We just returned from a trip out to Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. I infamously took Amy up one of the tallest peaks in the White Mountains for an overnight camp with some friends, very early in our relationship, and ever since we’ve enjoyed getting out into the woods together. Our trip to Alaska in 2009 took that appreciation to new levels, and we’ve talked a lot about returning there but there are so many other places left to see.

More after the jump:

Last year, Ken Burns released his The National Parks documentary and it inspired us to get out to some of our other great national parks. When I was 16, my dad packed my brother and me into the mini van and took us on a two week drive from PA to Mount Rushmore, then down south through Yellowstone and Grand Canyon until we hit Phoenix and then rushed back to PA through the southern states. If there was a park or site to visit in between, we made our best efforts to see it. But Amy’s done most of her traveling abroad, so she put together the itinerary for this trip last year and we set about waiting for it to arrive.

We took any early Thursday flight from Boston to Denver, and then a small commuter jet to Kalispell, MT which is just outside of Glacier to the west.

I love little airports where you get to exit the plane onto the tarmac.

We collected our rental car, Bobo The Car, and drove to the nearest food store to secure two foam coolers and breakfast/lunch supplies for the first leg of the trip to save money and our waistlines.

Our first two nights were scheduled at the Lake McDonald lodge on the western side of the park. Many of Glacier’s best attributes are only accessible by foot, but it does have a lovely strip of asphalt called Going to the Sun Road that takes you up the valley on one side and over the divide to the other. We explored a bit on the first night before it got dark and then returned to get some rest for the next early morning. The plan for our first full day was to drive the car up the road to The Loop (A) and catch a shuttle up to Logan Pass (B) where we would join a ranger to hike what’s known as the Highline Trail back to the car via the Granite Park Chalet (C). It’s a relatively gradual walk along the Garden Wall to the chalet and then a pleasant 2,500′ down to the car. The morning was gray and we packed all the warm clothes we thought to bring. At the Pass, things were downright cold and very breezy as we waited for the ranger to appear. When she did, she basically gave us the ‘today is no joke’ speech and then announced there was a rock slide just a ways out on the trail and she was going to investigate and decide whether or not to close the trail.

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While we were down at the Loop waiting for a shuttle, a nice man approached me and started idly chatting about the weather before getting around to our plans for the day, which were much the same. It later turned out that he had been tasked with finding a pair of sucke…. I mean hiking partners at the parking lot because they hadn’t planned on joining the larger ranger hike as we had. The benefits of a ranger led hike are twofold. First is that hiking alone, or even in pairs, in grizzly bear country is risky. And second is that the ranger has a lot of interesting information about the area to share. So we acknowledged our shared concern for bears and decided to stick together. We had not yet acquired any bear spray, assuming we’d be in a group of better prepared individuals, but our new companions (Jim and Sue from Minnesota) were properly armed. Jim also had a spare pair of leggings for yours truly, the perpetually under-prepared.

Standing there in the cold waiting for the ranger to return, we realized that the four of us would be fine on our own and decided to head out. 100 yards in, we were met by people who were turned back by the ranger. So we shuttled ourselves back down to the car and decided to salvage the day with a hike up from the car to the chalet (C).

I have to say that aside from the elevation and relative dryness as compared to here, hiking out there is a greater pleasure. The views obviously don’t hurt, but the terrain is simply easier. From afar it looks intimidating but once you’re finally on it, it’s mostly smooth going. There aren’t any of the nasty boulders or roots to contend with. Just one dusty foot in front of the next. Climbing 2,500′ to the chalet here would have left me breathless any number of times but it was nice and steady out there. I mean, sure it’s work and there’s harder terrain to be had, but you just can’t do that kind of elevation here that easily. I did suffer a bit from a headache due to either the elevation or under hydration when we got to the top so maybe I’m not the most rugged dude, but the hiking itself was totally pleasant.

Amy and Sue made conversation to alert any possible bears of our progress on the trail. Jim and I chimed in when necessary, but it was mostly uneventful. Amy posed with a very fresh pile of scat though, and at one point we heard a woman ahead cry out BEAR a few times. At first it was unclear whether or not she was announcing her presence, but then the fear in her voice was unmistakable and then it was unclear whether or not she was being attacked. We started communicating and it seemed like she might have been pushing it down towards us, although at that point I’m sure the bear was well aware of us and fortunately moved away from us all.

