The “We are turning/have turned 50” adventure continued on Wednesday, July 19th, as Jason, Jerry, Jim and I prepared to head south from the area around Jasper National Park in Alberta to a house close to Glacier National Park in Montana. We loaded up our rental car, a BMW SUV, to leave our house in Hinton, just east of Jasper. Packing was a close call.

Making packing more of a challenge was the fact that I couldn’t find my wallet on the morning of our departure, and I unpacked and repacked much of my stuff before recalling that I had left the wallet at a beer, wine, and liquor store the night before. Recovering the wallet gave us a late start, but we decided to take the more scenic route south by driving down Icefields Parkway anyway. By the time we stopped in Banff for our mandatory afternoon caffeine fix, it was overrun with tourists.

We eventually escaped the crowds and wound our way south and east to Aetna, Alberta, about three hours south of Calgary. That journey took long enough that we had to bail on our plans to eat dinner in Waterton, and in order to get to our house as early as we could, we went to Subway, home of the Canuck Classic.

Around 9pm, we pulled up at our rental house, on a literal farm.

While we had our doubts about renting a house in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, our farmhouse Airbnb ended up being the best of the three houses that we stayed in during the trip. Plus, it was on the east side of Glacier National Park, which made it quick and easy for us to get to Many Glacier and the St. Mary’s portions of the park; we could get to the eastern side of Glacier National Park maybe an hour and a half faster than if we had stayed in Western Montana. Because we were staying just north of the Canadian/American border, the house was probably $400 a night cheaper than it would have been south of the border, which is crazy because the border crossing near Aetna was a breeze, even with Jerry responding to the customs agent’s “Are you transporting large amounts of cash currency” question with a laughing, ‘We wish!” And even after, on one crossing, when the border agent asked if we were bringing produce across the border, I responded “No” while a banana was sitting right beside me in plain sight.

We did have one problem to deal with as we were settling in to the house. During our drive south, we had gotten this message on our rental BMW.

This message can mean anything from the car has “minor wear and tear that may impact acceleration” to “the transmission is broken.” Rather than drive to the middle of Glacier National Park, where cell coverage is often non-existent, in a car where the transmission could fail at any time, we decided to trade the car in, complicating our day on Thursday. We had tickets for the Many Glacier boat at 11 am, but the closest rental car place was an hour north from where we were staying and two hours from the entrance to Glacier National Park. That meant we had to arrive at the rental place when they opened at 8am and then getting across the border and into Glacier by 10:30. Miraculously, we navigated all of that and made it to the Many Glacier Hotel with time to spare.

When we arrived at the hotel, there was a sign outside listing the local hikes, the distance of those hikes, and the elevation gain on the hikes. I had planned for us to hike to Grinnell Glacier, which is a 10 mile hike from the hotel. Our boat trip would cut the first three miles off of that hike, leaving us, I believed with a 7 mile hike that climbed around 1600 feet of elevation. The sign indicated, however, that the elevation gain was over 2400 feet, and it was ambiguous whether that was from the boat or from the hotel. After our Jasper hiking experiences, where hikes were in reality longer or more difficult than posted online, the sign set off a moment of panic for me. My rule for planning hikes has normally been to avoid any hike with 2000+ feet of elevation gain. But had I lost my mind and planned a hike with that kind of elevation gain? Were the AllTrails guides THAT far off for this hike? Was my inability to remember a side-effect of eating smuggled produce? There was no cell signal with which to double-check this information. This was not the only time the lack of access to the internet would cause us difficulty on this excursion, but at this time I chose to trust that my past self would not have screwed over our present selves with 2400 feet of elevation gain.

At 11am, we loaded onto the boat and crossed the first lake, Swiftcurrent Lake.

Once across lake number one, we disembarked, walked over a hill for about .2 miles, and got on a second boat at Lake Josephine.

During my earlier trips to Maine and New Hampshire, Laura had desperately wanted to see a moose with no luck. As we crossed the lakes, we saw a bull moose and then a mother with a child.

Our moose sightings led Jerry to wonder out loud on the boat what the plural of moose was. A lady on our boat had turned around upon hearing this and confidently announced that the plural of “moose” was “meese.” Jim, the greatest living champion of the English language, reigned in his righteous indignation at this trampling of the mother tongue and gently contradicted her, saying that he was pretty sure the plural of moose was also moose. The lady, just as confidently as before, overroad Jim, comparing “meese” as the plural of moose to “geese” as the plural of goose. Without access to the internet, we could not prove that she was wrong, but rest assured that in the very same instant that we regained access to the internet after the hike, Jim verified that the lady was totally incorrect. That led us to wonder: was she being sarcastic without sending social queues that could be considered the live equivalent of /s or the winking emoji? Was she actually serious, as Jim and Jerry both believed? And, if she was serious, how can we acquire her phone number, so that Jim can cold call her to lecture her about how she’s no better than President Harding, who recklessly introduced “normalcy” into the language, carelessly shouldering aside the proper term, “normality,” a step toward chaos that was probably responsible for the Great Depression.

