Highlights:
– WILD and wonderful
– Main road (Going to the Sun) closed early
– Empty and cheap campground
Unfortunately this was the one park where we really missed our window of opportunity to explore it to the fullest. After a magnificent week in Yellowstone and Grand Teton we headed north to Montana, ready to really dig into a new park. We spent one night in Bozeman with some friends before continuing to Glacier, where we arrived in the afternoon.
Dark clouds and huge gales of wind ushered us in, but we were not deterred and excitedly set up camp in Saint Mary Campground, which only cost $5 per night (and was the only campground open in the park). There was no water available in the campground for the winter, but pit toilets were still open. The stormy weather set us a bit on edge, and the near empty campground meant that we couldn’t help but think about all the active grizzly bears we had seen in Yellowstone and the stories bears enjoying a meal of “human burritos” (people sleeping in their sleeping bags). We quickly built a fire to warm up and ate a meal before bundling up in our tent. The wind blew so aggressively all night that we didn’t get much sleep and I, personally, kept imagining that the rain fly slapping the side of the tent was a massive grizzly bear paw.
Luckily, we survived the night without incident and woke up ready to drive on the Going to the Sun Road and hike the Highline Trail. Unfortunately the weather had different plans. In the night, many trees had fallen across the road and snow at higher elevations made parts of the road impassable. A ranger informed us of this (and of increased grizzly presence in the campground) so we quickly changed plans and drove west to the Apgar Visitor Center to see if the weather was any better there. Most things were also shut down on the west side of the park and we decided not to waste any more time and continue on with heavy hearts. We absolutely need to return to this beautiful park in the summertime or earlier in the autumn and I would definitely try to get there before the end of October to have the best likelihood of being able to enjoy the many beautiful trails.