Day 67, Sunday, August 21, 2005

Finally got in a hiking day today. However, prior to hiking I went down the road from the campsite to get some pictures of the Many Glacier area. The only way to get good pictures of the valley is to take them in the morning. Afternoon brings really photographically unfriendly shadows to the entire valley.
For my hike, I went up to Grinnel Glacier at 13 mile round trip hike from my campsite. As you can see from my pictures, the hike up was beautiful and resplendent with obvious signs of glaciation. At the top of the hike, at the base of the glacier, there’s a decent sized turquoise glacial run-off lake. The water in the lake is interesting because it’s so silty that it feels soapy and slimy. Definitely not the water quality I’d want to take a dip in, even if the lake weren’t just above freezing. The glacier itself is not what I’d been expecting. Grinnel Glacier is in its last throws on its death bed. It has shrunken drastically over the last century or so and at the current rate of recession, won’t be around that much longer. Tomorrow, I think I’ll hike over to Iceberg Lake. It’s supposed to be a pretty strenuous hike, which I look forward to.
Also, I’m thinking about altering my course through Canada in order to swing by Calgary and visit Banff National Park. I’ve heard a few people recommend it and the route up to it isn’t that much longer than the zig-zag route I’d planned across the bottom of BC. We’ll see. I guess it’ll all depend on how I feel on Tuesday morning.