Glacier National Park- The Complete Guide | lakes, hikes, waterfalls & more

Hey we're Matt and Cheryl from We're in the Rockies and today we are at Glacier National Park. The whole purpose of our channel is to help you travel to the west. So in this video we're going to show you things to do in Glacier National Park. We're going to go on hikes, boat rides, scary drives, and see some really cool old lodges. Glacier National Park is located in northern Montana and is the 12th largest U.S. national park. Its main features are majestic mountains with stunning valleys carved by glaciers. The park actually extends into Canada. The Canadian side is called Waterton Lakes National Park. Together they are known as Waterton Glacier International Peace Park. Up first is the beautiful Avalanche Lake. This is such an amazing stop. What it is is it's in West Glacier. You park by the Trail of the Cedars which is a smaller trail boardwalk and then you do an extra two miles up to this Avalanche Lake. Along the way you're going to see some amazing cottonwood trees so it's nice and shaded. You're going to see an amazing gorge and then you're going to continue up and when you get here you're going to have the best surprise of all. You're going to be here at Avalanche Lake with this crystal clear water and four waterfalls like just across the way. They're far away but they're towering and amazing and the whole way through pretty towering walls. So a little bit about this hike. So it starts off at the Trail of the Cedars which is a boardwalk all accessible trail. It's really easy. It's about a mile long and it's a loop and then from there you can break off and head up to Avalanche Lake and that's two miles up two miles down. We'd say it's a moderate hike. The trail's packed dirt a few rocks but not anything I'm super worried about twisting an ankle on but be careful and it's totally shaded which makes it really nice. The only wildlife we've seen is a chipmunk. They're kind of friendly here at the end of the trail but you can also hear some birds. What bird did you hear Matt? Oh I can't remember. It was a thrush. I heard thrush or something. Yeah had a really kind of shrieky call and this hike I would say would take you about three hours and that has been kicking my butt and making me like run up the hill but I would say for the average Joe it's a three mile or a three hour hike and five miles round trip. So something some things I've really liked about this hike is on the Trail of the Cedars I remember taking my children here 10 years ago when they were small and I loved it because like I said all accessibility so it was really easy for children to do and I felt like I was on the moon of ender like there are just so many trees and ferns it's just very very natural and beautiful. I like there's this amazing gorge at the Trail of the Cedars like right when you go to go up to Avalanche Lake this is just so pretty and on the plaque next to it it says red blue green and white and as I looked around and saw it there there were all those colors there's red in the ground and there's blue in the water and green moss you know and of course white rocks also so you're seeing a lot of colors here at Glacier and it's just really is quite breathtaking. Now as I was hiking this I you know I'm always trying to think about what I would tell someone about it and my thoughts as I was hiking up to Avalanche Lake was that the best part was the Trail of the Cedars and then we came out of the woods and saw this and I have to say this might be one of the most spectacular hikes I've ever been on. The next thing to do is to visit Apgar Village. Apgar Village is on the west side of Glacier it is at the foot of Lake McDonald. You can see Lake McDonald behind me here it's just kind of a cute little village it's not very big at all when we talk about village we're saying that there are some hotels and places that you can stay on the lake here there's a campground there is a visitor center that you can go to learn about the park or ask rangers questions and then you can see some buildings behind me here there's just some gift shops there's a restaurant here Eddie's Cafe we've done a whole nother video on where to eat at Glacier National Park so check that out you can also rent kayaks down the road here and that's kind of cool because when you rent them you can actually push them on on like a stroller down to the lake so that's kind of cool and then at the lake you can actually rent a motorized boat and take it out on the lake so I mean there's a lot to do you can just go stroll along the the lake shore if you want a little beach it's rocky not sandy but you can go check out the lake and just a nice little spot. Okay the next thing to do is to just stop at the rivers there are so many rivers flowing through Glacier National Park coming down from the mountains and beautiful cascades and waterfalls and the water is just so turquoise blue and so clear it's really spectacular and there are plenty of little overlooks you can just pull over and stop and come down and just get close to the water it's wonderful Next up is to go out on Lake McDonald we're staying at the Lake McDonald Lodge tonight but there are a lot of ways you can access this beautiful Lake McDonald it's a really big beautiful lake it's very clear it's very calm and it's a great way to get away from crowds I haven't noticed that Glacier is incredibly crowded but you know I believe that when people go to