Following up from the Highline Trail/Granite Park Chalet adventure on Thursday, we decided to take the Highline Trail back to our vehicle on Friday morning. The original plan was to take the Loop Trail, which is only about 4 miles all downhill, to a shuttle stop in order to get back to Phil’s truck. However, from what I read, the Loop Trail doesn’t have much of a view and is basically there just to get from point A to point B. (That’s the trail they use to bring up pack mules with supplies to the chalet.) Since the Highline Trail was so beautiful, we decided to hike it (about 7.5 miles and over 1,000 feet elevation gain) back. I honestly thought it might be easier the second time around, given that we were carrying less water and food, but nope, it was still a challenge with amazing views.
We successfully made it back to our vehicle – exhausted but happy with our adventure. The trail head for Hidden Lake, which was highly recommended, happened to leave from the same parking lot. Since parking is very limited and highly in demand there, we decided to go ahead and hike out to the Hidden Lake Overlook, rather than try to fight for parking later. It was only 1.5 miles out (3 miles round-trip), but it was definitely a push for me to get one foot in front of the other going uphill to the overlook. The lake view was rewarding, though, and we even got to see mountain goats en route.
We simply couldn’t hike anymore after that, so we drove to the western side of Glacier National Park along the Going-to-the-Sun road. We went up into the North Fork region, which is like what I imagine the Pacific Northwest to be – lusher, greener vegetation, moister (today at least), but clearly still recovering from a series of wildfires.
The North Fork region is less highly visited, more remote, harder to get to. You basically have to take dirt/gravel roads to get anywhere within the region. We went far enough up into North Fork to arrive at Polebridge, which is a tiny enclave with a general store and saloon in the middle of nowhere. We grabbed pizza for dinner before heading back to our campground, as it turned out to be a rainy afternoon and evening.