An old man on the trail gave us this sage advice; He said, you can intimidate a black bear or a mountain lion but a grizzly bear will attack if it feels threatened. So keep quiet and calm and back away. On the other hand, if a black bear attacks you it means to kill you whereas I assume a brown bear might just maul you a bit and move on. That part was unclear. There has been a spike in grizzly related deaths out there recently so it seems they play for keeps as well. As much a we wanted to spot a grizzly on the trip, surprising one on the trail was at the very bottom of our to-do list.

We rested at the chalet for over an hour after eating lunch. The ladies sat inside by the fire and were regaled with grizzly horror stories from other hikers. Jim and I napped outside in the sun. The Highline Trail had since been cleared and we briefly considered making our way out there but I voiced my contentedness maybe louder than anyone (I don’t know) and we turned back down. 7 more miles – even flat miles – with the headache I was nursing seemed like a mood breaker to me. I know Jim and Sue had been looking forward to that trail for a year, whereas I’d only been hyped on it for about 24 hours. So I feel bad for them, but it’s something I look forward to returning for.

The next morning we saddled up and went back to Logan pass in order to get over to the eastern park. The day greeted us with sparkling blue skies, no wind, and an open Highline Trail but we had other business sadly. There was time to take a brisk walk out to Hidden Lake though, which I’m glad we did. Little squirrels and marmots scurried around the high meadows and at the very end of the trail we had two mountain goats descend on us and quite literally pose on the side of the hill for us. It was intensely beautiful.

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Our next two nights were spent at the Many Glacier Lodge on Swiftcurrent Lake. Everyone gathers on the lake side deck in the evening to watch the sun set over the Garden Wall and the lake. There were two moose eating dinner for a few hours across the lake and they were fun to watch with binoculars. Turns out my 200mm lens is not long enough!

Every morning was pretty much a pre-sunrise affair and the next one was no different. We were out early to grab a boat across two lakes to our next hiking adventure. This time it was a ranger led hike up to the Grinell, Salamander and Gem glaciers. Ranger Monica guided us up the valley, at times stopping to explain the geological processed that created the area and systems that the plants and animals depend on to live. The glaciers we saw are estimated to be gone between 2020 and 2030, which is sad, but it goes beyond just a bunch of ice melting. The mountain goats depend on the alpine environment to survive, but that environment is shrinking as vegetation moves higher and higher as the temperature rises. At some point, there won’t be anywhere for them to go. It’s true that the earth is warming due to natural causes but I do believe we’re accelerating that process. Ranger Monica acknowledged the point and said that what would normally take 100 years to change is going to take only 10-20 years. I’m not sure the little goats could adapt even given 100 years, but it’s still a shame. We felt incredibly fortunate to have gotten a chance to see the park the way it is now.

The group we were with sort of topped out near B on the map below, but I was determined to set foot on the actual glacier so I ran out to C and snapped a quick picture of myself. Knowing full well that the snow pack on a glacier can hide deep crevices, I only stepped out a short bit to say I did it and then got back on the rocks. I probably wasn’t even standing over ice, but I call it a win.

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We purchased some bear spray before this hike just to feel more secure – a $50 purchase we didn’t realize we couldn’t fly home with. Next time we’ll mail that stuff home.

A man went missing in the park about a week before we arrived and we asked Ranger Monica for more news. They had found his body on the side of a remote southern mountain called 8888, being that it’s 8,888 feet tall. It sounded like he had fallen about 800′ down the side of it. He did the right thing by letting people know where he was going and when to expect him back, but hiking alone is never a good thing. I guess falling 800′ isn’t something a partner would be able to rescue you from, but I dunno. Maybe it could have been prevented. We heard he left a family behind but we don’t know for sure.

The next day, again with the sun, we got in the car and headed south to Bozeman, MT for resupply and the northern entrance to Yellowstone.

The Great Plains run up to the park on the east side and so it was that we sped across them for the next 6 hours on our way south. The nice thing about covering great distance out there is that A) the speed limit is 70mph, and B) there’s no one out there. Oh, and all the roads are more or less straight, why not. We cruised down to Bozeman by lunch and took a casual drive through mammoth springs and the northwestern portion of the park on our way to West Yellowstone where we spent a single night before our full assault on the park.