national parks they're trying to to get some solace and connect with nature and I think this is a great way to do it the Glacier Boat Company they rent they do boat rides but they also rent boats at almost all the lakes around here and so we rented a motorboat this is just an old school aluminum motorboat with a little Honda motor it gives me memories of my childhood this is this is the type of boat I actually learned to water ski behind as a kid but then 10 years ago we came out here with our own little brood of we had three little boys at the time when I was pregnant with our daughter and we rented a little boat just like this and drove our kids around the lake and it was one of the most memorable things we did on that trip and if you don't want to do a motorboat I want to say though these are super easy to drive you don't have to be a captain to drive these and they'll explain how to do it but you can rent this by the hour for about thirty dollars an hour they also rent paddle boards kayaks and it's just a first come first serve so you kind of get what's available but I would definitely give this a 10 just for the beautiful scenic views and just for the opportunity to be out on the lake we're going to be doing the boat tours at all the other lakes but we thought we would do our own this time okay for the next thing to do I've got two things for you here in this segment so the next thing to do is to visit North Fork this is a section of the park that you actually need a reservation at least this year in 2022 you need a reservation to come visit it this is about an hour or so north of Apgar village okay which is where you enter the west gate pretty much so North Fork is is a little bit more backcountry kind of but what you do is you drive up to a little town called Polebridge town is probably too generous it's just a little tiny mercantile store a saloon and restaurant and then they have some little places you can stay some little cabins that you can stay in and the famous thing to do there is to visit the mercantile store to get a bear claw a huckleberry bear claw is what everybody likes to do there now we've done another video on food so you can watch that if you want to food and glacier but anyway you can drive up to visit Polebridge and then you can come to there's two lakes here this is Bowman Lake behind me here this is really gorgeous I mean it's just crazy how God designed all these to be picture perfect at Glacier National Park that's really cool this is about a 30 minute drive on a on a pretty rough dirt road so I would recommend a higher clearance vehicle or something like that and then there's another lake about an hour north called Kintlow Lake we're not going to go over that one today we're just doing Bowman Lake here so that is North Fork and that's another thing you can do we wouldn't put it as your highest priority but it is kind of a way to get away from the crowds a little bit there's hardly anybody here this lake where we are and if you want to play in the water this is a great place to paddleboard kayak it's I mean that it's gotten so popular it's hard to find a spot like this to do this anymore so yep the only trick is you'd have to bring your own paddleboard maybe a blow-up paddleboard type of thing or rent one and have a vehicle to to put it on okay now the second thing is to look at the colored rocks okay so I bring this up because this has been a trend I've noticed on Instagram and I always warn our viewers here against planning your trip using Instagram so again this is kind of a popular thing you can see that in the lake here there are colored rocks and so one of the very common questions that rangers get around here is where to find the colored rocks well you can find them in any lake okay we're in Bowman Lake here we were at Lake McDonald earlier and the colored rocks were there the rocks are cool they are colored but they're not Instagram filtered colored so they're not as amazing as what you might see in some pictures online so don't get your hopes up on you know seeing these just amazing colorful rocks but they are kind of fun they are different colors so something you can check out when you visit one of the lakes here in Glacier National Park okay the next thing to do is to get a treat so we already covered that pole bridge mercantile bakery store now when you're in Montana or Glacier National Park you have to try huckleberry stuff so I have determined that the state economy for Montana revolves around huckleberries I mean there's you know logging whatever that's got to be pale in comparison to huckleberries because everywhere you go it's just huckleberry everything was huckleberry pie we had huckleberry trout what else did we have huckleberry something earlier they had huckleberry charcuterie of course of course the huckleberry charcuterie so this is a wild huckleberry dark chocolate sea salt candy bar and then this is red jammer huckleberry soda okay so you got to try huckleberry stuff it's it actually is good just about everything I've tried that's huckleberry has been very good so give that a shot on your glacier skip the pole bridge bakery and go for some huckleberry goods okay the next thing to do is to take a red bus tour look at this super cool red bus behind me we are at Lake McDonald Lodge here and from here and from some other places in the park they will give you tours across the going to the sun road the red bus tours have been in operation since the 1920s or 30s I