I arrived in plenty of time for the hike and so did about ten other people - but not the ranger. We waited until about 9:20 and then set out on our own. The walk had a lot of uphills (mostly) and downhills (occasionally) and was quite pleasant. Since there was no ranger, it also afforded us more time to kibbitz with each other along the way. We put the person wearing the bear bells out in front, but we didn't see any bears. In the end, we did see a lovely little lake with mountains in the background. We all sat on a log and ate the lunches we had brought along and then hiked back.
I then got back on the shuttle continuing through the park to Logan Pass, one of the highpoints of the park both literally and figuratively. The temperature was in the low forties and there was a strong wind which made it even colder, but I was wearing a jacket, three long sleeve shirts, a short-sleeve shirt and a T-shirt, so it wasn't so bad. At one point it started to drizzle and I put on my rain poncho which also acted as a wind breaker. This walk was up a mountain with lots of switchbacks. There was open land around the path and beyond that very high mountains. At some points there were actually snow patches below me. Along the way I saw a marmot, which is sort of a cross between a prairie dog and a squirrel - very cute - but the real reward, in addition to all of the beautiful scenery, came at the end of the trail where there was a mountain goat just sitting on a hill not more than 30 yards from the trail. Some folks actually went up to within a few feet of the goat to take its picture; the goat didn't move. I guess it liked getting its picture taken.
After the hike there was an interesting ranger talk in the Visitors Center about the glaciers. Apparently they are fast disappearing and are expected to have melted completely in about 20 years. Also interesting, the ranger mentioned in passing, that the park rangers were only allowed to talk about this effect of global warming about two years ago. That would make it around the very end of the Bush administration. I must confess that I didn't actually get to see any glaciers in Glacier Park. They were all located almost a day's walk (round trip) from the main road, and since I had actually walked on a glacier in Alaska, I felt that I could pass on this, especially since I did a map check yesterday and found that I'm quite far behind schedule and probably won't get to see some of the things I had hoped to see. Ten weeks just isn't enough time for even a reasonably thorough trip across the US.
I then shuttled back to the Avalanche Lake shuttle stop. The temperature there was about 20 degrees warmer and it felt GOOD! From there I transferred to the shuttle back to my campground. On the shuttle I enjoyed a very pleasant talk with a man from Ireland who said he had lived in Philadelphia before his bank transferred him to New York. He was originally from Dublin and was working here for an Irish bank. I asked him if he would eventually go back to Ireland. He said, "No, I like it here very much." He has a green card and expects to get his American citizenship eventually.
In the evening I went to the amphitheater for a program of singing by a trio led by a Blackfoot Indian. He looked more like a sixties hippie, with a long ponytail, so I don't think he was 100% Blackfoot. The trio did songs related more or less to the environment and to Indian culture and it was quite pleasant. One of the songs was "The bear who stole the Chinook (West wind). At first I thought he was saying, "The bear who stole the shnook." "Oh my gosh," I thought. "A Jewish Blackfoot Indian!" but that was not the case.
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