This past July, my wife, Susan, her sister and brother-in-law, and a few of their friends, and I, eight of us in all, visited Wateron/Glacier International Peace Park. Waterton Lakes on the Canadian side and Glacier National Park on the American side make up the International Peace Park in the Rocky Mountains in northwest Montana and southern Alberta. A couple who have been family friends of Susan's for many years who live in Whitefish, Montana, just outside of Glacier Park, invited us to come out to stay with them and to hike the Park. The couple's son volunteered to be our guide during our visit. His original plan was to backpack along the Highline Trail, one of the most spectacular stretches of trail in Glacier Park. However, a snow-pack of 150% of normal left much of that trail innavigable due to hazardous snow. All eight of us got to Glacier National Park without a firm plan on how we would spend our vacation time. Before Susan and I arrived in Montana from Massachusetts, we thought we would want to do at least one three-day backpacking trip. We found that getting eight people to come to a consensus about daily trip planning was not easy. Some of us had actual agendas, backpacking as opposed to day hiking; some of us allowed others to make the decisions, but only a minority of us decided for the group what we should do and where we should go in the Park.

We undertook three one-day hikes and one overnight backpacking trip during our limited time. The first thing we did was ride through Glacier National Park on the 'Going-to-the-Sun' Highway. An engineering marvel of its day, the 52 miles first opened in the 1930's. The highway stretches from the Lake McDonald region in the southwest corner of the Park and climbs up to Logan Pass at 6646 feet and from there descends to the Saint Mary Lake region on the eastern side of the Park. On that road you look up at 8000 and 9000 foot snow-covered mountains and magnificent waterfalls, an exceptional one being Bird Woman Falls. We next drove up and around the Canadian side of the Park to the town of Waterton. At the north end of Waterton Lake in the town of Waterton lies the Prince of Wales Hotel. Built when the Great Northern Railway was king in the 1920's, this imposing structure was made of giant red cedar beams without one nail and using only block-and-tackle to hoist the beams. The Prince of Wales Hotel overlooks Waterton Lake and the Rocky Mountains with a scenic view practically unsurpassed in the whole world. We spent the night in our tents at the city campground in Waterton, got up the next morning and caught a sightseeing boat for a twenty minute ride to our trial head on the eastern side of the lake. We were venturing on a day hike to Crypt Lake on the Crypt Lake Trail. The trail winds its way east away from Waterton Lake and continues up in elevation to the southeast between majestic cliffs for 6.5 miles. In early July the alpine wildflowers along the trail are profuse. Two flowers in blossom that stood out for us were the glacier lily, a favorite of bears in the spring, and the mountain lady's-slipper which is among the rarest of orchids in the northern Rockies. What surprised me about this and other trails in the Peace Park is that the trail is often precipitous, or in simple terms, you walk near steep places. Nevertheless, at the end of 6.5 miles the fun began. Incidentally, before we started the final ascent, we spotted a marmot and a pika, a large and a small rodent, both of whom live among the talus boulders. You walk on a trail between a talus slope literally on the edge of a cliff. And then you come to the crypt, actually a tunnel in the cliff that is difficult to see until you are almost on top of it. At the base of the entrance of the tunnel is a short ladder that enables you to step up into the tunnel. The tunnel is about 50 feet long and has been widened so that you can stand up at each end, but you have to crouch down in between. At the other side of the tunnel, you find you are on an even steeper cliff. Fortunately, a cable has been attached to the rock to hold onto for safety. Having safely negotiated this part of the trail, all eight of us were able to walk up to Crypt Lake, an ice-filled turquoise-colored lake at the bottom of a magnificent cirque on the Canada-U.S. border. The trip lasted all day, we went back the way we came, and were just in time to catch the last boat back to town. 

