Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Glacier National Park,

Whats the NF?

National Forest.

Or welfare hunting ground if you ask the Texans.

We were there in September.

The park is amazing.
Going to the sun road is awesome the first two times.
Trail of the Cedars is an easy hike and turned out to be my favorite.
People are everywhere.
There is no parking.
Plan on getting anywhere you want to go before sunrise. We got to the parking lot for Hidden Lake a half hour before sunrise and the lot was half full. An hour later people were being turned away and it was still like that hours later.

Peasant.

This^^^^^^^^

More than one rental vehicle has sat alongside the North Fork with their second flat tire. All in pursuit of the elusive cinnamon roll baked by the most recent owner of the Polebridge Merc.

Much like Yellowstone, there are things in Glacier that you can't see anywhere else. Anything on the west side of glacier is a massive clusterfugk. Any trailhead coming off Logan's Pass, is a clusterfugk.

Many Glacier and all of its day hikes will be remembered forever.

I'm not guessing.

Oh, and taking your adult male children somewhere is not a "family vacation" LOL.

If you want to check out Glacier year round ,there are 4 or 5 or more up to date web cams in the park.
Just go to Montana Live cams on Bigskyfishing .com and most all of the cameras in the state including the highway cams are listed.
Most are up to the minute cams, but the ones in Glacier are the best.

You won't regret looking at https://www.bigskyfishing.com/montana-web-cams/

You're welcome,

Paisano to you hombre.

Also, they posted something on Instagram about significant road closures this summer. I’d definitely check on that.

Swiftcurrent Motor Inn.

And you can thru hike with a backcountry pass (easily acquired) and the shuttle will take you from Logan's back to Many Glacier.

They are gonna go right by Sleeping Buffalo.


Not saying that the park is not nice. I guess I was there years ago.......was probably okay. There was some dumbass goat that got a lot of attention from a lot of dumbass tourists.


Especially if you like everything to look like the thing you just saw.......and like being around 400,000 people who want to just "get away"..............


Just saying..........throw some cash out the window as you go by. The local food bank could use a little spending bread..............

I stopped at sleeping buffalo to go pee.... it was awesome, the tourist didn't even seem to mind.... oh wait , nobody was around..... wish they would put a bathroom in...

Well that's really nice, just like being in the city, you can catch a shuttle and go do anything if you have a permission pass. But then I'd suppose it'd be a good idea since......



That's sweet, being the entire state of Montana has a population of 1,086,759 as of 2020 it's like double the population base crammed into one spot with a single two lane road to cruise around on...

Different strokes for different folks..I guess



image complements of Glacier NPS website page on dealing with crowds

Oh yeah, and about those park bears...................

Surviving a Grizzly Attack in Glacier National Park

On August 25, 2005, Johan Otter and his 18-year-old daughter, Jenna, hiked right into the worst nightmare of any Glacier National Park backpacker: a 300-pound mother grizzly protecting two cubs. Here, in his own words, the 45-year-old physical therapist from Escondido, CA, shares the incredible story of their life-and-death struggle.

Jenna saw the grizzly a second or two before I did. We were on the Grinnell Glacier Trail, and there was a 20-foot-tall boulder sticking out. Jenna was about to walk around it when the bear turned the corner.

She could've reached out and touched its snout. It was within 5 feet of her, and she could see that it had two cubs. Jenna's first response was to run away. She took about two steps back toward me. I was still walking up, unaware of what was happening–until she shouted, "Oh no!"

The first thing I saw was this big furry thing. It was running straight at me. I remember the fangs and the claws. I never even saw the cubs.

I instinctively stepped in front of Jenna. My response was just to stand my ground and not move.

The bear immediately went for my left thigh: whomp, bite. It mouthed right in. I looked down at what was happening; it was just surreal. At first I thought, what is that: a big badger? Then I thought: No, it's a bear. Some weird thoughts were running through my mind. Like that the bear was not as big as I might have imagined. Then it bit me again in the leg.

We had driven to Glacier from Escondido to celebrate Jenna's high school graduation. She was getting ready to go off to the University of California at Irvine in a few weeks.

The two of us were pretty serious hikers. We'd often do 10-milers with my wife and younger daughter, then Jenna and I'd go a bit farther. She danced and was really fit, and I was a marathoner. Our goal for this trip was to really go for it.

This day, we decided to hike to Grinnell Glacier; it's about 11 miles round-trip.
We were talking loud. I'd been taking my time filming a golden eagle, but Jenna kept nudging me to keep on pace. We were hoping to hike to Iceberg Lake later that afternoon.

After the bear bit me, I didn't fight back. I couldn't. There wasn't half a second. It was just impact. Plus, I got thrown off my feet. I knew the smartest tactic was to get into the fetal position, but there was no time. And then I thought: Shoot, my vital organs are totally exposed.

The bear was throwing me around. I looked down the trail and decided the best thing to do was to get myself off the slope. And that's what I did. I ripped my body free from its jaws and then rolled down a steep embankment over rocks and bushes. I tumbled about 20 feet.

I came to a stop and took a breath. Then the realization came: OK, I'm here. There's no bear, there's no Jenna. Those two are together. That's not good.

I was carrying a daypack with a camera, water, and snacks. There had been bear spray in the loose mesh side pocket, but it was knocked out of my pack when the grizzly first struck.

It's unbelievable how fast grizzlies barrel up and down slopes. I went into a fetal position, and the bear latched onto my pack, lifting me up and down like I weighed nothing. I'm 6 foot 1 and 185 pounds.

When a grizzly attacks, it doesn't bite, hold on, then shake back and forth like a dog. It bites and pulls away, bites and pulls away.
Half the time I was in its mouth, and I could see what it was doing, that it was pulling my flesh, but there was no pain. I could also see blood, though, and I knew it was bad.

