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Glacier National Park East (and the Going to the Sun Road Finally Opens!)

November 6, 2023 by kokotg Leave a Comment

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travel dates: July 2022

Dave and Gretchen in front of Glacier sign

After seeing the western side of Glacier National Park, we made our way east still not knowing for sure when the Going to the Sun Road was going to open. Rumors were swirling, but all the rangers we encountered steadfastly refused to verify the rumors. The road ended up opening on July 13, but the evening of July 12, no one would say for sure if it was really going to happen. I have to say, not even being able to get twelve hours notice of the opening date for the park’s biggest attraction, in a park where many things need to be booked months in advance, makes things a little tricky. Surely there’s a better way to handle it.

We had three nights/two full days on the eastern side of Glacier, and our plan was to have already driven the Going to the Sun Road by the time we got there and to spend one day in the Two Medicine area and one day in the Many Glacier area. But the late road opening forced us to shuffle things around. We had booked a boat tour in Two Medicine months in advance, so that day couldn’t be changed without being out the money. We had originally been hoping to do the Grinnell Glacier hike in the Many Glacier are, but it was still closed when we were there and we’d run into all kinds of problems trying to figure out what to do with the dogs while we hiked it anyway (long story short: we’d be gone too long to leave the dogs behind in the trailer, and the only option we could find for dog boarding was very expensive day boarding at the KOA, and we didn’t think we’d make it back in time to pick up the dogs from there anyway). So! Our days ended up being Two Medicine on the 13th and the road on the 14th.

Visitor Center

The visitor centers at Glacier are not the big, sprawling affairs that you’ll find at Yellowstone or some other National Parks. The St. Mary’s one is the biggest one, but that’s not saying much: it has a movie and an exhibit on Native American connections to the area, and that’s pretty much it aside from the usual gift shop and information desk. But this is also where there’s a large parking lot where you can park to catch the shuttle for the Going to the Sun Road. More on that later. Anyway, we stopped here in the evening on the day we moved from west to east. In this same general area you’ll find St. Mary’s Campground, where we attended a ranger talk one evening.

St Mary Visitor Center, Glacier

kids checking out exhibits in St. Mary's Visitor Center

Going to the Sun Road

view of snow and Logan pass

Going to the Sun Road is a complicated proposition even if you’re not there when the road has a historically late opening date. But we were. And, by the time the road opened, the vehicle pass that I had been careful to acquire months in advance had expired. So we couldn’t drive the road ourselves at all. The good news was that we had pretty much decided we didn’t want to drive ourselves anyway. The road is steep and winding and narrow, with a good many drop offs…driving it in our own van would have meant Dave driving and not getting to look at things while I panicked in the passenger seat, occasionally barking at him to keep his eyes on the road when I couldn’t help myself anymore. I.e. not a lot of fun. So we opted for the shuttle.

Going to the Sun road shuttle

I will add my disclaimer again here that Glacier tinkers constantly with the park reservation system and the shuttle buses and all of that, so our experience in July of 2022 likely won’t match your experience…whenever that is. But for us, it was great that we were on the east side of the park at this point, because you could park at the St. Mary’s Visitor Center and catch the shuttle without a vehicle reservation there, whereas you had to have one to get as far at the Apgar Visitor Center on the west side.

I had done my research! I knew that there was an express shuttle straight to Logan Pass that only ran in the early mornings and that the first one left at 8. We dutifully made it there by 7:45 and…that wasn’t early enough. The express shuttles only held 12, so it didn’t take many groups ahead of us to mean we wouldn’t get on the first one. Or the second one. We ended up not leaving until 8:45 (which was, I believe the last express shuttle). This was also only the second day the road was open, so there was a lot of disorganization going on still and misinformation flying about. But at 8:45 we were finally on our way!

view out of shuttle window in Glacier

I think the shuttle was a great choice. There are other options besides driving yourself, like the Red Bus tours …but those are expensive and fill up well in advance. They look very cool, but you get the same views for free from the shuttles.

