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The Big Outside Ultimate Guide to Glacier’s Northern Loop Glacier National Park © 2018 Michael Lanza All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying or other electronic, digital, or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at the address below. Michael Lanza/The Big Outside 921 W. Resseguie St. Boise, ID 83702 TheBigOutside.com Hiking and backpacking is a personal choice and requires that YOU understand that you are personally responsible for any actions you may take based on the information in this e-guide. Using any information in this e-guide is your own personal responsibility. Hiking and associated trail activities can be dangerous and can result in injury and/or death. Hiking exposes you to risks, especially in the wilderness, including but not limited to: • Weather conditions such as flash floods, wind, rain, snow and lightning; • Hazardous plants or wild animals; • Your own physical condition, or your own acts or omissions; • Conditions of roads, trails, or terrain; • Accidents and injuries occurring while traveling to or from the hiking areas; • The remoteness of the hiking areas, which may delay rescue and medical treatment; • The distance of the hiking areas from emergency medical facilities and law enforcement personnel. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE PURSUANT TO APPLICABLE LAW, NEITHER MICHAEL LANZA NOR THE BIG OUTSIDE, THEIR AFFILIATES, FAMILY AND FORMER AND CURRENT EMPLOYERS, NOR ANY OTHER PARTY INVOLVED IN CREATING, PRODUCING OR DELIVERING THIS E-GUIDE IS LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF A USER’S ACCESS TO, OR USE OF THIS E-GUIDE. Cover photo: Backpackers descending the Piegan Pass Trail below the Garden Wall in Glacier National Park. Frontispiece photo: A backpacker on the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier. Dear Reader, Congratulations, you have just downloaded my guide to backpacking Glacier National Park’s classic Northern Loop. When I did it, I customized the trip to hit some of Glacier’s best scenery, including the entire Highline Trail, the Many Glacier area, Piegan Pass and Stoney Indian Pass, the Ptarmigan Wall and Tunnel, and some of the park’s finest lakes and most-remote wilderness. (This photo of me with a Glacier local was taken on this visit.) If you’re looking for the ultimate, long backpacking trip in Glacier, this is arguably the single best one to take. In responding to innumerable questions from readers planning a trip they read about at my blog—and, of course, through many years of planning my own trips—I’ve acquired a strong sense of what information people like you are looking for. I believe you simply want to know what a trip is like, and how to pull it off successfully and safely in a way that allows you to customize the trip to suit your party’s style of backcountry travel. Whether a family outing or a group of friends, complete beginners or hard-core experts, this e-guide will clarify what you must do to properly prepare for this trip. CLICK HERE NOW for a full menu of my e-guides at The Big Outside. In the pages that follow, I will describe this trip’s character and highlights, and provide details on its total distance and elevation gain and loss, difficulty, and the degree of solitude you can expect to find along it during the peak season. I will give you extensive advice in Section 1 on how to plan this trip, including tips about seasons, getting a permit, travel logistics, gear, and what you need to know regarding safety and other issues specific to this trip. And finally, in Section 2, I give you my expert guidance on how to execute this trip, including primary and alternative hiking itineraries. A few points: • I don’t rate trips for quality or scenery. Instead of a dry, numerical rating, this e- guide will describe for you the trip’s unique character. Plus, every trip that I’ve created an e-guide for is excellent and highly recommendable, period. • I don’t provide GPS waypoints or tell you precisely where to take photos or pitch your tent every night, because I believe that excessive hand-holding sucks the mystery out of the wilderness and robs you of the joy of discovery. Instead, this e- guide suggests itineraries and, in general, the best camping areas and other highlights, with enough specific tips on how to maximize enjoyment and safety. • I’m a big believer that much of the success of any outdoor adventure is determined before you leave home, so you’ll find abundant information in Section 1: Planning the Trip. • Please be aware of and always follow low-impact backpacking guidelines; learn about them at lnt.org. They ensure that we all have as pristine a wilderness experience as possible. Also, respect park regulations, they exist for good reasons. • Hold down your keyboard’s Control key when clicking on hyperlinks in this e- guide, and the link will open in a new window. If you don’t hold down the Control key, any link will open in the same window. (You could then click the back arrow in the upper left to return to the e-guide.) Alternatively, open this e- guide twice, to have one copy constantly open while clicking on hyperlinks in the second copy to view them, and using the browser’s back arrow to return to this e- guide and open other links in the second window. • If you find any inaccuracies or typos in this e-guide, I hope you will email me at [email protected] to point it out to me so that I can correct it. • Lastly, you have purchased one electronic copy of this e-guide for your personal use only. I retain all rights to its content, and I ask you to respect my legal rights and not distribute it by any means or for any purpose, including for profit. Thanks again for purchasing this e-guide. I hope it helps make your backpacking trip on Glacier’s Northern Loop very special. If you would like personalized trip- planning help, or you have questions about how to safely and successfully pull off any trip, I would be happy to talk to you on the phone or communicate via email about this or any trip I’ve written about at my blog. See my blog’s Ask Me page for more details. Please be sure to follow my stories about my adventures at The Big Outside. Have fun and be safe out there, Michael Lanza Creator of The Big Outside A backpacker descending into the Belly River Valley in Glacier. Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop Location: North of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park, Montana Primary Route: 65.1 miles/104.8 km Approximate Cumulative Elevation Gain and Loss (primary route): 20,150 feet/6,142 meters Difficulty for the primary route, on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest) 3—With generally well-graded and well-maintained trails, most of the hiking is moderately strenuous, with a few sections that are strenuous. There’s a possibility of severe weather like thunderstorms and snowfall and temperatures dropping below freezing even in summer, as well as encounters with potentially dangerous wildlife like grizzly bears. But this trip poses no extraordinary navigational or other challenges. Good fitness and intermediate-level backpacking skills and experience recommended, including knowledge in staying safe in bear country. See the Need to Know section below for specific details. Overview For backpackers, Glacier National Park embodies our highest aspirations. The peaks here possess a character unlike elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains or even in the country. Jagged, vertiginous walls of rock slash like meat cleavers into the sky, high above deep, green valleys carved in perfect half-pipe symmetry by ancient ice. Waterfalls plunge over cliffs and tumble down endless cascades. Blankets of crack-riddled ice plaster mountainsides. But even more unique than the breathtaking scenery, Glacier comprises raw, primal wilderness, where a range of wildlife long gone from most of the continent thrives in shocking abundance. Backpacking here—and especially along this route—you are likely to encounter mountain goats, bighorn sheep, possibly moose, and maybe even some black or grizzly bears. At the least, you will come upon signs of large wildlife, like piles of steaming, recently deposited scat, a reminder that those big critters often lurk nearby, aware of our presence even if we remain unaware of them. Knowing you are walking through a park that wild, which sprawls over more than one million acres, sets the tone for an adventure quite unlike anything you’ll find anywhere else in the contiguous United States. Two friends and I were blown away by this 65-mile, five- to six-day hike north of Glacier’s Going-to-the-Sun Road from the moment we reached Piegan Pass on day one until we walked the last steps up to Logan Pass on this hike’s final day. It isn’t actually a complete loop. It begins at Siyeh Bend, minutes east of Logan Pass via the park’s free shuttle bus, both to avoid backtracking any sections of trail, and to launch the trip with the hike over mind-blowing Piegan Pass and the descent below the Garden Wall into the Cataract Creek Valley and the Many Glacier area.