Many Glacier in Springtime glory; Shaw Butte's big toe

 

Some bighorn ewes we encountered

This will have to do for my 77th birthday photo on Lake Josephine

We were lucky to encounter a mother moose and yearling grazing near the roadway

Looking out across Swiftcurrent Lake toward Grinnell Point

During the height. of tourist season Glacier National Park has become a congested nightmare.

The worst nightmare is the Many Glacier valley.

Luckily for us, we were able to visit Many Glacier when the road opened this week, and there was no one around except the wild animals, the bighorn sheep, and moose particularly.

Many Glacier will offer only limited access this summer as the Swiftcurrent Inn parking area is being expanded to accommodate more visitors.  The restaurant won't open.  Even getting into the Many Glacier area to hike will be difficult.  Only visitors with passes or who are staying at the Many Glacier Hotel will be able to drive that far.  Others will be bused in, only as far as the hotel.

That means having to walk from the hotel to the key trailheads like Iceberg Lake/Ptarmigan Tunnel, the Swiftcurrent Valley, Grinnell Lake.  In some instances it will add miles to the hikes.

The congestion at the entrance gate promises to be monumental.

That's why we seized on a beautiful spring day to jump the line and drive into Many with no permit.

In spite of some substantial snow on the trails we were able to hike around Swiftcurrent Lake to Lake Josephine, where we got stunning views of Mount Gould. 

We bumped into maybe a dozen hikers during the time we were there.

The access will tighten down to buses without permits July 1.

Go now if you want to avoid chaos.

 

Shaw Butte:  walking up the big toe

Square Butte to the east offered an exceptional view

Walking the craggy ridge toward the Big Toe

The Big Toe in front of us

The view from below

A day before our Glacier trip we visited Shaw Butte outside Fort Shaw.

 

This is the low lying butte located between massive Square Butte and Crown Butte to the west.

 

It begins at a Hutterite colony at the foot of the butte where we found igneous outcroppings.

 

We walked to the top of the butte where there is communications towers and buildings but impressive 360 views of the mountain ranges and prairies.  The snow-covered Rocky Mountain Front was most impressive.

 

This was generally the same hike we took several years ago.

 

We descended to a long, craggy ridgeline that led us to a prominence I like to refer to as Shaw Butte's "big toe," and climbed it, looking down on the Hutterite gravel pit and many industrial-farm operations below.

 

There were scatterings to wildflowers:  yellow bells (fritilary), shooting stars, phlox, and violets.

To avoid the ridgeline's crags, I walked in a precarious game trail below them, while Mark Hertenstein and Gordon Whirry, worked their way through them.