Monday, July 25, 2016

Glacier - Hike to Avalanche Lake

This week's hike in Glacier is to Avalanche Lake.  We get an early start as the parking lot for this hike fills up early.  We get there around 8:30 and get the last parking spot.


It starts with the beginning of the Trail of the Cedars


The size of some of these trees are really amazing

 Uh Oh!  The start of the Avalanche Lake trail is reminiscent of Minnesota - stairs!

A portion of Avalanche creek

A most beautiful walk in the woods

Can you see the forest for the trees?
 a river runs through it

Looks like some boulders got rolled down in an avalanche at some point

Someone snuck in a photo of me.
The mountains come into view 

The back to the thick forest

 A cool spider web catches the sun and my eye


The trail changes to thick vegetation

and then the Lake come into view

Quite the log jam at the mouth of the lake

We move on further to get to the water










 Zoom in to the waterfalls coming off the snow melt from the mountains
 We decide to continue on to the very end of the Lake.  Along the way we see some buck walking along the shore line. We stop because I figure they wouldn't go far because of the people on the beach.  Sure enough they make the turn up to the trail.




They grab a couple of bites and then mosey on down the trail.

End of trail?

I don't think so

There it is!


What a view!




I am always amazed at how crystal clear the water is

Time to make our way back

Almost back to the beginning


We didn't see any bears but a couple weeks later in talking to a guest in the hotel that did the hike, they could not walk to the end of the Lake as it had been closed due to bear activity

 On the way home we decide to detour and see the Hungry Horse Dam

 It is pretty impressive.  Built in 1953, it is made from almost 3.1 million cubic yards of concrete.  It is 564 feet tall, 2,115 feet wide, 39 feet thick at the top and 330 feet thick at the bottom.  It is the 11th highest dam in the United States and along with 19 other dams on the Columbia River produces 5 billion kilowatts of power a year












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