The meese/moose controversy added to our anxieties early in the hike. Not only were we unsure about just how much elevation gain would be involved in this hike, but we weren’t sure how long we could endure the plague of biting flies in this part of Glacier.

The first 4-8 switchbacks of the Grinnell Glacier hike are grueling. It was more or less straight uphill, in the hot and intense sunlight, without much to see. Once again, I seriously wondered if I had made a mistake in selecting this hike. The very dry heat was punishing enough that people were huddled in the areas where there was actual shade, sharing the shade allotment with perfect strangers who were profusely sweating.

But then the trail leveled off a bit and we rounded a corner that gave us clear views of the bright blue Grinnell Lake. A cool breeze swept through the valley from the glacier.

From that point on, the hike was fantastic. The trail wrapped around the lake, offering views from multiple angles. The sun reflecting off the Grinnell Lake water created colors that we hadn’t seen since Lake Louise and Moraine Lake in Banff.

Don’t get me wrong; It was still a tough climb. But those climbs are easier when you can constantly see mountain vistas, glacier lakes, varieties of wildflowers, and massive rock structures.

Back when Laura, McKenna, and I had visited Glacier National Park, we had purchased a bear bell. The idea behind bear bells, which are designed to dangle from a backpack and ring while the backpack wearer walks, is that most violent encounters with bears typically occur when the bear is startled, so producing sound through talking or a bell is the safer way to hike in bear country. The section of Glacier that we were hiking through was known for its large grizzly population, and there was even more bear activity because it was berry season. One of the trails that we had considered hiking in another part of the park had been recently closed after a brown bear was seen walking along the trail. All of this data led Jason, Jerry, and Jim to encourage me to wear the bear bell, and I agreed that this seemed sensible, even on a popular trail like the Grinnell Glacier trail.

As it turned out, I could have done few things to anger our fellow hikers more than to wear a bear bell. The bell elicited comments like, “I thought the bell called the bears to dinner” and “I hear they always find those bells in bear droppings.” After one of these comments, I responded jokingly that I had considered bringing my bluetooth speaker instead. These speakers are notorious on hiking trails, and, if you hike long enough, you will inevitably encounter someone ruining the serenity of nature by blaring awful music, as we did near the end of the Grinnell Glacier hike. Like the “meese” lady, I must have forgotten to send out the /s social signal, because the two hikers I told this to thought I was serious and responded nonverbally with a visceral “UUUggghhhaaaarrggggghhhhhhh!”

The final part of the hike does turn brutal, with flights of big stone stairs asceding to the overlook of Grinnell Glacier. The knowledge that we were so close to the glacier at this point would have enabled us to push through this obstacle anyway, but added encouragement came from the people who were coming back down. The common bond of having come so far on a hot day led these strangers to call out as they were passing things like “Only three more switchbacks!” and “You are almost there!”

Finally it happened: we climbed the last stair and saw the glacier. It was such an inspiring sight that we chose to add onto the hike by walking down to the edge of the glacier.

It had been a long day, and we had missed our normal afternoon infusion of caffeine.

But after a snack by the cool glacier, we rallied.

We discovered on the hike that we were skewing the trail population older. Jim’s beard and the fact that he inexplicably wears reading glasses at all times apparently made him look particularly old to the younger population on the trail. A group of high school students passing us by the glacier thought it was so awesome that someone Jim’s age could complete the hike that they lined up and gave him fist bumps.

The rest of us clearly looked old as well. Around the time that I took the video below, we passed some children who exclaimed as we were passing, “Now there are old people in front of us AND behind us!”

Heading down the trail was much easier than climbing, and the views were just as spectacular. We could relive the “greatest hits” of the trail without worrying so much about heat stroke or heart failure. From this spot we could see Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine, which we had taken boats across, as well as Grinnell Lake.

Finally, we made it back to the boat dock at Lake Josephine. Including our addition of the hike down to the edge of the glacier, our hike was around 7.5 miles with 1800 feet of elevation gain. A guy in his thirties entering the trail looked at the group of us and said, “Survived your stress test, huh?” We can only hope that the man was trampled by a herd of angry meese. Back at the boat dock, we waited for the next boat to shuttle us back. When I planned the hike, I had been afraid that we would take too long on the hike and would miss the last return boat at 5:30, but as it turned out, we barely missed the 4:45 boat.

