We recently joined my dad’s side of the family in Whitefish, Montana for a family reunion to Glacier National Park. I’ll share more about the overall trip later, but wanted to feature the highlight of the trip first.
Like most trips, I had developed a full itinerary of lakes to visit, hikes, both basic and intermediate and couldn’t wait to do them all. Unfortunately, I had sprained my foot days prior while biking in Vancouver, so what was supposed to be a flat four-mile hike one-way to Grinnell Lake was the perfect choice.
While researching the best hikes, the photography of this lake really caught my eye. The bright blue water was stunning and reminded me of Lake Louise in Banff, a place I’ve been wanting to go for a while. For that reason, all photos in this post are unfiltered and unretouched, because the surroundings were that incredible.
Since we were staying in Whitefish, the below is how we made our way to East Glacier for the hike in late July.
We took the “Going-to-the-Sun” Road (a must do) over to East Glacier, passing the Jackson Glacier Overlook and Wild Goose Island and stopping for photos along the way. (I’ll post details on both of those in a later post.)
The beginning of our four-mile hike started at the Many Glacier Hotel (above), which is located on Swiftcurrent Lake in East Glacier. They offer shuttles across the lake (and the next lake, Lake Josephine) to cut 3.4 miles off the trip a few times a day, but they’re pretty limited and you have to reserve your spot in advance. With a large group like ours, it was hard to plan what the days would look like, so we opted to hike around the lakes.
Both Swiftcurrent and Josephine are beautiful, so I’m glad we decided to hike around them, offering plenty of stops for photos on a perfectly clear day. While stopping for breaks, we managed to lose track of the majority of our group and when the terrain started going up around Lake Josephine, we thought nothing of it and kept heading towards our destination, Grinnell Lake.
We arrived to the perfect lookout of the lake, asking someone we’d seen on the trail how far we’d come. Four miles, he said, but we couldn’t find our group anywhere. They must have kept going, we told ourselves, and we’ll run into them eventually.
I had read plenty about the Grinnell Glacier, but the hike there seemed too advanced for our group, so we had opted to only hike to the lake. Assuming the group was ahead of us and down for the challenge, we kept hiking.
While the hike has an elevation gain of over 2,000 feet, it’s gradual so the incline doesn’t feel strenuous. And the views are spectacular, so you’ll find yourself stopping for rest breaks often to enjoy the surroundings. Like looking back at the three lakes you hiked around (in the above).
A few miles later, we finally made it to the glacier, which was one of the most rewarding experiences—the glacier melts into a small lake, which then feeds into the Grinnell Lake through a waterfall.
After being unable to spot our group, we sat at the base of the water for half an hour, grabbing a snack, refilling our water bottles with the glacier water and resting after the three-hour hike up the mountain.
The four of us (Kevin, myself, my mom and a family friend) decided to head back down the mountain, assuming something must have happened to the rest of our group. Two hours later, we arrived back to the hotel to see our group reporting us missing to the local park rangers.
In my extensive research of this hike, I had only seen pictures from the top of the mountain, not the base of the lake. Early on, the other group took the path to the left, while we took the path to the right, heading to the incline around Lake Josephine. The rest of our group had only hiked to the base of Grinnell Lake.
While we hadn’t intended on completing a five-hour, 10-mile hike, it was my absolute favorite part of the trip. Even on a healing sprained foot, adrenaline is a crazy thing when you’re distracted by the views and hell bent on catching up with the group.
I couldn’t recommend this hike more and hope that you’ll fit it into your itinerary if you’re ever visiting Glacier National Park.
Layers, sunscreen and water were incredibly important on this one, so here is what I wore and brought on the hike:
What I’m Wearing: sweatshirt, leggings and crop (old) similar, tee (old) similar, shoes
What We Packed: lightweight backpack, water bottle, bug guard, travel medical kit, sunscreen and granola bars