Travel ideas often come out of day-to-day ‘trash’ – a freeze-frame with an unusual landscape from a film, images of strange city from a glossy magazine, a National Geographic film seen on a plane, discussions with a random travel-companion.
The desire to go to the Canadian province of British Columbia came about after a conversation with a Norwegian man, who spent 2 weeks going around the rivers and lakes of BC in a kayak. He was convinced that he had never seen landscapes that beautiful in his life.
To hear those words from the mouth of an inhabitant of one of the most beautiful countries in Europe, if not the world, means a lot.
We also wanted to add a visit to Glacier National Park in the north-west of the USA to our route, which we had driven past but didn’t get to go into due to a lack of time in May of the previous year, when we hurried from Yellowstone National Park through Montana to Olympic NP.
Glacier National Park, the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia is really a very, very worthy place to spend 2-3 weeks of vacation in a diverse, not boring, comfortable and surrounded by very beautiful mountain panoramas.
Our route was like this: Fly into Seattle (1 day), road to Glacier NP (1 day), 2 days in the park (St. Mary), cross over to Canada to Waterton NP, Fairmont Hot Spring (1 day), Yoho NP (2 days), Banff (2 days), Icefields Parkway, the road between Revelstoke towards Vancouver (1 day), ferry from Tsawwassen to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, Tofino (2 days), Vancouver.
Trip duration: from the 27th of August to the 10th of September 2014.
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
We set aside 2 days to get to know the park.
Because we stopped overnight near the West Entrance of the park we managed to get an early start down the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road, before the tourist traffic. The road, with a length of almost 50 miles, goes along the shores of two big lakes (Lake McDonald in the west and St. Mary Lake in the east) and reaches its highest point at Logan Pass (2025m). There are parking lots along the road, from which a variety of trails start, including both half-an-hour family walks to a waterfall and multi-hour hikes to the tops of the surrounding mountains.
There are warnings in all the parking lots about how here tourists are in bear territory, so during the hike you need to talk loudly and clap your hands, letting the bears know of your presence. It’s also desirable to carry special bear spray with you and to know how to use it in case of aggressive behaviour from a bear. The spray is sold everywhere and costs about 30 dollars, and often has a special case attached to it so you can carry it on your belt.
It was clear to us that we’d ended up in bear land straight away – on the first day we saw 5 bears. Grizzlies wander around the park, as do black bears (the colour of their pelt doesn’t differ, on the whole it’s actually their silhouette: grizzlies can be black too, but they’re stronger, and they have round ears and a clearly defined scruff. They can be very aggressive). Their black brethren are smaller, have long pointy ears, are easier to scare off and they prefer not to get into fights with those creatures that walk on only two legs.
We saw these cubs near the road.
Remembering the instructions from two years ago about the what to do in case you met a brown bear in Katmai National Park in Alaska (don’t run, slowly walk away from ITS path, backing away, in case of an attack try to show that you’re not easy prey, for example, by climbing up a tree etcetera) we loaded up on spray and cheerfully ran to have a look round the park. From a number of short treks we chose the two most scenic ones, one of which was Hidden Lake Overlook (parking at Logan pass, where about a million people park, and after 10 in the morning there’s basically no space because so many treks start here).
This route ended up being the quintessence of an ideal walk through the mountains – beautiful panoramic views, flowery meadows, and abundance of animals at arms length. Naturally, because of this didn’t feel lonely there.
The second trail was to the waterfalls, St Mary Falls and St Virginia Falls.
At the start of the route we came across a grizzly straight away, but he didn’t pay any attention to us and climbed into a bush to gorge on some blueberries. As a result the first half of the route was spent on high alert, but the situation later deescalated.
On the second day it was decided that we should become acquainted with the part of the park around Many Glacier and go on one of the best one-day hikes in the park – Swiftcurrent Pass Hike.
On the road to Many Glacier
This trail starts from the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn parking lot and goes through the scenic waterfalls Redrock Falls and Bullhead Lake to the top of the high mountain pass and back again.
We only got partly lucky with the weather that day – it was partly cloudy and a couple of times it tried to rain or hail, so I decided to only go as far as the waterfalls, but my husband wanted to go all the way to the mountain pass. For this he was rewarded with a meeting with a bear, practically tête-à-tête, on the narrow mountain path. The two high parties safely came to a consensus – my husband cleared the road, climbing up the mountain. The bear did the same, and climbed even higher.
From the top you get a view of the 6 lakes, the peaks of the nearby mountains and of the glacier.
The next day, early in the morning, we were treated to an amazing rainbow that practically spanned the entire horizon. The rainbow was so bright that it looked as if it had been painted with a brush right onto the sky, not with watercolours but with oils. Unfortunately, the dense texture of the colour doesn’t come across in the photo.
The park waking up.
It was time for us to head over to Waterton NP. The road there went through a place, which was romantically called ‘Where the prairie meets the mountains’. And actually, the contrast between the landscapes is fascinating.
Going through border control at the Chief Mountain International Highway post (open only in the summer season), we found ourselves on Canadian territory.
You find Part 2 about Canada here: Through Glacier National Park (North-Western USA) to the Canadian Rocky Mountains Part 2
