4 Days in Glacier National Park: A Day-by-Day Journal
Day 1: West Side — Lake McDonald and the Road
Flew into Kalispell, picked up a rental (the cheapest SUV they had — you want clearance for some park roads). Drove 30 minutes to the West Entrance. $35 entry, valid for a week.
First stop: Lake McDonald. Parked at Apgar Village and walked to the shore. The famous colored rocks — red, green, blue, purple — are real. Not filtered, not enhanced. Actual geological layers of argillite and quartzite tumbled smooth by glacial rivers. The lake was mirror-calm at 8AM. Mountain reflections perfect. I stood there for 20 minutes doing nothing but looking.
Drove Going-to-the-Sun Road eastbound. Had a 7AM vehicle reservation ($2, booked months ago on recreation.gov). The road climbs 1,000 meters in a series of switchbacks carved into cliff faces, some with no guardrails. At one point, a mountain goat was standing on the road and my car was maybe 6 feet from a 300-meter drop. I gripped the wheel so hard my knuckles went white.
Stopped at Bird Woman Falls overlook, The Loop (spectacular mountain panorama), and Logan Pass. Arrived at 9:30AM — the small parking lot was already full but I squeezed in behind a tour bus.
Did the Hidden Lake Overlook trail from Logan Pass. 4.5km boardwalk, moderate, 2 hours. Mountain goats within 10 meters of the trail, completely indifferent to hikers. The view at the overlook — Hidden Lake framed by Bearhat Mountain — stopped me in my tracks.
Drove the remaining road to St. Mary. The whole crossing took 4 hours with stops. Checked into a motel in St. Mary ($140/night) and fell asleep at 8PM.
Day 2: Many Glacier — Grinnell Glacier Trail
Drove to Many Glacier (45 min from St. Mary, beautiful drive). Started the Grinnell Glacier trail at 7AM from the Many Glacier Hotel parking lot. Bear spray clipped to my waist.
11.2km round trip. Strenuous. The trail passes Swiftcurrent Lake, then Lake Josephine (turquoise, absurd), climbs through wildflower meadows, traverses a cliff face with views of the entire valley, and arrives at Upper Grinnell Lake — a milky aquamarine pool at the foot of the glacier itself.
The glacier is smaller than I expected. It's a remnant, visibly shrinking. Signs along the trail show its extent in 1966, 1998, 2015. The retreat is dramatic and measurable.
I don't know why, but standing at that lake at 2,200 meters, looking at ice that's been there for thousands of years and won't be there in ten, made me tear up. Something about impermanence, I think. Or maybe the altitude.
Back at Many Glacier Hotel by 3PM, legs destroyed. Saw a grizzly sow with two cubs on the hillside near the hotel — maybe 200 meters away, grazing in the meadow. Watched through binoculars for 20 minutes. The cubs wrestled. The mom ignored them.
Day 3: Highline Trail — The One With the Cable
This was the hike people warned me about. The Highline Trail starts at Logan Pass and the first kilometer has cable handholds bolted into the cliff face because the trail is carved into the Garden Wall — a sheer ridge with a several-hundred-meter drop to your right.
I grabbed the cable. I did not look down. My hiking partner (a guy from Colorado I'd met at the hotel) looked down and said a word I won't print here.
After that first terrifying kilometer, the trail mellows into one of the most beautiful walks in America. 18.8km of alpine meadows, wildflowers, and bighorn sheep grazing on impossibly steep slopes. The Garden Wall towers above you. The valley drops away below. The colors — green grass, grey rock, blue sky — feel oversaturated even though they're not.
We ended at The Loop on Going-to-the-Sun Road and took the free park shuttle back to Logan Pass. Total time: 7 hours including lunch.
Day 4: Two Medicine and Departure
Drove south to Two Medicine Valley — the park's quietest corner, sacred to the Blackfeet Nation. Took the boat tour across Two Medicine Lake ($15, 45 minutes) and hiked to Twin Falls (3km, easy). Running Eagle Falls — a "trick falls" where water flows both over AND through the cliff — was worth the 10-minute walk.
The solitude here was the opposite of Many Glacier's spectacle. No crowds, no tour buses. Just water, rock, and the kind of quiet that makes your ears ring.
Drove back to Kalispell for my flight. Listened to nothing on the drive. After four days of Glacier, music felt intrusive.
Would I Go Back?
Already booked. September this time, for the larch season. The Drakensberg had the wildest hiking, Glacier has the most heartbreaking beauty.
