Everyone,

Yesterday morning I stopped in at the ranger station information desk and learned a couple of things. The park shuttles stopped running after Labor Day is one -- and the other was a recommendation to head to the Many Glacier section of the park.

I had never been to that part of the park and, for no particular reason, hadn't really thought about visiting there. It is farther north than the Going-to-the-Sun Road and is accessible only from the east side of the park; I am staying south and west of the park.

The ranger was very helpful and she seemed to think that was just the place I should visit after I told her what I was looking to find. I drove across the park -- which took quite a while with the construction and heavy traffic -- and found my way to the Many Glacier area.

I decided to do the the Iceberg Lake Trail and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I saw Ptarmigan Falls and Iceberg Lake and took plenty of pictures of both. Those are posted at http://www.dave-tech.com/f/IcebergLake and there are more in the general Glacier section ( http://www.dave-tech.com/f/DaveTour2007T2Glacier ) from my drive through the park in the morning, too.

It was much hotter on the trail (74 at the trailhead) than I had expected. It was 50 up at Logan Pass and even cooler on the approach -- but I think part of what threw me off was that I was coming in from the shaded west side and I hadn't realized how much warmer it would be on the sunny east side of the mountains.

The route I took was about 10 miles round trip and had about 1200 feet of elevation change -- this last item is taken from a hiking website I found this morning. I was surprised at how tired I was after the hike because the elevation change was deceptive and I had not thought I had climbed very much. Now that I know I climbed over 1200' it makes more sense that I felt like I had gotten a good workout.

Today I plan to head back over to Many Glacier and hike the Grinnell Glacier trail, as recommended by the ranger yesterday. During the Iceberg hike I heard people talking about the Grinnell trail and the glacier that you see there so it just confirmed that it was the one to do next.

I'm now staying in Kalispell and have taken the room for three nights so it's possible I'll just spend the rest of my trip here -- but that is far from certain. I'll see how I feel after another day (and night) here and then make up my mind.

Ramblin' Dave