think so in the very early days of the park people would have to ride a horse through the park to get over the mountain ranges and to get to some of the backcountry areas then when the automobile came along of course they started paving roads and they built that amazing going to the sun road well they still needed a way to get people around the park and so they came up with these these bus tours they're called red bus tours and as they were coming down some of the very steep roads from the canyons the drivers would have to jam it into low gear and so they called them gear jammers that was kind of their nickname is gear jammers and then these buses came to be known as jammer buses so in the late 1990s around the year 2000 they renovated it from the old standard transmissions where you'd have to jam it into gear and ford donated and renovated these things and put a modern engine in there and everything like that but the body of this is an original from the 1930s these are so cool and Cheryl and I really wanted to go on one of these tours but it just didn't quite work out with their schedule they do offer four types of tours ranging from kind of half day to full day type tours that go up the going to the sun road and over to the other side of the park the east side so definitely consider doing one of these tours if you come it would be a beautiful way to do the going to the sun road and a less terrifying way to do it because you're not the one driving along the ledge but unfortunately we're not doing it today next is driving the very very famous going to the sun road now the going to the sun road serves two purposes one is it's just a connection between west glacier and east glacier but it also happens to be one of the most scenic roads in the united states going to the sun road takes two hours if you start at west glacier and head to east glacier or vice versa so you want to plan on a good two hours there's no gas stations to fill up so make sure that you are filled up before you go i've seen a bathroom stops along the way so that's a good thing but no water fill ups no restaurants along this road but you are going to see some incredible things you're going to be hugging the canyon wall on one side which is actually where you feel the safest because on the other side is a sheer drop off and on most of it you know it's a constant debate about national parks about how much of it how much of the responsibility lies on the national parks to make things safe but i would say in the going to the sun road they chose to make the park aesthetically pleasing instead of making it uber safe the little barrier on the side of the road to keep you from rolling off the side of the canyon is only about two or three feet tall so you can see right into it it's so beautiful but so nerve-wracking if you're the passenger driving up the mountain now the going to the sun road can be accessed a few ways you can drive your own personal vehicle this year though you do have to have a reservation to drive your personal vehicle over the road but just make sure to check the park website and because it might be different in another year this is the summer of 2022 and it may be different the next when when you were traveling so make sure to check the park website to make sure you can go on this road you can also access it just for free on the glacier shuttle there is a glacier shuttle that runs every day for every 10 to 15 minutes and lastly there are the very famous red bus tours you need to reserve those quite a bit in advance but they are awesome and going to the sun road is such a cool thing to do in glacier and maybe the most exciting thing to do here that we made a whole other video about at logan pass so this is the peak of the going to the sun road it is at the very top and when you get up here there's a parking lot it's a fairly large parking lot but it does fill up quickly i was blown away we drove the going to the sun road this morning to get up here to logan pass and we started our drive at 6 30 by the time we got up here the parking lot was at least halfway full i mean wow there was a line of cars driving this morning anyway once you get up here you can get out and they have a visitor center here which is not open right now because we're here so early and then the thing to do is this hike that goes up here to hidden lake it's called the hidden lake hike now crazy thing is we got here today and the hike is closed they just have a string across it saying you can't go on this hike we have no idea why so this is a huge letdown for us the last time we came here we brought our kids and it was so amazing we didn't we weren't able to hike all the way to hidden lake due to the snow so you can see there's plenty of snow up there so you know you're kind of at the mercy when the snow melts but man we had a great time we saw mountain goats we saw a marmot and there's just all these wild flowers up here it's gorgeous kind of a meadow area almost you've got mountain peaks surrounding you on all sides i mean this is actually even though even though we can't go on the hike right now this is just amazing we're just kind of enjoying this time up here at the top of the mountain so anyway logan pass maybe hopefully this hike will open up later today or something like that we can get back here but logan pass is amazing okay the next thing to do is to visit saint mary falls this is a pretty popular waterfall on the north end of saint mary lake but there's