Grinnell Glacier

Our favorite region of Glacier National Park is Many Glacier. Many Glacier is a mountainous region of Glacier National Park which has some of our favorite hikes. There are many lakes in the Many Glacier area and we enjoyed our hike to Grinnell Glacier so much, we decided to visit it again this year. 

Although you can start of hiking from the Many Glacier Lodge, we opt to take the boat across Swiftcurrent Lake and Josephine Lake. The boat ride is not only fun and scenic, but provides a bit of history and information about the area. While crossing Swiftcurrent Lake we encountered a bear. In Glacier National Park bears are considered celebrities to the tourists. Everyone on our boat went nuts once they spotted the bear and were snapping photos like crazy. We felt a little concerned for the oblivious hikers who were walking around the lake because at times they were a mere ten feet away from the bear.

We lucked out with some phenomenal weather the entire time we were visiting Glacier. Clear skies made for cold evenings camping, but glorious days hiking. Living in the PNW we are accustomed to hiking up to alpine lakes, but encountering turquoise lakes like these are something pretty special.

Grinnell Glacier is beautiful, but unfortunately they are predicting it will be completely gone in the next couple of years. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch watching the icebergs bob on by and experienced the bone chilling glacial water.

Hiking back we were able to enjoy the chain of lakes in the distance. Last time we encountered a large herd of bighorn sheep here, but this time we were not that lucky.

As is fairly typical, we had the trail pretty much to ourselves. We did our best to out hike everyone from our boat and then we stayed at the glacier longer than everyone else.