Avalanche Lake

 (Jack)

Today started off as it usually does.   At 6:15 dad, our chief morning guy, woke us up to a song, tickling, and poking.   He also pulled our blankets and covers off, leaving us exposed to the cold Montana morning. We groggily pulled on clothes, ate a quick breakfast that is now no more than a memory, and stumbled down to the transit center to wait for a bus to pick us up and take us to the Avalanche Creek stop. We arrived at Avalanche campground with a half hour to wait for the ranger program, so we wandered down to the lakeside, where we disturbed a stranger doing tai chi by the creek. 

Shortly, we met the ranger and set off with a group of 25 on the ranger guided ranger tour up to Avalanche Lake. It was a 4 mile round trip hike, easy, well shaded and comfortable.   We hiked through the only cedar/hemlock forest in the entire park and it was scenic and fun.   Some of the trees were 13 feet in diameter and 500 yrs. old.  The ranger wasn’t very personable which was lame, and I made a mental note to not be like that when I work at Glacier later in life.  It took us 2 and ½ hours to get the 2 miles up to the lake, due to frequent educational stops by the ranger where she told us about the ecology and geology of the area where we were hiking.  When we got to the lake, we ate our picnic on some rocks overlooking the back of BearHat Mountain.  It was really pretty and there were many waterfalls up on the peaks which surrounded us.  When we hiked back down we did it without the ranger, and the crowd, and it took less than 40 minutes.  

When we got home we relaxed and went into the village area again.  When we came back, there was an old man measuring out our campsite to see if his 36ft rig would fit. Then he asked all these questions about when we were leaving because it’s first come, first serve in Apgar campground and he wants to grab our site when we leave tomorrow.  It reminded me of that grouchy relative that we all hear about, waiting for you to die so they can get your money.   

Today ended as it usually does.  Dad just won our nightly round of National Parks Monopoly, and we are settling in for the night.  Maybe we will even hear the bagpipes again – somewhere in the campground a bagpipe master entertained us with some great music last night.  It was pretty cool.