about it, but now I’m here to talk to you about rocks. The rocks in Glacier National Park are SO BEAUTIFUL.

A mix of bright red and pale green rocks fill the frame. — Red and green argillite together with some yellow limestoney rocks give you a landscape that feels painted.

Dustin stands at the top of this vertical image, a row of mountains and cloud-dotted blue sky visible behind him. But the bottom two-thirds of the image is covered by the foreground, a bare rocky surface covered with circular patterns. — Red and green argillite together with some yellow limestoney rocks give you a landscape that feels painted.

In the bottom half of the image, Laura walks along a row of rock that appears to be a peninsula or island in the middle of the glacial lake. In the background, the snow and ice of two glaciers are visible, with melting water cascading down a sheer vertical rock face into the lake. — Yellow bands of the Helena formation break up Upper Grinnell Lake, providing a path to between the remains of the glacier and the top of the trail. In the upper left on the cliff face, you can see the black band of diorite – an igneous intrusion among all the sedimentary layers.

We spent about an hour basking in the glacial glow, and then it was time to get going if we wanted to catch the ferry back to the hotel.

Dustin walks down a rocky ledge in the center of the image. To the right, a small waterfall sprays bright white droplets, backlit by the sun, onto the trail and into the air. — On-trail waterfall, at your service! Refreshing on a hot August day.

Having waited until the bitter end of the day (2:30) to start our hike back, the trail was now a little less crowded. We kept pace with a couple families whom I – now an expert – showed how to find huckleberries along the trail. (Those teenaged boys thought I was super cool.)

Laura walks along a rocky trail at the left of the image. To the right, there are three bright teal lakes visible along a valley floor, which stretches off into the distance. — Lower Grinnell Lake, Lake Josephine, and Swiftcurrent Lake strung along the valley like turquoise beads.

The furry white butt of a bright white mountain goat is in the center of the frame. The goat is stretching his head to the left, grazing on bright green plants growing on a rocky slope. — Goat butt!

Laura walks along a rocky trail at the bottom of the image. A craggy cliff of red, green, and black rocks rises sharply above her. — Argillite cliffs, red with iron and green with moss.

Laura stands facing away from the camera in the bottom third of the image, framed by a wooden bridge that she's just reached the end of. A fir and spruce forest stretches out before her. The trees climb up the sides of a rocky valley, with red-and-grey bare rock mountain tops visible at the top of the image. — Argillite cliffs, red with iron and green with moss.

We veered off the trail at the edge of Lake Josephine and made our way around to the dock, hustling now, as we’d cut it rather close and the potentially last boat departure was in five minutes. Fortunately, the boat was nowhere to be seen, so we couldn’t have missed it yet.

Unfortunately, the boat was really nowhere to be seen.

“There’s no boat!” someone near the dock hollered as we got close. Word on the trail was, the boat had broken down. There would be no boat today.

“Two more miles it is,” I said, squinting at the “11.5 Miles” displaying on my tracker. I was tired, but not, in truth, terribly disheartened. Two more miles of hiking meant two more miles worth of huckleberries to collect, and by now I was really into my huckleberry collection.

(For the record, the National Park Service in Glacier permits the harvesting by hand of up to one quart of huckleberries per person, for personal use only. A quart is actually quite a lot if you’re just going to eat them as snacks along the trail and maybe add a few to your cereal in the morning. Don’t be a dick and steal more than your fair share of berries from the bears.)

Laura walks along a forest trail in the middle of the image, with bright green thimbleberry plants covering the forest floor on either side of her. — The plants in this photo are thimbleberries, also edible and delicious, but out of season here by about a month.

A female moose stands in the middle of the image. She's about knee-deep in the middle of a lake, with water streaming off her snout, which is held just above the level of the water. The blurry branches of trees in the foreground frame either side of her. — As a bonus for our extra two miles, we got a great view of this moose having a soggy salad in Swiftcurrent Lake.

We stumbled off the trail and up to Many Glacier Hotel, where we had a room booked for the night, complete with a balcony overlooking … the parking lot. And also some mountains, because this is Glacier.

Laura sits in a chair on a dark brown porch on the right side of the frame, looking at the camera and holding a can with a stylized huckleberry on it. A mountain rises above her in the background on the left side of the image. On the right, the side of the hotel stretches away into the distance, with other balconies and porches visible hanging off the side of the building.

We picked up burgers, fries, and a huckelberry cider and put up our feet, enjoying the sweet wisdom of spending another night in a hotel. (This night, at least, had been planned in advance.)

Thither & Yon

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