Avalanche Lake
Since my dad and I couldn't go our planned route (Highline Trail to Granite Park Chalet to Swiftcurrent Pass down back to Many Glacier) due to trail closure, we instead all drove over Logan Pass and did things on the west side of the park. We walked the Trail of the Cedars, which reminded me of Olympic National Forest with how humid and lush it was.
From there, we also hiked down to Avalanche Lake. There were nice waterfalls and the lake itself was pretty. After that, we drove down to Apgar Village at the foot of Lake McDonald and looked at that lake as well. All in all, it was an easy day and a good way to recover a little.
The ranger program that evening was on climate change, a tough talk to make to people on vacation, I think. Ranger Monica was a UW-Madison alumna who I think overlapped with me, and she did an excellent job. I learned that the glaciers we know in the park all formed recently, during the little ice age (the huge ancient ones that carved everything were during the Pleistocene). So while it isn't surprising that they're melting, it is bad that they're melting so fast -- we would not expect them to be gone before the end of the century without human influence, and it looks now like they'll be gone in 5 or 10 years.
From there, we also hiked down to Avalanche Lake. There were nice waterfalls and the lake itself was pretty. After that, we drove down to Apgar Village at the foot of Lake McDonald and looked at that lake as well. All in all, it was an easy day and a good way to recover a little.
The ranger program that evening was on climate change, a tough talk to make to people on vacation, I think. Ranger Monica was a UW-Madison alumna who I think overlapped with me, and she did an excellent job. I learned that the glaciers we know in the park all formed recently, during the little ice age (the huge ancient ones that carved everything were during the Pleistocene). So while it isn't surprising that they're melting, it is bad that they're melting so fast -- we would not expect them to be gone before the end of the century without human influence, and it looks now like they'll be gone in 5 or 10 years.