Glacier

Far over the misty mountains cold...

Mountain hiking in Glacier National Park, BC:

Having a rest above the Illecillewaet glacier, after hiking up more than 1000 meters on a 3.5 km trail (that's steep!).

Life is hard for trees up here...

Nice views all around.

Resting in a heather meadow near the tree line.

A few of the 400 glaciers in the park.

My mountain girl.

Looking down on the Illecillewaet (Great) glacier

Mountain goats live up there!

One year after the completion of the CPR (see below), Glacier National Park was established and the railway company built a fancy hotel and brought in Swiss guides to establish trails and lead travelers onto the mountains and glaciers. In fact, Glacier was apparently the birth place of mountaineering in North America (i.e., the first place Europeans climbed mountains for fun). The hotel was eventually closed because the main attraction, the Great Glacier (now known as the  Illecillewaet Glacier), was shrinking. It has shrunk a full 2 km since the park opened. This shrinking was (at least until recently) caused by the end of a relatively cool period known as the Little Ice Age that lasted from about the mid-16th to mid-19th centuries. Today, there is a nice little campground (called Illecillewaet) near the mossy remains of the Glacier House lodge, and the trails laid out by the Swiss guides are still in use. The campground is beside the Illecillewaet river in a forest of spruce, subalpine fir, and hemlock. 

We spent the labour day long weekend (plus an extra couple days for Nici's birthday) exploring Glacier and Mount Revelstoke National Parks. We spent one of these days hiking up one of the trails in Glacier to a ridge overlooking the Illecillewaet glacier (the trail was called the Glacier Crest trail - I highly recommend it, if you don't mind a steep climb). From the top we could see glacier-capped mountains all around us. There is nothing quite like being on a mountain! That night in the campground, we couldn't hear anything but the trickle of the river and the wind in the trees and it felt like we were alone in the mountains. All of these photos are from the Glacier Crest trail, except the first and last, which are from other parts of Glacier National Park.   

(Camera: BeLOMO Vilia)