Avalanche Trail

This trail is on the West side of the Park by Lake McDonald. I think its about 5 and a few tenths of miles round trip. We did it in the evening when it was cool. There are two parts to the trail, Cedar Trail and Avalanche Trail. The Cedar Trail is wheel chair accessible. The rest of the trail, Avalanche, is in the "natural" condition in that the only modification to the area is the trail its self. I can't imagine what the trip was like for the first person that stumbled upon it. The trees are all small for the most part with dead and dying all around them and a real tangle on the ground.

The creek on the bottom part is a narrow cut through the Rocks.

There is downed timber clogging the creek in some places.

The rocky cliffs are striking, and as you may have noticed, I have trouble discarding similar pictures of the same rocks .

This is the Water Ozal picking out a living. A lot of what they eat is the Stonefly nymph that attaches to the rocks on the creek bed. She is very hard to see, her camouflage is perfect.

This should give you an idea of what the forest was like.

My "Knot Head" picture.

I wish my garden was half as tenacious.

You can't see the whole picture here, but the canyon coming in from the other side of the forest is  Funneling  the wind across and directly into the trees on this side of the valley. All the trees caught in the sights of this valley are either broken off, or up rooted entirely. There is some serious wind coming out of there at times. Winds of 75 MPH are not all that uncommon for Glacier, this cut most likely focuses the wind directly into this hill side.

This rock face just captured my interest.

There was a pretty serious rise in elevation to this lake, and this is our first glimpse of it. I asked one guy coming out, that looked pretty beat, about the trail, when we first started, and he was a believer. Probably a flat lander and the high altitude kicked his butt.

This is the Bear that was scrounging on the other side of the lake.

I am forced to admit that I am a cynic, that has never gotten over his vow while in the Army of, "I will never wait in another line again when I get out". I also for the most part hate crowds. However I had a great time on this trip. I think I only met one grouch the entire week I was there. The people there were almost all up beat, happy and courteous, and damn glad to be alive. I think Connie exchanged information with at least two couples and included invites to visit us. The funny part is that I would not be surprised if they did show up. After all there were guided escorted trips offered to see the Steen's and other wonders of this part of the world. They were from Bend,Or.

I saw an article while doing a bit of research that stated that average cost for a four day trip to Glacier was $2192.00. I put 2100 miles on the car, took food from my freezer for us to eat while I was there, and total cost was under$400. and that includes dog sitting fees for my neighbor. Having a Senior pass for NP's didn't hurt either.

One of the things that amused me was how much encouragement and wonder that we evoked by just being able to walk those trails. Talk about Irony, I used to make sounds of wonder at old codgers that were still participating in life, and NOW I ARE ONE!

A tour of the rest of the Park

This one is a bit out of order. It was the first day that Connie had off work, and I wanted to see the rest of the park, before we did that much hiking. I came in on the West side and saw Lake McDonald. The other lodges were Many Glacier and 2 Medicine.

 This area is "Many Glacier", and North of Raising Sun .

 These Lodges were built in the Swiss style by the Great Northern Rail Road Company

I looked through the history of the lodges and they claim that the timbers and most of the wood came from the park itself. I found that interesting since no where did I see any trees as big as these.

Next Two Medicine area at the South end (generally speaking) of the park is where the Main Lodge and the Rail Road terminal are located.

We had to go through some road construction to get to 2 Medicine, it seems they are rebuilding the road to get there. As usual the Mountains captured my attention. I kept expecting to see a herd of Elk.

As I understand it this is the main Lodge.

The Rail Terminus is just across the road from the Lodge.

This is
Rocky, the mascot for the Great Northern.

This is the Guy who started it all and it is a bit like "legend" to me, since I spent 30 years working on the result of the mergers of all the Railroads, Starting with the original being Great Northern RR.