Hiking the Highline Trail to Grinnell Glacier Overlook at Glacier National Park (& huckleberry pie!)

Yesterday was our first official day at Glacier National Park and we spent the day driving around the Going to the Sun Road, stopping at viewpoints, seeing wildlife, hiking to three waterfalls, and swimming in Lake McDonald. For our second day at Glacier we're hiking one of our U.S. bucket list trails, the Highline Trail to Grinnell Glacier Overlook. We got up early to drive to the park and after a quick parking lot nap we're now ready for a very long but beautiful day. A few years ago we learned about the Highline Trail here at Glacier and it's been on our bucket list ever since and today we're finally getting to hike it. We got super lucky because they actually opened up the trail about a week ago and it's August 6th right now so they opened it pretty late so our timing was perfect. Our plan is to hike the Highline Trail to the Granite Peak Chalet and then take the Garden Wall Trail to see the Grinnell Glacier Overlook and then hike the Highline Trail back. So we think the normal way to do this trail is park at Logan's Pass and then you take the Highline Trail to the Grinnell Glacier Overlook and you take the Loop Trail back and then you take the shuttle from the Loop Trail back to your car at Logan's Pass. But since the shuttles aren't running this year that option wasn't really possible for us. The mosquitoes they're really bad here just FYI. So we're gonna do the Highline Trail both there and back instead. We think the trail is about 17 miles long so we think this is gonna be our longest day hike we've ever done so wish us luck. So a few minutes into the trail you'll reach this section that's rocky. There's some drop-offs but they have this nice little handrail for you to hold on to if you feel nervous but to be honest this is pretty wide. So far it doesn't seem very sketchy and y'all know I don't like sketchy. So we're about an hour into the trail now and the whole time we've just been kind of skirting along the side of this mountain with awesome views of the Going to the Sun Road down below, the valley down below. It's been absolutely beautiful. Hasn't been very steep either. It's been a lot of flat and then sometimes you're going downhill sometimes you go a little uphill. Yeah they're pretty gentle though. But we hear we hear it will not stay that way when we get closer to the glacier. Yeah we started way in that valley over there under that mountain come all the way along here. We've come around the bend of the along the mountain and now we're going to zigzag up this big hill here and go up top there. We just saw some kind of deer from down here. You can see him right on the top. Looks like he had some antlers so maybe he'll still be there when we get there. He's still here and he has a friend over there. There's one right in front of us. I'll show you. A couple things we're loving about this hike are the wildflowers which there are so many and they're so colorful. We're kind of out of them now but in the first part of the trail they're just everywhere. And also we got pretty lucky that it's a cloudier day. It's getting a little bit like more blue sky out but there is there's basically no coverage on this trail with trees so you're pretty much exposed the whole time. So if it was really sunny this would get really really hot really really fast. So we're really thankful for some clouds today. But and the best part is it's not too cloudy like where you can't see the views. Like the views are perfect even with the clouds. Oh man this is awesome. Okay I believe we mentioned at the beginning that we were going to go to the chalet first but we kind of changed our mind along the way and I think we're gonna go we are gonna go to the glacier overlook first instead. We hear this part is the most challenging toughest part because it's all uphill but it's 0.6 to get up to the overlook so we're gonna make our way there now. Here we go. Yeah they weren't lying it's pretty steep. I'm willing to bet a decent amount of money that this is longer than 0.6. There's no way. It's really tough. We're just about to the overlook. I can see the big opening so here are just a few steps. It should be pretty rad. Oh yeah here it comes. I'm getting so excited. Whoa there's the glacier. Yeah worth it. Oh my god the water, the ice, the mountain. Oh shoot this is great. A better view of some lakes off in the distance too. Oh yeah. Oh wow that one's so pretty. It's official I'm just gonna say it right now this is my favorite hike in the U.S. that we've done so far. I don't know how you beat this. No there's no way. I mean we've done some pretty incredible hikes in the U.S. but we love glaciers and just the mountains at Glacier National Park are just incredible. You have ridiculous top tier views 100 percent of the time. There's not one part where you're in I mean you pass through some woods but you're not blocked by it at all. Yeah so you're saying earlier it's very exposed which can be bad if it's sunny but it's really good if you want views the entire time and we're getting to see areas of the park that we could not see from the going to the front road like this. So normally you can hike to Grinnell Glacier from the east side of the park but the east side is closed for the rest of the year due to COVID so you cannot so this is your only chance to really see it. Then there's some other beautiful lakes I think one of these is Swift Current I think. I don't know the names of all of them and then there's also a beautiful lake on the east side called Iceberg Lake. I don't think we can see it but if you do visit and the east side is open go check that out. All right we made it back down from the Grinnell Glacier overlook. It took us about 35 minutes to get to the top. It was very very steep. It took probably about the same to get down mostly because we just had to keep pulling over to let people pass but it was much easier going down. Yeah unfortunately we have another change of plans. The closest we're going to get to the chalet is the turnoff for the overlook. We're kind of running out of time. The weather it's getting kind of iffy. We got to return the rental car by five and we have a couple hours hiking back and then a couple hours to the airport so let's get back. Yeah we're bummed but because we really want to go see it because the thought of it reminded us a lot of our time in the Dolomites with all the refugios but if we had to pick between doing the chalet and doing the Grinnell Glacier overlook I'm very glad we did the overlook