Iceberg Straight Ahead!

After worship and a quick supper last night (June 28), we went back down to Fishercap Lake to see if we could spot a moose. We decided to walk to the other end of the lake to get a better view of an area where we thought a moose was likely to show up. Of course, as soon as we got to the end of the lake, a moose appeared all the way at the other end where we were to begin with. So, we started walking back toward the moose, who seemed pretty content to eat the willows on the bank. We think it was an adolescent bull moose, because he had a little bell hanging down from his neck. No antlers yet, but we’re 75% sure it was a bull. As we were waling toward the moose, he made his way into the water and started eating the plants off the bottom. The rangers told us that moose were excellent swimmers and could even dive up to 20 feet to the bottom to get vegetation. This lake is pretty shallow so he just had to stick his head down in the water, but it was still cool to watch. He kept coming closer and closer to us, and we got to see him up close. Apparently, we were standing where he wanted to go up the bank into the forest, so he stopped and rose up a bit on his hind legs. It wasn’t overly aggressive, but we got the message and moved off the bank into the woods and sure enough he moved right where we were into the woods. So the two times we’ve been scared of animals on this trip haven’t been by bear or mountain lion, it’s been buffalo and moose.


We woke up Monday and decided to go on one of the most popular hikes at Glacier National Park. It’s a 10 mile round trip hike up to Iceberg Lake. I know what you’re thinking: 10 miles Wow! It wasn’t that bad, although we were pretty worthless for the rest of the day. The hike was ranger led, so a ranger led us through the trail and stopped occasionally to talk about flowers or the geology of the park. It was very interesting. We met a couple our age from the Chapel Hill area on the hike, as well as a couples from Virginia and Tennessee that knew a lot of the same places that I have lived. A young boy named Dwight who was going to be a junior next year in high school attached himself to me about halfway to the lake and he was on my hip pretty much the rest of the hike. I gave him half of my sandwich at lunch and he followed us all the way down the mountain, too. He was a good kid and was pretty knowledgeable of the terrain, since he was from Canada and only about 2 hours away.


Back to the hike. The hike starts close to where we were camping and climbs 1,100 feet of 5 miles to Iceberg Lake. The start was pretty intense, but after that, it was a pretty gradual climb. We saw a lot of mountain wildflowers and even where a black bear had climbed up a tree. The only wildlife we saw were some mountain goats from pretty far away, but we could still see them with the naked eye, so we counted mountain goats in our animals seen list. There were a lot of areas the ranger showed us that were avalanche areas. It was easy to see where the trees had been knocked over. The flower below is a glacial lily. It only bloomed the higher you got. Kate got some great shots of it and a lot of other flowers. I’ll try to get pics of those posted later.



We got to the lake after about 4 hours of hiking. The trail was still covered by snow in several spots so we had to hike through snow for quite a bit of the last mile of the trail. The weather was gorgeous. It was about 78 or so and perfect. It was funny to me to be hiking over snow covered fields while wearing shorts and a t-shirt. When we got to the lake, it was amazing. It’s called Iceberg Lake because it has ice on it most of the year. It even has icebergs floating in it. It’s in a natural amphitheater that the glaciers carved out during the ice ages. The pictures of it don’t do it justice. It’s another one of those sites around here that you have to see for yourself. It took us about 4 and a half hours to get to the lake, but only 2 hours to get back down. We hiked down with a couple from Abingdon, VA and we were both setting blistering paces down the mountain. It was a really fun hike, but we were glad for it to be over, too. We had a little huckleberry ice cream to reward ourselves for a 10 mile hike.


We came back to camp and crashed pretty hard. I took a pretty long nap and Kate worked in her journal. Around 5:30 we went to take some long overdue showers. I really enjoy showering a lot more when I can only get one every 4 or 5 days. After showers we ate a quick supper then went back down to Fishercap Lake to see if we could find the elusive bull moose that we know is there but haven’t seen yet. We got down there but no bull moose. The same cow from the other day was there, but no bull. There were a lot of people, so we didn’t stick around long. We did see a porcupine, though, which we weren’t expecting to see on the trip so that was good. We came back to camp and played a little UNO. Kate is thoroughly destroying me now. She’s opened up her lead to 16-11 and I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up. After some writing we called it a night.

~Andy