Thursday, August 18, 2016

Hiking Hidden Lake in Glacier National Park…

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We left Helena Montana, a town we will likely revisit someday, and drove about 190 miles northwest. Highway 12 west was a breeze and the turn north on 141 and 83 was much nicer road than I expected. Beautiful scenery all along the way made the long  drive exceedingly easy. We pulled into Greenwood Village and set up for our month-long stay in Kalispell.

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That afternoon we drove over to Columbia Falls to the Backslope Brewery to meet RV friends Steve and Mona Lisa of The Lowe's RV adventures for dinner. We haven’t seen them since we wintered in Florida a couple of years ago. It was great fun reconnecting with them and it was too bad they were leaving the next day otherwise we likely would have shared a few hikes with them. Since we have similar winter travel plans we may see them again. We also might make a foray into Mexico to Puerto Peñasco with them in February.

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With Glacier National Park so close we made a trip the following day to the park to redo one of our favorite hikes and to continue conditioning our legs for more mountainous adventures. Wow, the park is very crowded this year as compared to when we were last here two summers ago. We had no luck at all finding a parking place at Logan Pass, the summit of Going to the Sun Road so we drove back down to the loop and caught one of the park’s shuttles back to the top.

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The Hidden Lake hike begins up a fairly steep stair step boardwalk for about 3/4  of a mile.  The trail then becomes mostly a rocky trail the rest of the way to the the Hidden Lake Overlook. There were a lot of people on the trail and at the overlook but once we continued on fewer people were encountered. This part of the trail beyond the overlook had been closed last time we were here due to bear activity so it was a treat to see new views of the trail and  the beautiful blue mountain lake. We highly recommend this hike to anyone visiting Glacier NP.

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We noticed many beautiful wildflowers and we were amazed at how much less snow there was this year compared to our last visit in July 2014. I know we are a few weeks later in the year but there was hardly any snow on top this year. Happily once again there were lots of mountain goats on display all along the trail. I swear they must be on the National Park’s payroll since they seem so ambivalent to people. We also saw a few big horned sheep on the mountainside and there were lots of golden fronted ground squirrels scurrying about. 

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What a great hike it was and it heightened our excitement to revisit several of the hikes we did last time since they were great hikes with lots of incredible scenery. We hope to do a couple of hikes each week while we are in Kalispell Montana so we should be in good shape after our Glacier adventures…

NOTE: We are in Kalispell Montana till September 12, 2016. Then over towards Spokane Washington most likely…

9 comments:

  1. Hiking, then a couple beers. Sounds like a plan. What a gorgeous lake, but snow? You know that is a four letter word to me now. Enjoy your stay in Kalispell. San Diego is not too far away!

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  2. Beautiful pictures of the lake. Every hike in Glacier is just fantastic. Just saw that picture of you 4 on Mona Liza's post. Envy you staying in Montana so long.

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  3. What a wonderful area to explore, enjoy your time in the area.

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  4. We have been so close to you guys. We also loved the hike to Hidden Lake, but we "enjoyed" it in the snow. The mountain goats were so much fun. We drove right by Helena today on the way to Bozeman to finally see some grizzly bears. If you happen to stop in Great Falls on the way back, Bowsers Brewery has some great craft beers. Cheers!

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  5. Don't forget to hike Danny On at Whitefish Mountain Resort, no crowd and there is a brewery there too.
    So glad we meet again and looking forward to our forays south of the border.

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  6. We enjoyed our hike to Hidden Lake...had to put our feet in that cool water. Glacier Park is a favorite!!!

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  7. Just catching up on my blog reading. We just saw Steve and MonaLiza, they asked us to join you guys for the foray south of the border but don't think we can make it since our winter plans this year are TX Gulf Coast. Sounds like you've had a great summer, time to read the rest of your Glacier NP posts.

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