first. Absolutely. Because that was so epic and I'm sure the chalet is cool too. You can actually stay there so maybe next time we'll just stay the night. Yeah that'd be really fun. This hike was is definitely harder coming back. It's uh it's it's different than your typical hike where you're going up the whole way to the viewpoint and then you hike back down. This one there's a big hump in the middle and man it was way harder coming back. I guess because we're tired a little sleep. I don't remember it being that tough though. Me either. I think on the on your way out your the stoke is high because of all this but after after seeing it all. The stoke is still high but I'm just tired now. Yeah. But we're hitting the downhill part now. Yeah we finally made it to the downhill part. Oh man we did it you guys. We didn't end up going the 17 that we planned but we went about 15.2 ish and. Still a lot. Yeah and it took us just under about eight hours but man the way back was tough. It was it was grueling but it was amazing the entire way. Yeah the views were like a postcard the entire time. Like even when we were in pain we couldn't stop smiling. Yeah. But I think we have a little bit of time to go reward ourselves with a little treat before we go take the rental car back. Oh heck yeah. I finally freaking saw one. We just saw a bear. Oh I'm shaking I'm so excited. We were just about to proclaim that bears were not real and we were being duped because wow. That's awesome. We saw someone looking over like they pulled over and they were sorry the camera's all over I'm like this we're a hot mess right now we just stopped in the middle of the road which is probably frowned upon but we saw these people pulled over and looking at something and so I I saw it I was like I don't have to stop it's a bear. So cool. That was exciting. More like a baby one. I don't know it was no it was a it was a black bear but it was a cinnamon I think they're called cinnamon black bears. Wow it was our dream situation we saw it from the car yeah together and from the car and he was really close but we were in the car and he didn't care about us or she. Wow. That was cool. That is seriously the today was amazing so far and that just made it 20 times even more amazing. You can't come to Montana and not get huckleberry everything so we came to this spot called the huckleberry patch to get some huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry pie. So we've had huckleberry ice cream before when we were in Wyoming but we've never had huckleberry pie and we've never actually had just regular huckleberries so here we go. Oh it looks so good though. I love it that's darn good. Heck yeah. So they're kind of tart and they kind of remind me of actually did kind of remind me of blueberries and I think a lot of times they get confused with blueberries some people call huckleberries blueberries and blueberries huckleberries but they're apparently completely different but yeah they're kind of tart it's sweet the crust is nice and thin. That's really good but let's try it with the huckleberry ice cream. We're going double huckleberry. The huckleberry is kind of like a candied flavor to them. They're really good. Sugar overload. So much sugar and that is going to do it for today's adventure. We now have to go return this rental car and quick little story on the rental car because maybe it'll help someone in the future but we're actually we actually have this car until tomorrow at five. I made an error I didn't realize that we can actually drive our van to the trailhead we're doing in the morning it's like the farthest you can drive on the going to the sun road in our van so we don't need the car anymore so when I went to go change the reservation to take a day off it was going to be a hundred dollars more to take a day away so I called Alamo and I was like hey what can I do about this and the guy basically told me if you return it by 5 p.m. the day before you can get basically a day's worth of the fare or whatever the rental rate back so we should be getting a hundred something dollars back for returning this car at 5 p.m. today so we're kind of like frantic right now because we're like oh god we're running low on time we got to get to the airport and return it and make that money back. Update on the rental car situation. I think we got there with two minutes to spare. I literally ran inside the airport and I just asked the lady I was like here's my situation and she's like go park the car come back in so she worked with me and we got 145 dollars back I'm sorry. Getting crazy in here. So it's kind of a stressful end to the day but it worked out it was awesome yeah in an ideal world you wouldn't you would book your rental car for the exact amount of time you need you wouldn't make the mistake I did but if you do make this mistake and then when you try to change it it's more money call the rental car company see if they can help you like Alamo helped us out. Well before all that today was just absolutely epic in the moment it's hard to describe what we're seeing like so I we apologize if we've got too many epics awesomes that's so cools but again it's just it's just hard to describe when you're there it's it's like breathtaking and it makes you speechless but in the end it like we said earlier it's our number one hike now for sure favorite hike in the U.S. that we've done it was just ridiculous and so we had an epic day again more epic wildlife so marmots bighorn sheep again tons of little squirrels and all that fun stuff some deer but the the cherry on top the highlight of the freaking year so far for wildlife at least was a bear we finally saw a bear and we saw it together this time yes together yeah I can forget that the other one happened so it counts this one counts yeah so yeah we are absolutely pooped though today so tonight we're gonna get some food or waiting outside Maude for our pizzas to be ready then we're gonna get some rest because we are wiped out just a little sleep from last night but then tomorrow we'll be back at Glacier for one more adventure and then we'll come outside of Glacier and do a couple other fun adventures too it's gonna be awesome oh yeah arrest me okay all of this come on take care thanks I don't know if you heard him but I was like oh do a little dance he's like I don't think I should be dancing with this pole they may arrest me oh that thing looks good I'm trying to pick the best tastiest flowers I like the flowers that one look good but I don't know okay bye I'll just go ahead and finish this off right now bye buddy hope you find your dad