actually quite a few things to do around here so the fall behind me is virginia falls and on this hike we also went to bearing falls and we did sun rift gorge as well they're all just stunningly beautiful saint mary falls there's a reason why it's really popular we actually saw some people jumping into the water there and the water is just crystal clear blue turquoise just incredibly pure and gorgeous and then from saint mary falls we continued up here a little bit of an ascent but not too bad and for me it was the best part of the hike it was just gorgeous along the way you get to a more wooded forested area the sun shining through there was ferns and you've got just cascade of falls all along the way until you get to virginia falls here so you can't go wrong doing this hike to saint mary falls a lot more to do okay next up is to take a boat ride through glacier park boat company this is the only company that does boats in the park they've been in business since 1938 and they are a family-run business they have boat rides at four locations they do lake mcdonald mini glacier saint mary and to medicine you can do a ride at any of those places we just got done with ours at saint mary's but we're going to be going on a couple more and we're going to be actually doing a review on all them so you can check out that other video but from what i can tell you so far this is a pretty fun thing to do something nice about it is you can make advanced reservations if you want to but you can generally get them the day of which is really nice because sometimes you don't know how your day is going to go and what time you're going to catch a boat the other nice thing about doing these boat tours is that a lot of times you can take these boat rides to cut some distance off some of the hikes glacier is a hiker's park and even if you love to hike you can get tired if you hike all day long and so sometimes it's kind of nice to cheat a couple miles off of your hike on the boat ride ours was about an hour and a half long and on our boat ride we learned some interesting things about saint mary's one thing that i thought was especially interesting is why they don't rent personal boats here like kayaks it's because this place gets some wicked crazy winds the winds blow so hard the trees grow sideways and storms can come really fast so they only trust licensed captains to drive around here but you also learn about some of the animals some of the geology and then just some interesting stories about the area so the the tour guide is half the fun and you can tell that these guys have a great camaraderie they like each other they're excited to be here they're excited to be captains and it just brings the energy an example of getting to kind of skip the hike is we got to go over to bearing falls and it was just a quick little five minute walk to go see a waterfall which was nice saved a bit of time if we would have hiked it so overall i would say taking a boat ride is pretty fun the next thing to do is to visit the two medicine area in glacier national park this is kind of a separate area a separate little valley with its own lake and hikes and all that stuff to do so for the next couple segments we'll just show you things to do in two medicine so the first thing to do in two medicine behind me here is running eagle falls this is a really short hike it's only about 0.6 miles round trip i think there's a little nature trail it's ada accessible flat we like that we love when we can get to a nice scenic shot like this waterfall with very little effort so this is a great one don't miss out on this if you come to two medicine the the waterfall here is called running eagle falls but it has kind of another name which is trick falls because there's actually two waterfalls there one in front of another one and so that's kind of an interesting little quirk and you can see it's very unusual because it's kind of coming down through the rock it's not coming over that top ledge of the rock so that's pretty cool and then the river just running through here leading right to the mountains here behind us really beautiful area and a great introduction okay the next thing to do is to hike in two medicine the hiking in glacier national park is amazing so some people hike all the way up to upper two medicine lake but we went along the edge of the lake and we got to a little overlook or a little viewpoint of the lake and then we came up a little farther to this waterfall right here this is called astor falls and then you can actually go up a very steep switch back to get to another look a viewpoint called astor park our opinion here is astor park is not worth it it's uh really strenuous to get there and although the viewpoint is nice it's not something that you don't really see in glacier anyway so i'd say don't worry about that this waterfall however better than apostoke falls we would highly suggest this and then there's some really pretty meadows along the hike as well so spend a little time getting out away from the dock and back into the woods okay the next thing to do is to pick some huckleberries we've seen huckleberry merch everywhere at the lodges the stores the gas stations the restaurants and now we have found legitimate wild huckleberries in the woods so here you go we've got a dark purple color and there's like a little flower on and that's how you know that they're huckleberries there's some bright red ones that are kind of sour berries you don't want