Day 4: Iceberg Lake and Going to the Sun Road

6:40AM time to get up, a good night's sleep helps a lot. The day before at the lodge I bought a day hiker's guide to Glacier and Waterton Lakes Park. One in particular hike that stuck out was Iceberg Lake. Well I should start out that I had narrowed the hike down to three, Grinell Lake, Iceberg Lake, and Swiftcurrent Pass. I am terrible at deciding between things, but Iceberg won out because it was the most intriguing, 1200ft elevation change, and just a walk from my camp site to the trail head. I snacked on a granola bar and added 3 more to the pack and set off.....to the general store for chocolate milk and then set off for adventure.

Iceberg Lake Trail is supposedly an 'easy' trail but they should say that it is more of intermediate difficulty. The first half mile or so is actually quite steep and literally felt like a a)Irish Mobster Little Person, b) Press Your Luck Devil, c)Overactive Child (take your pick) is beating on your kneecaps with a foam bat. I will choose the Irish Mobster Little Person (Irish Mobsters are known for crushing kneecaps).

Moving past the difficult section, you walk along the bowl of the mountain side and see many spectacular views of all the various glacier areas and peaks in the area. I would tell you what they are but I am afraid that I am the Ron Burgundy of hiking. That peak there was named after Joey Sasquatch...yeah. About every half mile or so is either another spectacular version of the view or a cool creek or waterfall babbling by.

I never saw much wildlife besides ground squirrels and locusts, but that is mostly from my head down, hurry along hiking style. I am not a good stop and smell the roses sort of guy, so I have to remind myself every once in awhile to do so. Also, I chose the 2008 Kansas University Men's Basketball Championship for the hike today, so some of that steely eyed confidence was rubbing of on my climbing skills...obviously.

Going up I never came across any other hikers except one guy carrying a mess of camera equipment including a huge tripod walking back down. He gave me that look of shame like amateur don't you know that hikes start at 5:30AM? I sheepishly walked passed keeping my mouth shut so I don't blurt out the typical tourist hiker's question, "How far until the ____?" After that incident, I am proud to say that no one passed me going up (or when I came back down for that matter), not bad for a flatlander.

I met up with a couple from Washington, who had some sort of Washington University Championship clothing on, obviously had the same idea I did this morning. I couldn't tell you their names, but they were really nice in pointing out mountain goats and letting me peer through their goggles, which I appreciated. Another insight from them was that this trail was often closed due to frequent bear travel in the area during wild berry season and we were lucky that the berries were a couple of weeks late this year. I felt pretty honored that I had picked this trail this morning. They also made sure to let me know the way they hike was slow and constantly looking for wildlife, which leads me to another point.

Dear hikers of the world, most of us don't care how you hike, why you hike, or certainly what time you got up, how hard the hike is compared to your trip to the Himalaya's, that you prefer Asolo's over Merrell's or whatever the heck else your talking about. This is something you hear in Colorado a lot more than Montana but the alpha type hiker can be found blabbering away in just about any national park. I haven't ever felt the need to tell someone those things unsolicited, just if people really wanted to know. This isn't a triathlon it is a walk in the woods.

Glacier isn't really a park worried about peak-oriented hiking either. It should be said that this park is great for all ages, athletic abilities, and outback skills. The trails all range from the very easy to moderately hard in my opinion, and the rewarding views are way more meaningful than the hikes to them.

Back to the hike, shortly after meeting the couple from Washington, I came across the Iceberg Creek and sort of a nameless lake that I am sure some would mistaken for Iceberg Lake. Looking at it, I was disappointed that I hiked all the way here to see this. To my right however I saw one other early riser climbing a little further up the path over a hill, I followed up and over to see the real lake, which was pretty stunning to say the least. It was like stepping out of Montana and into a Iceberg flow in Alaska in 100 feet. It's hard to wrap words around it and felt even harder to capture it into pictures, but I tried. The natural lake was obviously sitting in a valley between glacier scraped walls of nearly 270 degrees of mountain. It's awesome.

I jumped and scurried and relaxed around the lake as long as I could before heading back down the trail to the camp, I wanted to eat lunch and hop in the Bug Deathstar to travel the length of Going to the Sun Road for the afternoon. So hauling butt back down the mountain I realized that I wasn't the few climbing this trail today, just one of the early ones. Dozens of families, couples, and friends were encountered on my way back down the mountain. I swelled with pride due to the fact that I had actually beaten the rush up the trail and while the day was now hot, I was going down. Most of the people I passed were complementary that I had finished so early and for a guy traveling alone on a trip, it felt vainly good.