Red Bus in Glacier

Since we had already been as far as Avalanche Lake on the west side shuttle, we didn’t do the entire road on this day. We got off at Logan Pass and transferred to another shuttle that took us to the Loop. I think this got us most of the great scenery but saved us a good bit of time (the area between Logan Pass and the Loop has a lot amazing views and a lot of the stuff that looks particularly harrowing on the map). At the Loop stop we checked out the views and then got back on the shuttle to go back to Logan Pass. This was the only place where crowds were much of an issue with the shuttle (well, except for the very beginning, I guess): the first shuttle was nearly full, so we ended up splitting up and meeting back up at Logan Pass. It turned out the next shuttle was completely empty, so Dave and Milo, who waited for that one, had it all to themselves, AND they saw a bear. Boo! Oh well. At any rate, we all met back up at Logan Pass and checked out the small visitor center there and ate a picnic lunch.

kids at Logan Pass

From there we probably would have done the Hidden Lake Hike, except it looked like this:

snow behind Logan Pass visitor center

At least part of the trail was technically open, and there were people walking it…but it looked extremely tricky and slippery. But Abe was very excited to finally get up close and personal with all that snow that had been making Glacier logistics so tricky for us.

kids in July snow at Glacier Abe in the snow at Logan Pass

We spent awhile admiring all the prettiness and visiting some bighorn sheep:

bighorn sheep at Logan Pass

With no Hidden Lake hike to fill our time, we opted for the St. Mary Falls hike (at the shuttle stop of the same name), and this was an excellent alternative! We loved this hike!

beginning of St. Mary Falls Hike

You reach St. Mary Falls at less than a mile:

St Mary Falls, glacier

people looking at St. Mary Falls

But I very highly recommend continuing to the end of the trail, at Virginia Falls, which is even more impressive, and will make your total roundtrip hike about 3 miles.

hiking to Virginia Falls

On the way you pass another waterfall, which doesn’t even get a mention in the name of the trail, because I guess they have so much awesome stuff at Glacier they ran out of names for them.

Milo at unnamed waterfall in Glacier

The last push to Virginia Falls is pretty steep, but definitely worth the climb:

kids in front of Virginia Falls Dave looking at Virginia Falls

Overall, it’s a very doable hike, but there are some steep places…and the part at the very end, where you’re feeling very ready to be done and get back on a shuttle bus, feels a lot steeper than it really is.

But we finally made it and grabbed a shuttle back to St. Mary’s…all together we were gone around 7 hours, even with that lost hour waiting for the shuttle in the morning.

Two Medicine

There are a number of different tours, boat rides, etc. that one can book in advance at Glacier; the one at Two Medicine seems to be one of the cheaper ones and one of the later ones to fill up, so we went with it. Two Medicine is in the southeast part of the park, about a 45 minute drive from the St. Mary’s area where we were staying. There’s a campground there, a small store/snack bar, Two Medicine Lake, and a number of hikes, waterfalls, etc. It’s lovely, and a quieter part of the park for when you want a break from the crowds (although it’s not empty by any means, at least not in July). The boat tour of Two Medicine Lake  is run by concessionaire Glacier Park Boat Company and is around $20 for adults and $10 for kids up to 12. There’s a 45 minute narrated trip across the lake and then, a few times a day, an optional guided hike to Twin Falls (about 2 miles round trip).

boarding the boat at Two Medicine

The boat, the Sinopah, was built in 1926–“the oldest wooden boat in our fleet”–which always makes me nervous, but it did not sink. Our tour guides, who both captained the boat and narrated the tour, seemed very young and not super experienced at boating…but still the boat did not sink! The tour narration focuses largely on Blackfeet stories and history of the area.

ABe on boat

You can do the hike on your own if you don’t hit one of the guided hike times, but we liked the guided experience, both because we were told there was a lot of recent bear activity on the trail and because our guide, Claire, knew an awful lot about the plants we saw along the way. This is Beargrass, for example, and word is we were lucky to be there during a year when it was blooming in abundance (which doesn’t happen every year):

beargrass at glacier

The hike itself is an easy, pleasant one, with a big payoff at the end in the form of…twin waterfalls, as the name implies. Claire also pointed out American Dippers–“”North America’s only truly aquatic songbird”–nesting in the rocks:

Twin Falls at Glacier

kids walking over bridge in Glacier

One sad part is that the boat can fill up on the way back, and you might have to wait for it to come back for you. This happened to us, and it was long wait without much to do…but we did chat with some of the other people stuck waiting, so we persevered. Oh, ALSO, the only reason we didn’t make it on the first boat is that some people ignored the fact that there was clearly a line and went in front of us. They suck. Don’t be those people.

Goodbye, boat!

Two Medicine boat leaving without us

As we were leaving Two Medicine, there was a steady drizzle that occasionally accelerated to true rain, but we decided to make a quick, wet stop at Running Eagle Falls, where there’s a short trail to a lovely waterfall:

Running Eagle Falls

And so ended our time at Glacier! Which was very sad, but we still had a few great stops ahead of us. Eventually I’ll finish blogging about them!

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Things to do in Glacier National Park, eastern side, with kids and teens

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: 2022 Mountains, hiking, national parks

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