Glacier National Park Backpacking/Camping Trip Day6 and 7

Grinnel Glacier

Bighorn Sheep

On day 6, we did a day hike. We hiked to Grinnel Glacier. On the way to the glacier, we saw a lot of bighorn sheep. It was my first time seeing them. They were calm and standing on the cliff. They ate plants, but didn't move a lot. They were cool and cute.

Grinnel glacier was amazing. Hundreds of pieces of glacier were scattered in the turquoise-colored lake. I had never been able to imagine this kind of scenery. The water was really cold, of course. In the back, there was the Garden Wall and falls were running into the lake. We saw the other side of the Garden Wall yesterday. According to my friend, the lake was all glacier in old days. Apparently, glaciers are getting smaller and smaller and will eventually disappear, maybe in the near future.

 

Day6 was a big hike day. We hiked 22 miles including the 8-mile off-trail portion.

We had to get up at 1:30 a.m., so we went to bed 9 p.m. the day before. However, I couldn't fall asleep until 11 p.m. because other people at the campground were still talking and my tent was too hot inside.

Anyway we started hiking before dawn. The air was cool and crispy. It was nice to see the scenery emerging by getting sunlight gradually.

The off-trail section was amazing. We hiked right under the gigantic glacier and sometimes walked on the glacier. The view was so colorful. There were purple, green, brown, and gray rocks. The lakes were blue, green, and non-transparent white. The minerals in the glacier made the scenery dynamic. It was stunning.

I was much more comfortable with the off-trail region because we did more hardcore off-trail in the firsf half. 

I thought, "Wait, is that Mr.N's strategy to get used to the undesignated area?"

The last one-third of the hike was on trail, but we got a thunderstorm. Clouds made the view mysterious and pretty, but we hiked fast so we would not be completely soaked. 

The hike took us 14 hours, but it was definitely an epic hike.