Day 17: Many Glacier to Kalispell

The weather forecast was not good for today and when we woke up in the Many Glacier hotel this morning, it was indeed rather gloomy. We went downstairs to have breakfast in the hotel dining room; at $22 each it felt rather over-priced, but on a sunny day the view from here must be amazing.

After breakfast we checked out of our room and put all our suitcases in the car. It began to pour torrentially with rain and I began to question whether the hike I had planned for today was going to work out. 

The Many Glacier Hotel is situated on a lake called Swiftcurrent Lake. Our plans for the day involved getting a boat across this lake – and a subsequent lake a bit further on – before embarking on our longest hike of the holiday.

We were booked on a boat at 09.00 and had to collect our tickets from the ticket office behind the hotel by 08.30, else risk forfeiting our place.

We collected the tickets without any problems, then stood waiting for it to be time to board the boat. The weather wasn't looking any brighter!

Eventually we could see a small, white boat appearing on the horizon.

We got onboard and began the journey, which only lasted around 15 minutes or so as it's a fairly small lake. The woman driving the boat gave commentary as we went, telling us lots of interesting facts about the area. Apparently in winter, the snow gets so high that it reaches the roof of the Many Glacier Hotel  The caretaker, who lives on his own in the building when the season is over, woke up to find that a sheep in the building last year: it had fallen through a skylight!

One of the most fascinating things she told us was that all the trees in this Swiftcurrent Valley date from 1936, which is why you'll see in the pictures that they're all more or less the same height. They're a special type of tree which actually need a wildfire in order to propagate; their pine cones, which can lie for years on the forest floor, are coated in wax which requires the heat of fire to melt. The last big fire in this valley was in 1936, so all the trees here started growing then.

After 15 minutes or so, the boat docked at the far end of Swiftcurrent Lake.

We could just see back to the Many Glacier Hotel in the distance.

From Swiftcurrent Lake, we had to walk about 10 minutes or so, uphill and then down again, until we reached a second lake.

The second lake, Lake Josephine, was slightly bigger.

Our group boarded the boat and we set off across the lake.

We got lots of interesting information about wildlife during this crossing. We learned that bears eat 50 pounds of berries a day at this time of year  And that moose are able to swim and dive in the lake. It turns out that they can dive up to 18 feet; since the lakes here are about 15 feet, that means that they eat vegetation growing on the floor. We didn't encounter either animal today, though.

When we got to the end of Lake Josephine, we disembarked from the boat. The good news was that the weather was starting to look a little brighter!

We decided to start the hike we'd come to do and see whether the weather held up. We were trying to walk to a place called Grinnell Glacier Overlook, which looked absolutely stunning in the photos I'd seen online. It was going to be quite a steep uphill hike, but it started relatively gently as we made our way around the top of Lake Josephine.

I don't have (m)any photos of the trail on this hike because we were both using trekking poles, which meant our hands weren't free to take pictures most of the time. But we started off with an incredibly steep climb up above Lake Josephine.

The benefit of starting this hike with the boat journey was that a large group of people were setting off all at once. That meant we were effectively hiking in a big group that was making lots of noise (almost everyone else was American, so I do mean lots of noise!) and so we didn't have to worry that we might accidentally surprise a bear as we began climbing up through the undergrowth.

After 20 minutes or so of uphill climbing, we got our first glimpse of something blue in the distance.

This is Grinnell Lake.

I have taken a ridiculous number of photos of it today, because it is just so incredibly blue!

The striking turquoise colour is because of the silt transported into the lake from the nearby Grinnell Glacier.

I had seen pictures of this online when planning the hike, but part of me believed that they must have been photoshopped to look this colour. Turns out they really hadn't!

The lake was beautiful but the uphill trail was unrelenting. We'd been climbing for over an hour by the time we had these views and we were still going steeply up.

And when I say steeply up, I really do mean steeply up.

There's no way I would have made it without the extra support of the hiking poles.

Eventually we could see that we were making progress alongside Grinnell Lake.

When we looked back from this point on the trail we could see all three lakes: the turquoise Grinnell Lake, then further back Lake Josephine and Swiftcurrent Lake which we'd travelled over by boat.

We'd come a long way, but we still had quite a way to go. When the clouds began to clear slightly, we could now see the glacier in the distance. 

We could also now see this beautiful waterfall, pouring down the mountainside.

The trail continued around the side of the mountain, then the final half a mile or so was very steeply uphill via a series of stone steps. Once we'd conquered that, the path began to level out and the glacier looked a lot closer.

It had begun to rain again by this point, but we were nearly at the top.

We made it! This was Upper Grinnell Lake. It didn't look quite as blue today as it has in some of the pictures I've seen; probably because of the very wet weather.

And this was what we'd come to see: Grinnell Glacier.

This definitely called for a selfie.

Maybe a couple of different selfies

Even in the rain, it was such a beautiful place.

I realised we could even see tiny little icebergs, breaking off the glacier and floating in the lake.

Back in 1850, this glacier had an area of 710 acres. Today, it's only around 150 acres. It's one of only 25 glaciers left in the park; there were 150 when it was discovered.

Beautiful as it was at the top, the weather wasn't great and we still had a long descent ahead of us. We began to walk back down.

Walking downhill was significantly easier and we were able to enjoy the views a bit more.

We stopped to enjoy the incredible panorama.

On the way down I managed to get a few more shots of the trail. This was one of the rockier parts.

And this was the most difficult bit, walking downhill over wet rock due to a stream of water pouring down the mountainside.

Here's me looking glad to have survived that part

Of course, there were some more incredible views of Grinnell Lake on the way down.

Shortly after 2pm, we'd made it back down to the area of Lake Josephine.

We had a return ticket for the boat, but there was only one boat per hour and there wasn't a guarantee that we'd be able to fit on the first boat that came.

A sign informed us that it was only 2.5 miles to walk back to the Many Glacier Hotel from here, so we decided to do the journey on foot.

Walking along the side of the lakes was actually really pleasant.

The weather had dried up by this point and it was a much brighter day.

As we stood and admired the views from Swiftcurrent Lake ...

... we realised that from here we could see all the way up to Grinnell Glacier. In the photo below, it's the lower patch of snow towards the centre of the photo.

Finally, around 15.30, the Many Glacier Hotel came back into view.

We'd made it. Phew! As the screenshot from Tim's Fitbit shows, we covered a serious amount of ground today.

We stopped for some refreshments at the hotel, then had a 2.5 hour drive back to Kalispell, where we're staying overnight at a Best Western Hotel.

Tomorrow will be a long day of travelling, starting with a couple of internal flights to get us back to Phoenix in time for our main flight back to the UK. We'll be landing at Heathrow some time on Wednesday afternoon.

It's been a fantastic holiday and we will do a final post once we're back to summarise everything we've seen