Glacier National Park, just 26 miles from Whitefish, offers a stunning ice-carved terrain with jutting peaks, spectacular hanging valleys, imposing glaciers, more than 200 lakes, waterfalls and thick forests covering 1.2-million acres. Wildlife abounds! Deer are among the most common, but elk, moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, wolves, grizzly and black bears, bald eagles, mountain lions and marmots also make frequent appearances.
The Going-to-the-Sun Road is a stunning 52-mile, paved, two-lane highway that bisects the park from east and west. It is the width of Glacier, crossing the Continental Divide at 6,646-foot-high Logan Pass. The highway offers mind-boggling views of glacial lakes, cedar forests and alpine tundra along the top of the pass. There are several scenic viewpoints and pullouts, providing motorists with numerous photo opportunities. Traditionally, the Going-to-the-Sun Road opens sometime during the first two weeks in June. The earliest opening date is May 16 and the latest opening date is June 23. The rest of the park is open year round for camping, hiking, mountain biking and so much more.
If you’re interested in architectural wonders, don’t miss the Glacier Park Lodge, which was built by the Great Northern Railway in the early part of the 20th century. The site was purchased from the Piegan, a tribe of the Blackfoot Nation, who called the lodge “Omahkoyis,” which means Big Lodge because of the huge fir and cedar columns used to construct it. They had a right to be impressed because there is no other building like it in the world. The enormous Douglas Fir timbers, which support the lodge, were probably five to eight hundred years old when they were cut and measure thirty-six to forty-two inches in diameter.
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