Besides the packs of hikers, I noticed too that the Press You Luck Devil had shown up to gnaw on my right Achilles tendon and pointer toe. Also the Irish Mobster Little Person somehow had crept into my backpack for a nap. At least that is what it felt like. I was getting tired and realized that I should have worn the thick socks for the hike that day. Each step heading down my right foot felt worse and worse but my stomach had taken over commands of the body. I was hungry and slowing down would only prolong my time away from food. So foot be damned, I continued to haul down the hill.

The trail dumped me out back near the Swiftcurrent Inn, which I promptly hopped into for a pizza and Dr. Pepper. The Sausage Pizza tasted great and soda quenched my thirst. The meal helped my senses return. Only other thing worth noting was another alpha hiker in the room requesting an easy hike from the waiter for the afternoon. "I want something nice and easy that will just take me a couple of hours." "Iceberg Lake," was the waiters response, to which I snorted DP. I am sure some people consider this an easy hike (it's not) but it takes at least 3 hrs at the least, I took nearly 4 hours essentially hauling tail up and down the trail. I wondered why this serious hiker, who was traveling alone, was in such a hurry for a trail since he hadn't obviously gotten himself ready to go for the day until noon or so. It must have taken awhile to get that perfect look after the shower, hair gelling, and perfect outfit I guess. Maybe his Camelback just wasn't filled with the perfect mixture of CytoPlex and water, Jetboil out of fuel, or sunblock too icky. I don't know, but I thought it was funny to hear this serious hiker want to get something easy in before the day was out.

I left, hit the showers (quick tip: in the public showers at Swiftcurrent Inn, third one down was working without tokens), and hopped into the car for the main attraction, Going to the Sun Road. To get there, I have to leave the park, drive through Babb and St. Mary's, and then back into the park. Not really knowing the history of Going to the Sun Road, I can only tell you that the clouds seem to hang low in Glacier (and most of Montana for that matter) and driving up this road sure feels as if you are driving up into the heavens. Much like Marioworld I think, except without the smiley faces, mushroom people, and massive bullets. The views are spectacular, again it's like getting your head around infinity, how do you describe it and photograph it properly.

You start roadside of St. Mary's Lake and crawl up the side of the mountains up to the clouds, peaks, and mountains near Logan's Pass and the Continental Divide. Logan's Pass was overflowing with tourists and was impossible to stop and enjoy (I tried for three days). So up and over you go and then down to the west end of the park, which is I'm sure beautiful but hard to watch as you traverse through a long construction zone down the road of the mountain. It stunk because you couldn't really stop other than where they told you, so I don't have any amazing stories of the views on the west side. Weaving along down, you eventually make it down to another very cool campsite called Sprague Creek. Sprague Creek is lakefront property for campers to hangout on Lake McDonald. The water in the shallows of the lake were actually quite warm and the view was spectacular. I told myself that my last day in Glacier I was going to be camped out here.

After my brief stop in Sprague Creek, I continued on out West Glacier and headed towards Columbia Falls and civilization. I was hoping that Columbia Falls or Kalispell were big enough towns for an Internet cafe or at least to find a camping supply store for a new camp stove. I found both. The camp store was really a hunting and fishing store, but I found the modern replica of the fireball shooting stove I had back at camp. This one I think was not meant for warfare purposes like my other. A quick few questions to the store clerk, whom I can accurately describe as a saucy broad, and I headed down the road to a *gasp* closed wifi coffee shop. Yet I noticed a bunch of people outside on tables with laptops. Parked the Deathstar and walked around to find a group of techies all happily tapping away. "Wifi up," I asked. "Yup," and for the next two hours I typed, uploaded photos, applied for jobs, and emailed friends. It was a perfect end to the day.

I drove off, grabbed a quick burger, yuck, and headed back to the other side of the park via highway 2 around the south side of the park, then 49 by Two Medicine and then 89 on back to Babb. Took me nearly 2 hours back but without many other cars to contend with. Got my phone calls in to Parisa, my parents, and my brother, and snuck back into the camp to fall asleep. Two trails to choose from for tomorrow.