I got some good sleep last night and cereal with Huckleberry on top which was excellent. I left the house around 8 and made it to West Glacier by 8:45. It was 32 miles to the top of the pass and the final 12 were the hardest. The park also doesn’t like bikers on the road to the pass between 11 and 4 because they slow down traffic. I did the first 20 miles by 10 and hoped to get to the top a little after 11. I tried not to stop much for the first 20 miles since I was pressed for time and I knew I would be leaving the same route I came in. It was really tough though. It was some of the hardest climbing of the trip probably. There was only 1 switchback but the road wound in and out of the mountainside on the way up with a cliff on the other side. It wasn’t much fun with the motorists on one side and the 2000 foot cliff on the other. The view during the climb was spectacular though. It was probably the most amazing road I’ve been on including the Amalfi Coast in Italy and the Champs Elysees in Paris. There were waterfalls/rivers running down the mountains in nearly all directions. They would run right under the road most of the time and sometimes right onto it.
I reached the top around 11:45 and took a break to eat some Pringles. The view from the top of Logan Pass was pretty amazing. Next I decided to walk to Hidden Lake. It’s a 3 mile hike from the visitor center at the pass to the lake. Along the way I saw some mountain goats up close and big horn sheep from a little further away. Hidden Lake was awesome. I almost stopped at the overlook after 1.5 miles but am definitely glad I went all the way to the lake. The water was so blue and crystal clear from the silt brought down by the glaciers. The lake reflected the surrounding mountains perfectly. It was incredible. The walk back up was pretty steep with a bunch of switched and I saw a few families with little kids and thought how though it would be with 8 year olds like one family. On the walk back I got a good view of some big horns that were crossing the path and forced people going in both directions to stop and wait for them. The flowers at the top of the pass were amazing too.
The ride down the east side of the pass was fun but too steep and narrow to really look around. I hoped to camp at the east entrance and go to Canada the next day but I learned that getting into Canada isn’t hard but getting back to the US without a passport is a big hassle and since I wasn’t planning on coming up here I didn’t have my passport. There were two other guys at the camp when I got there. Gary was on a bike trip and had ridden his bike over 27,000 miles over the last 4 years and put another 2500 this summer. He was a really interesting guy and had ridden most of the Adventure Cycling trails. I never got the other guys name but he looked like a Tom so that’s what I’ll call him. Tom was hiking through Glacier but couldn’t get the trail he wanted and seemed to complain about everything. Gary and I talked for a while about the places he had ridden and such. I picked up some more bread from the grocery store and had some PB for dinner.
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