Half Mtn Glacier Knob

It’s been a busy couple weeks. LOG 35 ended four days of activities yesterday with the driving school. Prior to that I was in Albuquerque on business. The day before I flew down there I hiked in the Park. Ten days, and this is my first opportunity to make a few notes and glance at the photos.

Saturday, August 15

I asked Ed if he wanted to take me to the top of the glacier knob attached to Half Mtn. This is knob #10 by his reckoning, He visited the top of all ten in one day a few years ago. This is my 4th, all with Ed’s guidance.

HalfMtnKnobMap

Our route: Up in red, down in blue

I left the house before six, picked up Ed by six thirty; we were through the Park gates before they were manned and to Bear Lake parking lot by 7:30. The lot was already three quarters full. It was another beautiful summer day in the Park – bright sunshine and a brilliant blue cloudless sky.

Ed had us off the trail and into the forest at his usual spot and visiting two officially unnamed ponds, “Zone Lake” and “Joyce’s Pond”. After crossing the main trail we had to cross Glacier Creek, which is fairly substantial here. We looked around for a few minutes before deciding to ford it. The water was cold and the rocks were slippery but it was an uneventful crossing. Once across we worked our way east to the base of a steep gully and to the bank of a small pond.

The base of the gully is a cone of talus. We took a short break at the top of the cone, where the route gets much steeper. Here we’re about two hundred feet above the valley floor and have a nice vista to the north. From here to nearly the top of the knob it’s a steep climb culminated with a scramble through a tunnel. We were on top of the knob by ten thirty.

IMG_9739s

East Glacier Knob on the left and the Mummy Range in the distance

I often say there are two kinds of hikes: those to summits and those to lakes. On summits, the views are incredible but everything is miles away. At most lakes in the Park, the scenery is dramatic, and up close. These knobs are a sort of hybrid – wide vistas but not miles from away.

IMG_9743_stitch_crop_resize

Glacier Gorge

We relaxed until noon or so before heading down the western slope. It’s a series of shelves. Navigation is generally a matter of finding the ramps from one to the next; ramps which are sometimes clogged with obstacles. After another short break at Mills Lake, we kept to the trail as far as Glacier Gorge junction, where we cut through the woods.

It was a nice hike. I’ll definitely do it again. Rather than make the steep climb, I’d take the trail to Mills Lake and go up the way we came down. I could be to the summit in half the time, trading variety for speed. But that would let me sit up there for three or four hours if I wanted.