The next three nights were based at Lake Yellowstone and we made efforts to get to every point in the park that the roads would allow. There was a short hike along the coast of the lake with Ranger Amy to learn about the little critters that sustain the larger animals in the park. There were geysers and bubbling pots of goo. Many buffalo. Our first buffalo sighting was met with much rejoicing, but we grew to disdain the traffic they caused in the valleys. Early September is a great time of year to visit these parks by the way. It’s very near the end of the season in Glacier and right about the time most families are back in school. So I’d have to say everything was generally quiet which made it very nice and intimate. Many of the mornings in Yellowstone we were the first people to be visiting a spot, or at least one of the first.

There’s a six mile long section of road in the northern part of the park that is unpaved and fairly untraveled. It was there that we had about an hour long encounter with a young male moose. He was hanging out in the shady area beneath some trees, eating and eating. We snapped picture after picture, hoping to get a good angle, but it was hard given our positions. I struck up a conversation with another guy about where a good place would be to get shots and then we started comparing equipment. He had a 100-400mm lens on his camera that he very graciously snapped off and offered to me for the session. Patience finally paid off and the moose moved into a more open area where we could really watch him negotiate the landscape and do his thing. They’re generally depicted as kind of goofy and awkward animals with the long legs, but he moved with such purpose and strength. We were awed. It was our best animal experience on the trip.

We drove up to the Lamar Valley in the northeast on our last night to have a picnic dinner and maybe see some wolves or a bear. The most active wolf pack in the park is up there, which we learned from a NatGeo video we watched before going. We sat for a while and then decided to move further out. There we stumbled on a mass of cars and people camped out on the side of the road to try to catch wolves. We had heard that there was a bison carcass somewhere in the valley that had been attracting animals and we found it. A ranger finally came by with a radio receiver and let everyone know that the faint signal he was getting from a collar on one of the wolves meant we wouldn’t be seeing any that night.

Sparkles searching for bears and wolves.

There were a few wildfires burning while we were there. One in particular was burning on the eastern side of the lake. We could see and smell it from the Lodge and spent a little bit of time the first night watching it glow and flare up. Fire and the resulting bald landscape seems like a sad thing, but in reality it returns nutrients to the earth and allows for new things to grow and flourish. It happens slowly to us, but to the forest it’s only a brief moment in time. So they let the natural fires burn unless they threaten person or property.

Yellowstone is a crazy place if you think about it. An enormous pocket of liquid magma, a hundred miles deep and nearly the diameter of the park, has remained still as the crust above has moved southwest over the last few million years. You can see the smoothing impact it’s had on the land in Idaho from satellite imagery.

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This volcano erupted two million years ago, 1.2 million years ago and 640k years ago. Each time it spread ash over nearly the entire continent. Mt. St. Helens by comparison barely covered a corner of the state. I think the volcano in Yellowstone is the largest known in the world and it powers all the thermal activity you see in the park. The caldera is pretty much centered and roughly half the size of the park. The bubbling pots and geysers are delightful but they’re only signs of a ridiculously powerful natural force that’s just sleeping. It’s eerie.

Yellowstone is connected to the Grand Tetons to the south and we passed through there on our way to Jackson, WY for our final night. The Tetons are imposing and at nearly 14,000′, the tallest peaks we saw on the trip. But unless you’re going to get out on foot, there’s not much to do so we cruised on by.

Jackson is a nice little resort town, I guess. Tons of shopping if galleries and real estate are your thing. A good launching off point for the surrounding parks and rec. We had heard about a great mexican place to eat at in town called Pica’s, which we visited for lunch. And a kid at the Many Glacier hotel in Glacier told us about a Thai place called Thai Me Up where we ate dinner. Thumbs way high up on that place.

The town had some sort of open gallery night that we inserted ourselves into after dinner. Wine flowed freely and live music played. It was all so nice, except the part where I have never in my life experienced such a mass of people trying so goddamn hard to be noticed and impress. We cut the evening short feeling really uncomfortable and never more simple and bumpkiny. Which was fine, we had another early flight to catch home.

If the trip had a soundtrack for me, it would be Aaron Copeland, I guess a little obviously. We caught a bit of him on the last night in the car and it just seemed so fitting. We didn’t listen to much radio on the trip but Aaron Copeland really struck a chord with me.

More pics can be found here, and below is a basic map of our route minus extra noodling and backtracking in the parks.

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We did end up seeing a grizzly bear crossing the road in Teton Pass on our very last day. Too quick to photograph, but it was a nice way to wrap up the trip. This is almost more of a travel journal to help me remember it all. Hopefully it was semi coherent! Thanks for reading!