Glacier National Park – Part 7

Our destination for today’s hike Grinnell Lake

For July 20th we picked the hike to Grinnell Lake in the Many Glacier area of Glacier National Park as our hike of the day. This hike begins at the Many Glacier Hotel.

Like all of the Grand Hotels in the western national parks Many Glacier Hotel was built by a railroad. The Great Northern Railroad had the hotel built between 1914 and 1917 by several hundred men in a Swiss Style on the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake.

The interior of the Many Glacier Hotel.

The hike to Grinnell Lake begins with two boat trips. One across Swiftcurrent Lake and the second one after a quarter mile “portage” across Josephine Lake.

The scenery is magnificent during the entire trip.

Loading the boat for our trip across Josephine Lake.

Once across the two lakes our hike followed the heavily forested slop seen at the far left of the above picture.

Bear Grass in bloom along the trail.

Suspension bridge across a creek on the way to Grinnell Lake.

First view of the cascade and falls dropping into Grinnell Lake. The water comes from the Grinnell Glacier that unfortunately can not be seen from the valley floor.

Grinnell Lake has that beautiful turquoise green of the sky reflecting off of the very fine glacial dust that is suspended in the water of rivers and lakes fed by glaciers.

 

Closer views of Grinnell Falls

There is a trail to Grinnell Glacier somewhere on this slope!

After lunch at this beautiful site we started back to catch our boats.

The boat returning for us on Josephine Lake

The boat returning for us across Swiftcurrent Lake.

A view of Many Glacier Hotel from lake level.

As you can tell from the pictures we had wonderful weather all day.

There are still more picture on the slideshow