Glacier National Park Photo Trip Report

Glacier National Park, established as a national park in 1910, is considered Crown of the Continent. Early in the park’s history, the Great Northern Railway tried to brand Glacier as the Little Switzerland of the United States. They constructed lodges and remote mountain chalets throughout the park. The Going-to-the-Sun Road, completed in 1932, is one of the greatest mountain road drives in the world. The scenery feels stunning, breathtaking and unfathomable. It’s a photographer’s dream or a photographer’s nightmare. There are so many good views and compositions, it is hard to know what to settle upon or where to be or when to be and it’s easy to second guess, especially when the weather is unsettled and constantly changing.

Glacier National Park Photo Trip

In mid-September of this year, I spent about a week camping in Glacier National Park on a photography trip. I wanted to figure out where I had backpacked in the park about 13 years ago — I kept no notes and couldn’t remember — and I wanted to visit some of the places I visited on a past visit and see new locations. Unfortunately, wildfires closed the Going-to-the-Sun Road at Logan pass and I stayed on the east side of the park at the NPS St. Mary Campground. That meant I couldn’t return to places I had stayed on the western side of the park without a several hour drive around the southern edge of the park. Wildfires presented only one of the challenges of the trip; terrible weather was the other. It rained, sleeted, socked us in with fog and almost every sunrise and sunset went blah.

But, I managed to hike to Hidden Lake, Redrock Falls, visit Many Glacier several times and take some time to go to Two Medicine. I took 1,700-ish total shots over the week I was there. I’ve only spent about 4 hours working through images from Glacier National Park, but I’ve found about 30 or 40 that I consider worthwhile. I try to shoot for 5 good images a day, so I did well enough.

Backpacking Shots from the Last Visit

Below are a few images from the trip, but first a few backpacking images from 13 years ago.

The Fire

Here’s a shot of the fire that closed the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

St. Mary and Going-to-the Sun Road Photos

The shot from this collection that I most want to revisit is the strange-looking, spherical rock on St. Mary Lake. This is an ideal foreground for the shots that I like to take. I just didn’t get a good sunset there and didn’t want to return every night (thankfully I didn’t, because every sunset was terrible). In many of these shots, I was working with layers and the type of composition seen in ukiyo-e prints. The fog, clouds and layers of ridges helped build the depth into the scenes that you’d see in that style of wood block printing. Glacier National Park seems ideal to explore that style of composition. When I go back, I hope to have similar conditions to be able to continue to explore this idea.

Many Glacier in Glacier National Park

I spent several days in the Many Glacier area. I was captivated by the old hotel there (awesome breakfast!) and loved the Swiftcurrent Trail. I shot several panos there. My biggest disappointment was I shot the hotel pano handheld and one of the images isn’t all that sharp. I’m including it here for memories. Next time, I’ll need to reshoot that shot. I really wanted to get a sunrise at Grinnell Point, but the two mornings I was there were overcast (on one it was low-hanging fog so I missed an amazing sunrise from Logan’s Pass). I shot a sunset at Fishercap Lake. Lots of people were there hoping to see a moose. The moose didn’t show up. I shot a pano there and decided to include the people in the shot. The waterfall is Redrock Falls. I used the new Singh-Ray Bryan Hansel Waterfall Polarizer on the falls there (p.s. if you are a photo workshop student, you get 10% off on the polarizer. Drop me an email for the secret code). The other shots were taken when hiking as the sky started to clear. That usually happened and we usually had blue skies for an hour or two midday. The landscape here felt more intimate and lead to being able to include foregrounds in the shots.

Two Medicine Area

We briefly visited Two Medicine and fell in love. We also recognized it as the location that we had gone backpacking. While we didn’t stay there long, because I also wanted to visit the East Glacier hotel we did get a chance to see perfect reflections in Pray Lake and we hiked to Running Eagle Falls, which at lower water levels come out of a rock cave. The story of how the falls got their name was an interesting one. The person they are named after broke cultural norms and succeeded (excelled) in an opposite gender role. When she passed away, the tribe buried her somewhere above the falls and named the falls after her. I found the story interesting because it represented the celebration of a breaking a taboo, which isn’t a common cultural theme. Usually, the breaking of taboo is met with resistance and when it does happen it can bring in new cultural norms. In this case, it didn’t sound like the norms were changed, but it was still celebrated. The story is also true. Keep in mind that I read the story on a sign, so I’m analyzing it off-the-cuff.

Despite the challenges of weather and fire, the trip felt successful. I can’t wait to get back into this park and spend more time exploring the wilderness. While I haven’t backpacked in about a decade, this park might get me interested enough in backcountry backpacking to get out the old pack and go on a long hike. Glacier National Park was a worth photography destination, and I will be back.