The Grinnell Lake and Glacier hikes

Grinnell Lake--the turquoise color is visible as a strip on the top
see all photos »

After completing the Going to the Sun Road drive, we relocated northward to the Many Glacier area of the park.  We stayed at the Swift Current Motor Inn, which was not much to look at, but was ideally located for our hikes.

This morning we took the lazy man's tour to Grinnell Lake by using tour boats launching from the nearby Many Glacier Hotel.  Two boats ferried us up two small lakes to the starting point of the Grinnell Lake Trail.  A park ranger was leading this hike but when it became clear that nearly everyone on the boat (about 30 people) were also going, we started out on our own to avoid the crowd.  The hike was easy and boring, going through the forest on a level path to the lake.  Grinnell Lake receives water directly from the Grinnell Glacier and has the distinctive turquoise blue color due to glacial milk, fine mineral suspension, from the glacier runoff.  From ground level this coloration was not overly impressive, however.

Near the start of the Grinnell Glacier Trail
see all photos »

As we started back we saw the sign for the Grinnell Glacier Trail.  The Grinnell Glacier Trail was closed due to heavy snow drifts in the upper reaches and was not scheduled for clearing until the middle of July. We decided to hike up as far as we could go and we were rewarded with the most scenic hike at the park.  We climbed high above the valley and had incredible views of the valley, the Grinnell Lake, and the surrounding mountains.