In a bit of good luck, a tour boat showed up a little after 5pm. Very few people were getting off the boat at this time of day, limiting seating, but we were close to the front of the line and were able to get on. Not everyone was pleased by our good luck in getting on the boat: one stranger on the boat thought we stunk so badly that she got off the boat holding her nose and only came back on at the last minute before the boat disembarked. It was a legitimate response. No deodorant on earth has been made to contain what we were putting out after 4.5 hours walking on steep trails on an 85 degree day spent in direct sun, and enough sweat had evaporated off of me that the salt left behind had formed a Rorschach pattern on my shirt.

The hike was amazing. If it wasn’t the best hike I have ever done, it was definitely in the top three. However, there was one casualty on the hike. Jerry’s boots, which had gone through several phases of superglue and duct tape repair, did not survive the combination of sharp rocks and flowing water on the trail. However, the boots did gain Jerry wide attention on the hike. People spotted us at the bottom, pointed at Jerry, and turned to their friends and relatives to day, “Hey, there’s the guy with the duct-taped shoes I was telling you about!”

Jerry ended up throwing the boots away, missing an opportunity to market his distinctive brand of battle-damaged hiking gear.

In spite of how grimy we were from the hike, we returned to the Many Glacier Hotel to eat dinner at the pub there.

We made it through dinner without anyone complaining about the stink that accompanied us, and the meal gave Jerry the chance to rehydrate by consuming roughly 57 glasses of water. Hydrated and full of cheesecake with Huckleberry sauce, we made it back to the farm Airbnb, where we were welcomed by the farm cat.

The next day, we knew we couldn’t hike a path as strenuous as the Grinnell Glacier hike, so we picked as a recovery hike the St. Mary and Virginia Falls Trail. The map provided at Glacier National Park listed the hike as a 3.2 mile round trip, in-and-out from the parking lot, with around 600 feet of elevation gain. By the time we arrived at the trailhead, the main lot was full, but there was parking in a nearby auxiliary lot. The trail begins with a walk through a burnt-out forest by St. Mary Lake.

About a mile in from the trailhead, we came to the first falls, the aqua colored St. Mary Falls.

The hike to St. Mary Falls is so easy that I was able to do it the first time I visited Glacier with McKenna and Laura. The falls are about 35 feet tall, but they seem less massive due to the two-tier drop.

Continuing from St. Mary, we encountered another waterfall, which seemed robust and noteworthy enough to deserve a name. We were briefly tricked into thinking it was Virginia Falls, but we realized it wasn’t far enough from the trailhead to be that waterfall.

Apparently, the waterfall didn’t merit a name, sandwiched as it was between two of the most famous waterfalls in the park.

In the defense of the waterfall-namers at Glacier, the next waterfall on the trail, Virginia Falls, was clearly more impressive than the intermediate, unnamed waterfall.

Virginia Falls is so high it is visible from the road. The main falls are about 50 feet high but there are also several lower cascades.

The scale of Virginia Falls was exciting, as was the fact that my shirt was on brand for the experience.

And Jerry, no longer having to worry about the state of his duct-tape repair on his boots, was now free to approach the water.

On the way back to the trailhead, we saw yet another moose, this time with its head underwater for quite some time. This led me to recall the story our boat pilot on Lake Josephine had relayed – that moose have a set of transparent eyelids that they can use as “goggles” to swim underwater. When I was in Maine, I also learned that moose are such great swimmers that they have been seen by fisherman diving into the ocean and swimming for a mile.

The centerpiece of Glacier National Park is the Going to the Sun Road, named after a mountain along the road. The road is so popular that Glacier has begun requiring road passes to access the road during most of the day. The passes are good for three days and they only cost $2, further driving up the demand. When the first batch of July road passes went on sale in the spring, I thought I was ready to make the purchase, logging on to Recreation.org at the proper time, but I failed to realize that I would need roughly the same level of preparation as people buying Taylor Swift tickets from Ticketmaster: the pass I added to my cart evaporated before I could pay for it. The park had additional July road passes that were released 24 hours ahead of time, and we were ready this time to bring an Eras Tour level of preparation. To ensure that we got one, we had 4-5 laptops and phones logged into Recreation.Org to buy the pass when new passes went on sale at 8am Mountain Time, and even then getting a pass was a close call. While I was successfully purchasing our pass, Jason was calling out how many passes remained: 600, then 150, 90, 24, 3, and 0, in around 20 minutes.