I decided to throw myself away from it again, and I fell another 30 feet. I didn't time my fall–I just jerked away. I landed face-up, which wasn't ideal, but you can't plan these things. The bear got right back on top of me, so I grabbed it by the throat. I was facing it. Holding onto it. It was one big block of muscle that I knew I couldn't control. This animal was incredibly strong.

I grabbed a rock because I recalled hearing that if you hit a bear's nose, sometimes it will back off. At this point, I still didn't know there were cubs. Grizzlies aren't usually interested in people as food.
So I curled back into protective mode, but this time it got more aggressive, gnawing and scratching my head. It felt like a dog digging for a bone. It was also biting my right arm.

I was face-to-face with the grizzly for about 3 to 5 minutes, but I don't remember what it smelled like. I don't recall any sounds, any grunting or growling.
The turning point was when I felt a tooth going into the bottom of my skull at the nape of my neck. When it went in, I heard a cracking sound and felt a lot of pressure. Then it hit me: Yes, I'm keeping this thing with me, but I'm going to be dead soon. So I thought, I need to get out of this situation. I launched myself downhill again and fell another 20 feet. I stopped in a rock chute on the edge of a cliff. My feet were strongly planted on rocks, my back into the mountain, and there were two rock outcroppings above me. Below me, there was a drop of several hundred feet.

The bear came down and just looked at me. I didn't move or make a sound. Maybe it thought I was dead. I was sitting there preparing to kick it off the mountain if it came after me again. I wasn't in a vulnerable position, even though I was really banged up. Honestly, I don't know if I could ever kick a bear off a mountain, but I was prepared to try. Instead it looked down at me and walked away. I never saw it again.

Then I heard Jenna scream. That was the worst sound I've ever heard.

The bear had gone back to Jenna. When it lunged at her, she extended her hands and grabbed it around the throat. I think that was when Jenna realized she needed to play dead instead. She quickly curled up in the fetal position. The bear bit her face and then her shoulder. She didn't flinch. It finally gave up and left, probably to retrieve its cubs.

After her initial scream, I didn't hear anything more, so I figured the bear wasn't on her. But I didn't make a sound myself for fear that it would turn back to me. At this point, I couldn't do anything to help Jenna, because I was pretty beaten up. I assessed my wounds. I didn't see any arterial bleeds, but when I touched the top of my head, I felt nothing but bone. I covered my left eye to find out if I could see anything out of my right eye, which had been clawed, and I managed to make out Grinnell Lake.

I waited a little longer, then I yelled for Jenna. She called back immediately. And her voice was strong. That was the best sound I've ever heard.

After Jenna fell, she had crawled under some bushes and next to a rock for some protection. We were about 30 feet apart. The first thing I asked when I called to her was how her eyes were. Fine, she said, but she had wounds on her face and her shoulder.

I crawled to a ledge, leaving my backpack and a trail of blood behind. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head, just to cover up my scalp so people wouldn't have to see me. A ranger told me afterwards that I actually created a seal to stop the bleeding.

Jenna and I were only 30 feet apart, but we were too weak to get to each other. And later, when the rescuers came, they didn't want to move us. So I didn't see Jenna until after my surgery more than a week later. But that was a good thing. When I saw pictures of how I looked, it was bad. I was covered in blood, and you could see my skull.

For the next 45 minutes, we yelled for help.

I don't remember much until a guy came sliding down the mountain with his eyes wide open. His wife ran back down the trail and eventually found a ranger-led group on its way to the glacier. That ranger radioed for help.

It was a long 2 hours before medical personnel reached us. During the wait, more hikers stopped. Two boys retrieved my backpack and camera. Others covered us up with their jackets. We were bloody, but they didn't care.

My blood pressure dropped to 80/30, and I lost about half of my blood. An artery going through my scalp was torn. But pain was not an issue. Yes, I was hurting, but it wasn't something I concentrated on. I was just so happy to see people.

I was taken to Kalispell Regional Medical Center, where x-rays revealed I'd broken my neck in three places and needed to be kept still. An hour later, I was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and went right into 7 hours of surgery. Jenna stayed in Kalispell, where a physician who's world-renowned for treating bear bites worked on her. There are exotic parasites that live in a bear's mouth that could have killed us. Somehow, neither of us got an infection.

My list of injuries was long. About 60 percent of my head was "de-gloved"–the bear essentially took my scalp off. Its claw fractured my right eye socket and disrupted an eye muscle. One bite snapped my right wrist. I also broke my nose and two vertebrae; I had a compound fracture of my second cervical vertebra; I had bite wounds all over; I ruptured my left biceps; and I had lacerations on my thighs and shins.

Jenna broke her back in two places, but they were stable fractures–meaning they were in place and wouldn't easily move. She had two big bites. One was from the corner of her mouth to the top of her head, and the other was on her right shoulder. She also lacerated her ankle nearly down to the Achilles tendon when she fell.

People have asked me how I feel about bears after the attack. Well, I don't find them as cute as I used to.

https://www.backpacker.com/survival...-grizzly-attack-in-glacier-national-park

yes.

You're saying, Focus on Glacial National Park, and avoid wasting to much time trying to learn the personality and size of the surrounding National Forest?

How do you get back from one of those rafting trips?

A wingsuit?

And you don't have to take a shuttle. It's just available in places like the park if a person doesn't care to hike the same ground twice.

Geez, Makes me pause on going at the time were thinking of going.

Last year the Many Glacier area would be closed off completely (unless you had.a reservation for a boat tour or guided hike) due to gridlock.

The road construction is expanding this summer. Here’s a link to some areas affected.

https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/manyglacier.htm