Working our way south by cars along the east side of Glacier Park to the Many Glacier area, we took a second but this time much shorter day hike to Grinnell Lake. The lake is named after George Bird Grinnell, an early editor of Field and Stream magazine who was instrumental in persuading the federal government to set aside large tracts of the Northern Rockies, Glacier National Park, for recreational use for future generations. Three of our group wanted to see if they could get up to Grinnell Glacier, located above the lake and said to be the most accessible glacier in the park. Without proper gear, they were unfortunately prevented from getting near the glacier by the hazardous snow-pack. The other five of us went on to Grinnell Lake. Not far from the lake, we encountered a cinnamon-colored black bear sow with two cubs. She stood straight up on her hind legs in the middle of the trail trying to get a good whiff of us. We hid behind a tree, and attempted to make it difficult for her to locate us. In the meanwhile, one from our group saw one of the cubs climb a tree. We beat a hasty retreat knowing how dangerous a mother bear with cubs can be. A half-mile back down the trail we met a National Park ranger leading a group of about fifty people toward Grinnell Lake. The ranger said we did the right thing by backing away. Then in the safety of the group we headed back in the direction of the bears towards the lake. The bears were gone when we returned to the area where we sighted them. Along the trail we crossed a one-person-at-a-time suspension bridge. At Grinnell Lake, while the ranger answered questions about the lake and the park, mosquitoes bit us relentlessly. We returned to our cars at the parking lot the way we came.

Our last day hike was a real killer. In the Logan Pass area we chose the Siyeh Pass Hike. This hike starts at Siyeh Bend on the 'Going-to-the-Sun' road, goes through forest, then meadow, ascends steeply up switchbacks on a talus slope to the top of a mountain pass. Siyeh (pronounced sa-yee) Pass, goes around the corner into a huge cirque that contains Sexton Glacier, descends steeply via long switchbacks, parallels Baring Creek and past Sunrift Gorge back down to 'Going-to-the-Sun' Road. We spotted a car at each end of the 9.8- mile trail that practically encircles the 9642 foot Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. Almost as soon as we got onto the trail at Siyeh Bend, we ran into a 5-point mule deer buck munching on the vegetation. We've since learned that they are a favorite prey of mountain lion. He seemed unconcerned, so much so that he didn't want to leave the trail in front of us. It was an overcast, slightly raw day when we started, but since the mountain environment in the Park is essentially a microclimate, we didn't know what to expect. Well, on our way to the top of the pass, we were enveloped in a raging rainstorm with seventy-five to one hundred mile an hour gusts of wind. At the top of the pass, the trail was about four feet wide. It made me giddy to be on the edge of a cliff at 8,000 feet. Right around the corner from the top we looked out into a vast bowl of steep hard-packed snow. The weather had cleared. At that point I was nervous. How was I, I was thinking of my own survival now, going to get down this steep snow-covered slope. One member of our group lent me his instep crampons, Thank God. My hiking pole converted into a ski pole. So with those two items I was able to get off the scary slope by zigzagging my way inch by inch down the hard-packed surface. After successfully getting down, the only other obstacles on the trail was another snowfield, this time even steeper. My wife and I took the better part of valor climbing down around it and back up to the trail. We actually beat three of our party who chose to stay on the trail by cutting steps in the steep surface of the snow. Lastly, since there was plenty of water run-offs in the Park, it was a pleasure to walk beside and above the fast-flowing and wide Baring Creek.

After obtaining a backcountry permit at the St. Mary visitor center, our last adventure was 15.5 mile roundtrip overnight backpacking trip to Red Eagle Lake in the St. Mary area of Glacier Park. It was a joy to have little elevation gain through the forest and meadow, going over two suspension bridges spanning Red Eagle Creek, and camping in the wilderness at a lake between two mountains. The wildflowers were overwhelming with beauty. Beargrass in full bloom, famous in Montana, lined each side of the path on one stretch of the trail. However, at the lake, the mosquitos were ferocious. Susan and I were certainly glad we each brought a bug shirt, a pullover of thick cotton material with sewed-in netting over the face and armpits, for protection. In order to discourage bear/human contact, there was a food preparation area in place but away from the tent sites, as well as a horizontal pole strung between two trees about fifteen feet off the ground used for bearbagging. Bears were constantly on our minds whenever we hiked in the Park. And from time to time, we would see evidence of their presence by seeing bear scat on the ground on the trail. The grizzly bear is part of the mystique of hiking in Glacier Park. You know they are there, but you try to put them out of your mind as much as possible. There were so many good things about wilderness hiking including freedom, solitude, healthy exercise, indescribable beauty, fresh air, and peace that fills you with joy in the incomparable environment of Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park.