Finally cold

7/20/2017

Another day in paradise! I awoke to a slight snap in the breeze, a freshness that I haven’t felt in… well, a long time. Colder weather!

When I left Texas, it was 108*F. Part of the goal of this trip – especially after the hellacious first day - was to find some cooler weather to hang out in for a while. And it only took 1,800 miles of driving north to find it!

My destination for the day was another long but popular hike: Grinnell Glacier. Yesterday, the top of the Highline Trail took me to an overlook looking down at Grinnell Glacier from above. At the time, I was sweaty and tired and hot, and it seemed to me that I looked down into a paradise where hikers ate lunch in the sun on the brink of a glacial lake, dabbling their feet in the refreshingly cool water. And I was over a thousand feet above them just wishing I could be there, even if the views from the top were incredible! So today I was very excited to go experience that part of the park up close and personal.

I headed into the Many Glaciers area, stopping to take a “family photo” with Jane when an appropriate vista spread out before us.

 At the entrance, the park attendant told me that there was no parking. I then parked in the empty parking spot right in front of the trailhead.

Feeling smug, I took off along the trail, which starts in a lovely shady forest. Bear bells abounded on all of the hikers around me. I wore Jane’s keys, which more or less make the same amount of noise.

It wasn’t long until the trail opened up and I ascended to sweeping views of the valley. While the Highline Trail was beautiful in its vastness, the Grinnell Glacier Trail is beautiful in its abundance. The valley is smaller and more closed off, which keeps it warmer and thus full of diverse lush vegetation. At the end of the valley, Grinnell Glacier feeds a lake, which feeds a roaring waterfall, which in turn feeds a system of creeks and connected glacial lakes that chain their way along the whole length of the valley floor. Each lake is a stunning aquamarine jewel, shining bright against the surrounding forest. The only thing to outshine them in beauty is the shocking array of colors displayed by thick carpets of flowers covering every surface. The trail is, in a word, stunning. Words can’t do it justice, so I’ll just post a lot of pictures instead.

 

You can take a boat across this lake, but it takes less time to walk so it's silly.

The water's so clear that you can see the structure of the lakebed itself - deeper in the center, with a shallow sediment-laden ring around the edges.

This tree has taken possession of this rock.

Looking back down the valley along the chain of lakes. 

So many flowers!

I hiked my way up through forests and meadows, passing across creeks and waterfalls (and even through one waterfall, which was a wet and chilly experience!) until I reached the base of Grinnell Glacier. There, flowers and trees gave way to spectacular views of a comparative wasteland, rocky and ice-covered. The glacier has eroded the sedimentary rocks into stepped benches that reveal some very interesting features (to a geologist, at least).

 

Awesome stepped sed beds

Some kind of weird result of metamorphism - not entirely sure what's happened here to create these "stretch marks"

Large ripple marks with cross-ripples in between them! Spectacular.

I found stromatolites! These dark circular mounds are essentially the fossilized remains of accumulated cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), similar to those seen in Shark Bay, Australia today.

And then, of course, there’s the glacier itself. It sits on a high bench about midway in elevation between that overlook I was at yesterday and the top of the Grinnell Glacier trail. Annoyingly inaccessible, but that’s okay – glaciers are not to be messed around with anyways, as they tend to contain yawning crevasses under thin skins of ice that may appear to be solid at first glance (that’s one thing that Hollywood actually gets right). The runoff from the melting of the upper glacier collects in a depression that used to house the lower portion of the glacier prior to climate warming. Now, it forms a lovely milky blue lake full of ice floes.

Remember how yesterday I thought it looked so nice and cool and refreshing to dabble ones feet in that lake? Yeah… it’s not. It is frigidly cold. Guess the ice floes floating around should have been my first clue, huh? I put my boots back on pretty quickly.

While it had been a bit hazy on the way out to the glacier, I stayed long enough for the weather to turn, bringing in little fluffy clouds and a clear deep blue sky. I really need to find a few more synonyms for the word beautiful. But I guess I can just show you a picture instead and let you draw your own conclusions.

I headed back down the trail late in the afternoon by design – that’s the best time to see wildlife, after all! I encountered a super friendly deer who wouldn’t get out of the trail (she was eating huckleberries, so I had some too), a momma grouse that repeatedly went, “MUH!” until her chick appeared on the other side of the trail, flapping and hopping, and a female moose grazing on the side of the road. I even saw a grizzly bear, though he was a good half mile away in the meadows up the mountain!

 

Okay, this is not an animal, this is just some cool flowers.

Hello, Ms. Deer.

All in all, a perfect day, but for one hitch: that dang knee of mine. I have declared it officially “mostly busted”, sacrificed to the Highline Trail. I am now very good at going up, and walking on level ground, but terrible at going down. For whatever reason, going down a rocky slope in a straight line makes it start hollering, but if I go down stepping sideways like a toddler going down stairs, it’s just fine. Don’t know what that means, but I guess I just go downwards sideways now. Could be worse. But definitely could be better, as being in the Rockies by definition means that you do a lot of going up and down. Bummer!

I retired to my hotel in St. Mary for the night with the hope that it would improve by the next morning – because the next item on the agenda is a foray into Canada! Can’t wait. Until then… Kelly signing out.