to eat those you got to get the dark purple ones yeah okay the next thing to do is to visit twin falls it's a there's a reason why it's called twin falls we've got one on one side one on the other this is about a mile from the end of two medicine lakes so in order just to start this hike you have to take a boat ride to the end of the lake or you can hike three and a half miles the length of the lake to do it but anyway we did the boat and they have some options on the boat rides where you can do a guided hike if you want so the boat ride itself has a tour guide and they'll tell you some stories as you go across the lake and all that but some of the tours also have the guided tour option or the guided hike option at the end of the boat ride so we actually started out with the guided hike and she'll tell you about some of the trees and the mountains and things like that although we ended up breaking off a bit because it was kind of going slow for us and we're in a hurry today so we came up here to the twin falls it's really pretty and we're going to head back and catch the boat back okay up next is to the grenelle glacier hike this is in many glaciers so now our next few segments are going to be in the many glacier valley we've moved on from two medicine and now we're going to spend some time in probably the most famous valley in glacier national park many glacier we've saved the best for last so currently we are at upper grenelle lake and you can see a waterfall and then up above that you can see grenelle glacier this is one of the most famous hikes in america definitely the most famous hike in glacier national park i'm sure and so let me give you a little overview of it my rating and then some tips so first of all this hike is about 12 miles long and you will pass three lakes in route to this lake so you're going to see four lakes all together you're going to pass quite a few waterfalls you even walk through a waterfall along the hike which is super cool you're up really high in this glacial bowl that has been carved out here and you're going to pass through some gorgeous wildflower scenery i mean that's one of the things that makes the hike so special and such a wonderful experience is that you're just going through these amazing wildflowers indian paintbrush bear grass there's purples there's yellows there's blues reds whites i mean it's really quite a stunner i mean one of the most stunning experiences we've ever had it's actually really hard to put into words how beautiful and breathtaking this hike is one of the things we've really noticed about glacier is that's a colorful place and this hike shows off some of the very best colors of glacier national park the lakes have this really turquoise bright turquoise color to them and that's because the glaciers kind of rub against the rocks and they leave this residue that ends up dying the lakes again i mentioned all the colorful wildflowers and then surprisingly some of the rocks in the mountains are kind of like red rocks so this area was all under the sea at one point so we've seen some rocks here that are similar to the rocks we saw in capital reef called ripple rock and so it's just red green the colorful wildflowers the blue the turquoise the white snow and glaciers it really shows off the best okay so now for my rating if you haven't been able to tell by now we've just been gushing over this hike the whole time this is probably the best hike we've ever been on or at least top two or three we were comparing this to maybe angels landing at zion national park and some other really stunner hikes that we've been on if you are physically able you need to really try to do this hike at some point in your life because it is an incredible experience so let me give you some tips now first of all the hike i mentioned is 12 miles and that's round trip so if you start at the trailhead you come all the way up here that's got six miles to go back down it's another six you can cut some time off with a boat ride now we have done a whole other video about how to do this hike with the boat ride so i'm going to refer you to that video and let you watch that for more details just a couple of more tips we are here in august and the hike just barely opened up because it's snow on the trail and all that they had to actually go kind of clear out some of the snow and it just opened up last week so if you're coming here and you want to do this hike i would plan your trip for mid to late august or something like that so you can make sure that the trail is open also obviously you're going to want to bring plenty of water and snacks because it is a long hike even if you do the boat ride it's quite a hike it's still seven miles around trip or so you may want to bring things like trekking poles because you're going uphill for most of the way it's pretty intense in that regard plenty of people of course bringing their bear spray because we're in glacier national park backpack with water all that stuff just be prepared for a long hike and then just when you get here enjoy the glacier the lake the colors and my last tip for you is just take your time and enjoy this hike if this is the only thing you do on your on your day in mini glacier it'll be the best day of your life next up is grinnell lake behind me if you take the boat cruise across the lake the same the same boat cruise you would take for the grinnell glacier you can choose to go up to glacier which is like over seven miles up there