Holy smokes is Glacier National Park a hopping place this summer!!! For whatever the reason – economy, passports, cheaper gas – the park was the busiest we’ve ever seen it. Campgrounds filling before 8:00am, the Logan Pass parking lot resembled a Walmart during a Boxing Day blitz, and all the Going-to-the-Sun Road required was a traffic helicopter to sort out the string of congestion undulating up and down the mountain.

We’ve posted many times that we consider Montana’s Glacier National Park a little piece of heaven that the rest of the world has yet to rediscover… well not any more. But as we’ve said before, leave the road and the magic that Glacier has to offer – the alpine regions, the abundant wildlife, and yes even solitude, await those willing to put in a little sweat equity and follow the path before them leaving the chaos behind for a few hours.

Case in point – Many Glacier’s Swiftcurrent Pass Trail. Enlarge the photo above (go ahead click on it)… other than myself how many people do you see? (Cameo’s the photographer). Well that’s the point; despite the hordes that have descended upon Glacier National Park this summer the trails were empty. For seven and a half hours – 27 kilometers (~ 17 miles) and a little more than a kilometer (~ 3560 feet) of elevation gain in effort – we met maybe a dozen like-minded parties during the day the majority of which were either on the flats in the Redrock/Bullhead Lake area or coming down from having spent the night at the Granite Park Chalet. We met only one other couple on past Swiftcurrent pass hiking up to the watchtower. Ascending the pass we pretty much had anything beyond Bullhead Lake to ourselves for the entire day – grizzlies, moose, ptarmigan and golden mantled ground squirrels were our companions.

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