The Savage Traveler: Out West Adventure: Part 2--East Glacier, Day 3

Fri. June 28: Today really felt like the last day of our trip in a lot of ways. While we had much to look forward to today, the drive home was going to be a slog. We wanted to take the 11:30 Ranger-led boat trip and hike to Upper Two Medicine Lake so we had plenty of time before hand. For the first time we walked with our coffee down to the end of the lake and enjoyed the view looking the length of it with the mountain we were calling The Matterhorn beyond it. While it was less windy than the last few days, it was still pretty cool with the breeze in our faces so after finishing our coffee we went back to the camper and made breakfast and packed up the camper. We were ready with time to spare but needed to use dump station, which was unfortunately being used by two women who seemed not to know what they were doing and had to empty their trailer’s water tank before refilling it, which all took a very, very long time. In fact, we started to get a little worried about time so I walked over to the boat dock and bought our tickets while Marv waited, took care of the camper and finally joined me, just in time to get aboard. We took one of the historic 89 year old launches that are on at least four of the bigger lakes in Glacier. It took about twenty minutes to go the length of Two Medicine Lake (There is also a Lower Two Medicine Lake so this one could have been called Middle) . Ranger Dan Hagan was very entertaining and knowledgeable. He had taught several years on the Blackfeet Reservation so his talk included many Blackfeet words and names for the mountains, animals and plants. His emphasis for the hike was on traditional medicinal uses of the plants as we hiked up 200+ft in elevation over the 2.2 miles up to the Upper Lake. He also showed us signs of animal activity along the way (but he missed the large pile of mountain lion scat on the side of the trail!) He sadly told us that in his last training session they had been told that experts now think that all the glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park by 2020.

Our first stop was at Twin Falls, a really beautiful pair of waterfalls tumbling down from the mountain we faced at the campsite.

Twin Falls

Right side of Twin Falls

After several other short stops for Dan to explain things to us we arrived at the beautiful glacier cirque lake. The shoreline was very steep around most of the lake but where our group accessed it, it was low and swampy. A few weeks ago Dan said it was over a foot deep and we wouldn’t have been able to get to the shoreline. There were places where the snow still came down to the water and lots of snow on the banks and the mountains surrounding the lake. We lingered about an hour there, eating our lunches and chatting and looking for wildlife. Some of the group saw a mother grizzly bear with two cubs far above us on the mountainside but Marv and I didn't see it. One man looking for grizzly saw some mountain goats, which Marv did see but I couldn’t find. Dan encouraged us to make our way back down the trail at our leisure so Marv and I went back a quarter of a mile or so to sit on a big rock in the sunshine and watch the beaver pond there for a moose but we didn't see any. As we continued descending I was scanning the peaks and near the top of one I saw a big mountain goat with a small one behind it. It’s amazing how they cling to the side of the rocky peaks!! The boat returned for us at 4:00 and we hopped into the truck at 4:30 to begin driving east and, ultimately, home to Michigan.

Avalanche snow mounds

Hiking with Ranger Dan

Upper Two Medicine Lake

Another view of Upper Two Medicine Lake

The two white dots just up and left of center are my Mountain Goats

Our historic launch

For tonight we drove only about an hour to Cut Bank, where we met Aaron at an RV Park high above the Cut Bank River, where he had already been swimming. After quickly setting up the camper we drove him to the Big Sky Café in town, where we all had a big dinner. We were back at the campsite in time to watch the sunset, eventually all going in our camper to get away from the mosquitoes. There was quite a good firework display to the west from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation that we were able to enjoy. We stayed up longer than we should have sharing stories of our travels. It was really good to see him and know how well he was doing and hearing about the interesting people he had run into on his way to Seattle by bike.