Waddup
Hope today has been a great day for all of you.
Today I wanted to share with you the incredible experience my brother, dad, and I had in Glacier National Park. Specifically in Logan Pass, a section in the eastern part of Glacier NP.
All of the pictures below were edited to look as close to film photos as possible. I have a very real love for the look and feel of film, but have never been able to actually buy one for myself. So instead I am going to pretend these were taken on a film camera, with the character of the photos and story as a whole greatly enhanced (in my view).
One morning, back in the good ol' summer of '17, we set out to hike up Mount Oberlin. It's a relatively small mountain, measuring at 8,179 feet, but the adventure itself felt big.
The drive up to trailhead is nothing less than gorgeous. Everywhere you look there are rock behemoths and flowing cascades.
The path up to the peak of the mountain is not exactly a traditional trail. Although there is a very rough "path", the trail is not maintained, and most of the path has to be marked by cairns. If you don't have a keen eye that is able to spot small cairns marking the direction you should walk, it can be very easy to get lost.
It took us a while to find the beginning of the trail, mainly because there isn't any actual markings that tell of a trail. Unless you know what to look for, there's no way anyone would realize there was any hike to the mountain. We were quite confused at first because when we finally found the start, there was a rope across it. We don't give up that easily, however, so we crossed the barrier, feeling rebellious ;-)
The hike itself is absolutely gorgeous. I found myself smiling the entire time, not for any reason other than being glad that I was there, enjoying the natural features of Northern Montana.
As you may have seen in a couple of the above photos, there was still some snow on the ground even though it was the middle of July. I wasn't entirely surprised, considering how high in elevation we were, though it also made for a bit of challenge. I hadn't planned for trekking through snow, so I was wearing my Chacos (hiking sandals, basically). This decision proved to stab me in the back, for I had to walk through very cold snow in nearly bare feet. No worries! I still had a great time, even though I lost feeling in all of my toes.
After a while of trudging through the slippery snow, we crested what felt like the top of a hill. Personally, I was pretty relieved to be out of the steep snowy part of the hike. But when we took a look around, we noticed that we were actually walking along the ridge of the mountain! It was truly a surreal experience. That has always been one of my goals in life, and there I found myself completing it unintentionally.
Right as we stepped foot on the top of the mountain, I felt an immediate sense of peace. All around us, 360 degrees, were magnificent views, unparalleled in anything I had seen before. We sat up there for a while, soaking it all in, not really wanting to leave. We were completely alone up there, besides the few chubby chipmunks that peeked their heads up at us every once in a while.
Here's a quick little gif of the views we had up there.
From the top we could see that the formation we were standing on was part of a bigger formation that almost looked like a bowl.
Eventually we had to head down (sadly). It was a fairly smooth trip, other than having to turn back to find my brother's phone that he lost at the top... we never found it.
When we were close to the end of the hike, we passed multiple other groups of people that were headed up to the top. We made sure to let them know how worth it the trek was.
I really appreciate you taking the time to read about our hike to the top of Mount Oberlin! If you want to stay updated on all of my future travels around the U.S. and Canada, make sure to follow me! I'll be posting many more adventures, hopefully allowing you all to live through them with me.
Peace :-)
!steemitworldmap 48.704106 lat -113.736807 long Glacier National Park (Mount Oberlin) D3SCR