at the top yes up there or you can choose to do this or you can do both which is what matt and i did today this one is significantly easier though this is 0.9 miles each way from the boat dock it's a really flat dirt trail it's a lot more shaded um lots of vegetation around you and then you end up at this beautiful glacial lake and so when you start your boat tour you start on swift current you get off you walk for a little bit get on the josephine boat to get over here that's the josephine lake and now we're at grinnell and i would say absolutely worth it i think that this would be a perfect hike for families or if just if hiking's not really your thing you need a little more level this is just perfect but matt and i got here in about 25 minutes from the boat dock we were going at a pretty good pace but yeah i would definitely recommend this it's gorgeous and it's just so nice to dip your feet in the cold water after hiking so much okay the next thing to do is red rock falls so named because they are falls no no no because they are red rock here it's actually really cool the rock is red and it's not red rock like southern utah and arizona red rock but the rocks are red and the falls are really really pretty here so this is also in the mini glacier valley here and i'll be honest with you we have hiked nine miles today to grinnell glacier and grinnell lake and cheryl said we need to go do this hike and i had a little bit of waterfall fatigue and of course i was just tired anyway from hiking so much didn't really want to do it i thought this would just kind of be another glacier waterfall now i don't want to i don't want to make that sound bad but there is a little bit of a like a waterfall fatigue sort of a thing here in glacier one of the other hikers that i saw on a trail she said i know this sounds bad but that's just another waterfall because she's seen so many waterfalls they're all beautiful but obviously some are more beautiful than others i'm really glad we came and did this one because this is gorgeous it cheryl said it looks like it was professionally landscaped it's just different levels and cascading down it really is a very pretty waterfall the hike here is pretty flat four miles around trip you go by a couple of lakes where wildlife like moose and deer like to hang out so a very nice little evening stroll for us today the next thing to do is to attend a ranger program there are ranger programs every day throughout the day and all you need to do is either look at the schedule board at the visitor center or at your hotel or even some of the newspapers they print off will have those events in them and really don't miss out on the chance to listen to a ranger they have such fascinating stories we just heard ranger benson talk about research within the park and we learned about mountain sheep and mountain goats and grizzlies and the tarnagan so don't miss out on that chance to see those things in the park okay the next thing to do here mini glacier is to watch the sunrise oh my goodness again just one of the most beautiful things this is really comparable to the grand tetons here you can sit out on the deck of the mini glacier hotel or just walk along the edge of the lake and see this beautiful sunrise the sun comes up and hits the mountain here if you head over here to the bridge you can actually see the sun rising and it's hitting the the little waterfall that's right by here so that's another beautiful sight so you know cheryl and i yesterday hiked 13 miles over 13 miles around mini glacier in one day wouldn't recommend that i'd say break it up into two days if you're going to be doing a lot of hiking but even if you're not a hiker you can just enjoy mini glacier just by spending time here you can walk around the lake here walk along the shore stay at the mini glacier hotel or eat dinner there get out on the deck just spend some time you can't go wrong in mini glacier okay for my final thing i've got two things for you here so next thing to do is to visit waterton lakes national park in canada this is kind of the canadian side of glacier national park and we've done a whole other video on waterton lakes so make sure to check that out and my final thing for you the final thing to do is to have a game plan when you visit glacier national park guess what we have used our own travel guide for this video our own itinerary to see the best of glacier national park now we worked with somebody who is an expert on glacier national park who lived in the park for eight summers in a row and knows the park inside and out she helped us to create this guide for you and now we came up to test it out to see how well it works and by our video you can see we have seen and done a lot of amazing things in glacier national park it would not have been possible if we did not have a great game plan and itinerary you can get this on our website we'reintherockies.com please go check it out if you want to have a great trip to glacier national park and have an efficient game plan one that's also flexible based on your situation your age your family if you've got a big family if you're older and retired and you don't like to hike as much or if you're somebody who does like to hike maybe you have a higher budget you can eat at some of these higher end places maybe lower budget some of the lower end places we've got you covered you need a game plan for glacier national park and have a very similar amazing vacation what we just had