I had experienced the Going to the Sun Road during my earlier trip with Laura and McKenna, so I knew that we would absolutely want a pass for this trip. The road is best driven from west to east, and the most spectacular parts of the road come just after this tunnel.

After the tunnel, the road bends around a hairpin curve known as “the Loop” as it climbs the mountains. This was our view of the spot where we stopped to see the tunnel only a few minutes earlier.

As the road climbed upward and the dropoffs along the side of the road became more and more sheer, we were reassured by the secure guardrails.

I consider the Going to the Sun Road to be the best road experience in any National Park I have gone to. It is better than Skyline Drive in Shenandoah, better than the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park (although that road is close competition), better than the Park Loop Road in Acadia, and better than the Badlands Loop Road. The skyline with the mountains is consistently spectacular on the Going to the Sun Road, and I warned my companions that I would be stopping at 80% of the pull-offs as we drove through the park. Each one looked like a postcard.

Even with all of our stops at the many awesome Going to the Sun Road pulloffs, we exited the park with enough time to loop in the town of Waterton. You might be thinking that our group was drawn to Waterton because we were intrigued by stories of the historic Prince of Wales Hotel or maybe, given the preferences of our group, that we wanted to see where the cannibal episode of Last of Us had been filmed. But no, it was because we had seen the menu for Wieners of Waterton.

Unfortunately for us, other people had also seen the menu for Wieners of Waterton; or, possibly like us, they liked saying Wieners of Waterton. Whatever the reason, the line for Wieners of Waterton was really big and thick, making it too difficult to penetrate the opening of the restaurant, in spite of repeated efforts to just ram our way in. Frustrated and needing an outlet for our pent up desires, we went to our fallback restaurant, the Thirsty Bear, which provided much-needed release. Then, after our exertions, we relaxed at Waterton’s International Peace Park.

On our way out, we did stop by the Prince of Wales hotel, which overlooks the town of Waterton and the Upper Waterton Lakes. Apparently, the hotel was named after a Prince of Wales in order to get the 1927 Prince of Wales to stay there. The ploy failed.

Saturday, July 22 was the last day of our out-West adventure. The last hike we planned was the 5-ish mile Avalanche Lake Hike. This was a popular hike, routinely included on lists of the top ten hikes in Glacier, and the beginning of the trail is connected to the Trail of the Cedars, a kid-friendly, partially planked trail that is also very, very popular. All of this made finding a parking space a challenge. We gave the lots at the trailhead a shot, didn’t find anything, circled around and missed a spot by one car, and finally bailed and caught the shuttle. The shuttle from the Lake MacDonald Lodge was fairly quick, and by a little after 10am, we were on the Trail of the Cedars.

The Trail of the Cedars is an accessible, partly planked trail that loops around to a waterfall with the greenish-blue glacier-melt water. It has to be the easiest hike in the entire park. Just beyond the waterfall, the trail branches to the Avalanche Lake trail, climbing up to offer views of the canyon leading into the Trail of the Cedars Falls.

As we climbed, we walked through a forested area, which was nice on a day when the temperatures reached the upper 80’s.

To give you a sense of the scale of some of the trees in the forest, I grabbed two old people walking the trail.

Two miles after we took the branch from the Trail of the Cedars, we reached Avalanche Lake. The lake has an emerald green color from the snow and glacier melt, and it is nestled in a valley between the gigantic mountains of the park. The lake was chilly even in July, and water temperatures rarely breaking 60. So of course there were people swimming.

While I can’t recommend swimming, Avalanche Lake was a nice spot for activities that didn’t involve total water submergence.

The walk back from the lake was almost all downhill, making it the faster part by far. I got back to the Trail of the Cedars before Jim, Jason, and Jerry, and waited for them down there. In a comedy of errors, they somehow walked right past me, with both of us missing seeing each other.

When they didn’t find me at the beginning of the trail, Jerry hypothesized that I had gone back to pick up the car, which was a great idea that I never actually had. Finally, our wacky 1920’s-style movie mishaps concluded with me finding them at the shuttle stop and them being disappointed that Jerry’s version of me was so much smarter than the version that had shown up to ride the shuttle with them. Once we had the car, we were ready for one last ride down the Going to the Sun Road.

We left the park for the last time and headed to Calgary, where we were staying for the night before Jim, Jerry, and I departed the next day on a 10:30am flight. In Calgary, we ate at a restaurant that offered several varieties of poutine, giving Jim one last chance to sample the many forms of gravy that could be added to fries. Unfortunately, Jason only found this candidate for the ultimate poutine experience after we left.