We just got back from a trip to Glacier National Park, the highlight of which was a roughly 10-mile hike up to the Grinnell Glacier and back. We started from the Many Glacier Hotel and took two boat rides on the way there, which shaved off a couple of miles, but walked all the way back down. It took about nine hours in all. Here it is from beginning to end, photographed and timestamped.
08:03: Lined up outside Many Glacier Hotel for the boat ride across Swiftcurrent Lake.
08:42: After crossing Swiftcurrent Lake, we traversed a brief patch of forest to reach a second boat on Lake Josephine.
08:50
08:59: When we reached the other side of Lake Josephine, everybody got excited about a moose.
09:23: Looking back at Lake Josephine as we start the ascent.
The moose was still down there.
09:39
09:42
09:48
09:58
09:59
10:00: Looking back at how far we’ve come from Lake Josephine.
10:02: Our ultimate destination is tucked in the mountains below the large patch of snow in the center of this photo. That patch of snow is Salamander Glacier, described by a boat operator as looking like a T-rex without its arms. Beneath it, but not visible from this perspective, is the Grinnell Glacier.
10:04: Stopped for a second to take in the blue color of Grinnell Lake.
10:35
10:44: One of the most memorable things from this hike was this chokepoint where you basically had to walk under a waterfall, or else clamber off-trail to avoid it. I went under the water only on the way up and luckily only a bit of water soaked through one shoe. I didn’t linger there long enough for fear to set in, but this narrow, wet precipice was probably the most dangerous moment of the hike. On the way down it seemed to be gushing even harder, so I picked my way around it further down the slope.
10:49: First mountain goat sighting of the trip.
10:50: Looking back at what we’ve traversed so far. The first boat started on a lake around the corner of the mountain to the left of this shot, then another boat took us across the middle lake, then we commenced hiking.
11:00
11:31: Looking back.
11:59: We’re on the cusp of reaching our destination, the Grinnell Glacier. First we were greeted by this huge pile of stones, which we threw our own additions onto.
12:08: Here it is, the Grinnell Glacier. It’s not much to see in 2026 — it’s mostly a pool of very, very cold water with some ambiguous snow fringes.
The glacier is shrinking fast. Here are some photos from back at the Many Glacier Hotel showing the glacier’s shrinkage from 1940 and 2006. In 1940, there was barely any lake at all here.
13:22: Walking out onto the snow/ice near the shoreline. It felt pretty safe to walk on, but definitely had some unnerving hollow bits. Probably would have been OK if I fell in? Not sure how deep it was, but other people seemed to be surviving brief dips into the water. Up on the mountain is Salamander Glacier, the “T-rex-shaped” glacier previously seen from a distance.
13:25
13:34: We spent about an hour and a half at the glacier, and now we’re on the way back down. Pretty quickly ran into a bighorn sheep.
13:58
14:23: This was a delightful encounter — a mountain goat taking a shady perch overlooking the trail.
14:26
15:08
15:44: The deer get a lot closer to people here in the national park than they do back in Michigan.
15:51: Back at the Lake Josephine boat dock, a lady moose + a male.
We intended to board the 4:00 return boat, but it filled up. We got bored of waiting for the 5:00 boat, so we started walking back to Many Glacier Hotel, a distance of about 2 miles.
16:41: Along the way we had a prolonged encounter with this deer, which allowed itself to be herded down the trail ahead of us for a few minutes before it finally got startled and ran off. We joked that it was our tour guide.
A couple of hours later, we sat down for dinner at the Snowgoose Grille, back at our home base of St. Mary Village. We both got bison burgers, $26 each and only OK.
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