Day 16: Apgar to Many Glacier

Today was one of our earliest starts of the entire holiday, with the alarm set for 5am. The reason for this was that I wanted us to get a parking space in the car park at a place called Logan Pass, which typically fills up before 7am each day. Although there are around 200 spaces in the car park, it's the starting point for a number of popular hikes, as well as the location of a visitor centre, and so it's always very busy. Logan Pass was a drive of around an hour from where we were staying in Apgar, so we checked out of our hotel at 05.30 and set off in the darkness.

Logan Pass is the highest point of the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road, a scenic highway of around 50 miles which runs from the west of Glacier National Park to the east. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful roads to drive in the entire USA, so it was quite ironic that we were having to drive it before sunrise in order to get a parking space. Glacier is one of those national parks where visitor numbers have increased rapidly in recent years, with 3.2 millions visitors in 2024. Most of those visitors arrive between the start of July and the end of September, which is the only time that Going-to-the-Sun road is open (the rest of the year, the road is covered in heavy snow). With that volume of tourists, even a car park with 200 spaces is inevitably going to fill up pretty quickly!

As we climbed up towards the pass in a column of other vehicles, I was slightly worried that even with the ridiculously early hour we had got up, we were at risk of not getting a parking space. However, in the end everything turned out fine  We arrived at Logan Pass around 06.30 and there were still multiple spaces left. We parked the car and proceeded to sit in it for a while until the sun began to rise. And it was a really beautiful sunrise! This was our view from the car park at around 06.45.

It was really gorgeous

And this is what the car park looked like at 06.45; completely full!

We didn't actually want to set out on the hike until the sky was a bit brighter, so we sat in the car for a bit longer and ate some biscuits for breakfast. By 07.30, the view was even better.

It was so pretty that it almost didn't look real!

We were planning to do one of the easier hikes in Glacier National Park today, which is the Hidden Lake trail. The path starts from just behind the Logan Pass Visitor Centre.

We immediately passed a sign warning us to be careful of bighorn sheep. Luckily, we didn't encounter any bighorn sheep today; they sound a bit scary!

Very soon afterwards, we also passed a sign warning us that this was an area frequented by bears. That was the reason we hadn't wanted to start hiking until it was completely bright (although, that didn't seem to be stopping other people, plenty of whom set off before us). We didn't ultimately see any bears today either, although we were carrying our bear spray just in case. 

The Hidden Lake trail was beautiful right from the start.

The only downside was that it was also uphill right from the start.

The trail led us upwards via a series of wooden steps and boardwalks.

As you can see from the pictures, there were other people on the trail, but it never felt overly crowded.

And there was no chance that any of us were going to take a bear by surprise given the volume most Americans were talking at  

The landscape as we climbed was absolutely stunning.

When we looked behind us, we still had the remnants of the sunrise colours in the sky too.

Here's me partway up, looking tired after getting up at 5am  

It was quite a chilly morning – around 6 degrees when we'd left Apgar at 05.30 – so I was glad to be wearing a coat and leggings.

Definitely a contrast to the extremely warm temperatures we had down in Arizona a couple of weeks ago.

The change in climate and landscape shouldn't really be a surprise, though; we've driven across the USA from within about 60 miles of the Mexican border in Tucson, to within around 20 miles of the Canadian border at Logan Pass.

Eventually we came to the end of the wooden boardwalks. From here the trail became a bit rockier.

I was excited that we could see bits of snow on some of the mountains.

We took some selfies to capture the snow ...

... and the sunrise.

Around this point we passed a group of people with large binoculars who said they could see a bear in the distance. We couldn't see anything – either with the naked eye or with our cameras. It was obviously a very long way away.

Whenever I thought we must be nearly at the top, the trail continued on uphill.

After a while we came to a slightly flatter area with a small lake.

This wasn't the Hidden Lake that we were walking to, but it was still very pretty.

Eventually, we were nearly at the highest point of the walk ...

... and got our first glimpse of Hidden Lake in the distance.

What an amazing lake!

Once we got to the official overlook point, we could see it more clearly ...

... and just about got both lake and mountains in a selfie

Most people stop walking the trail at this point, but you can continue on further all the way down to the lake.

We didn't want to climb down all that way – mainly because we didn't want to climb all the way back up again – but we did carry on a little bit further around the mountain.

It was definitely worth continuing – the further we walked, the better the views of the lake.

I found a nice rock by the side of the trail to sit and have a drink.

And then spent a moment taking in the scene.

After this point, the path became significantly rockier.

The rocks were actually really fascinating. We've seen all sorts of rocks on this holiday, but not this shade of burgundy.

The colour of the rocks contrasted with the mountain behind was really lovely.

And they looked pretty cool in this little river too.

Around this point we heard some whistling on the rocks above us. I looked up and saw a marmot, who was obviously warning others about our presence. He was quite a long way away, so the photo hasn't come out very clearly, but hopefully you can just make him out sitting on the big rock in the middle of the photo.

We had a final look at Hidden Lake ...

... then decided to turn around and start walking back towards Logan Pass.

The walk down was just as pretty as the walk up had been. Now that the sun was fully up, we could see the mountains in a different light.

There were more people coming up the boardwalks as we started climbing down, so they'd obviously managed to find parking spaces somehow! I guess some of the people who started hiking at dawn had already finished and moved on.

The car park still looked incredibly busy by the time we got down, with multiple cars circling around in search of spaces.

There was one more thing I wanted to see at Logan Pass before we gave up our parking space: the continental divide sign.

Water to the west of the pass drains into the Pacific Ocean, while water to the east drains into the Atlantic.

Once that was ticked off my list, we made someone's day by giving up our parking space and started driving east down Going-to-the-Sun road, towards the small settlement of St Mary which lies at its far end.

The road truly was spectacular now that it was daylight.

We drove alongside St Mary's Lake for a while ...

... before ultimately turning around at the St Mary Visitor Centre and re-driving the entire road from east to west, this time able to see the daylight views!

We stopped for a couple of minutes at a place called Wild Goose Island Overlook.

Neither of us have seen the film, but this viewpoint is apparently really famous because it features in the opening sequence of 'The Shining'.

It was particularly exciting to see the scenery on the return journey once we got past Logan Pass, as this was the portion of the road that we'd driven in complete darkness.

The road was quite narrow in places, with rock on one side and a steep drop on the other.

The views from over the edge were incredible.

We definitely hadn't been aware of any of this in the dark!

Once we got to the outskirts of the park, we decided to drive to the town of Kalispell where we'd had lunch yesterday. There really aren't many settlements close to Glacier National Park, so finding food is quite hard. We had a nice meal in Kalispell, though belatedly we realised it had been quite a diversion because we still had two hours of driving to do before we reached the hotel we're staying in this evening.

Glacier National Park is huge and we're staying in a different part of it this evening; a region called Many Glacier. We're staying in the Many Glacier Hotel, which was built in 1914 with a Swiss Alpine Theme.

Our room is fairly standard ...

... but the interior of the hotel itself is very grand.

We've got a little balcony outside our room, from where we can see a little bit of the mountains.

The views from the car park outside are really beautiful ...

... and in the distance we could even see the edge of one of the glaciers that give the area its name.

The best thing about the hotel is that it turned out to have way better WiFi than we expected  So despite the fact that there is zero phone signal here, we've been able to do the blog before relaxing after another fairly long day of driving!