Glacier National Park (07-16-12)

If Yellowstone is known for the wildlife and geysers, then Glacier is known for their….glaciers.

 

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any wildlife though.  This is a whole family of mountain goats- parents and 3 babies.

We’ve also seen big horn sheep, a black bear and part of a moose (the antlers) and we’ve only been here two days.

Anyway, so, what actually is a glacier ( I wasn’t sure of exactly what it is, I just know that there are lots of them up north.) A glacier is a slow moving mass, or river, of ice that accumulates over the years (doesn’t melt in the summer).  Glaciers literally carve the landscape as they move.  A canyon or valley carved by a river has a V shape, whereas a valley carved by a glacier has a U shape:

In 1850 there were 150 glaciers in this park.  In 2010, there were only 25.  It’s expected that all the glaciers will be gone by 2020.

The large area of snow in this picture is Grinnell Glacier.  We hope to get a better picture of it when we hike to it.









We’ve done two hikes since we got here, and one of the most noticeable things to me has been the “smell”.  The pine forests are so fragrant, I keep taking deep breaths to enjoy it (may have something to do with going uphill, too though) I am reminded  of Christmas all day long. And when I can’t smell the pines, the air has an incredibly fresh and clean scent to it. 

Our first hike was to St. Mary’s Falls and Virginia Falls.  After a short hike of about a mile, we arrived at St. Mary’s,  with beautiful water and several short falls.

A short distance later, we came across Virginia Falls, where we stopped to have lunch. These falls weren’t as pretty, but they were much taller.

We watched two baby birds hanging around the falls- like, in the water, just on the edge of the falls themselves (the edge is a 30 ft. drop).  Every few minutes the mother would come by and feed them some bugs she caught.  We found out they are called Dippers.  They build their nests near fast flowing water or waterfalls, and get their name because they bob or dip their heads up and down.  We were wondering why the babies were doing that!

Today’s hike was to Iceberg lake and was much more of a “calf stretcher” than yesterday’s hike.  10 miles, with 1200 feet of elevation gain. Again we hiked in the pine forest for part of the hike.  Once we were out in the open, the  views were awesome. 

Iceberg lake gets it’s name because the ice on it doesn’t melt until September.  Its not actually icebergs, and although it may look cold in the picture, it was in the 70’s and we were very happy to reach the snowy area, so we could cool off for a while.

Paul also looks like he is skiing, but nope,he is just using his trekking pole to keep his balance on the snow.

It was on the way back that we saw quite a few mountain goats and some big horn sheep.  We also stopped to look for the moose that many people on the trail reported seeing.  We did catch sight of the antlers, but by then we could hear thunder and could see the clouds coming over the mountain tops, so we gave it up and picked up our pace.  With the forecast calling for a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms, we had our raincoats with us, and almost got away without needing them.  We got rained on for the last little bit, but nothing major. 

By the way, many times, as I hike, I compose my blog posts in my head.  And let me tell you, they would be ever so much better if I could actually remember anything I was thinking about later on when I actually write it!  As it is, I usually write it at night, like tonight, after hiking all day, relaxing with a beer and eating dinner. I need to put the post together because we will be doing a lot of stuff while we are here and NO ONE reads long blog posts.

PS- I started putting “recent pictures” on the right hand side of the blog.  The difference between the ones in the post and those is that they are the original size- 4-6 megabytes, and these have been automatically shrunk. So if you like to look at big pictures, click on the link and it will take you to my Picasa page. I am running out of free storage with Picasa so when I get time, I’m going to have to look for alternatives that will work with Blogger. It’s part of the reason I stopped updating my “our trip in pictures” page.