After a breakfast of pancakes, we drove up to Many Glacier for a day of hiking. Our “next door neighbor” at the KOA campground, a parole officer from Illinois, showed us pictures of the bears, bighorn sheep and moose they’d seen while hiking a trail there the day before.  Many Glacier has a reputation as being one of the most scenic areas as well.

As soon as we entered the park, we visited the Many Glacier campground to see if any open sites were available. Many of the national park campgrounds are “first-come, first-served” and we still held onto the notion of returning to dry camping within the park boundaries. Like sharks circling prey, we and perhaps five or six other campers looped through the campground trying to find the ideal spot. In the end, we decided not to stake out a site and turned our attention to hiking. The campground provided us with a view of one of the mountain peaks with large “A” of snow in it, which we dubbed “Asher Mountain.”

Shortly after exiting the campground, we saw a group of cars parked and people with cameras and phones and iPads scrambling across the road, over the weedy shoulder and through the ditch on the north side. Clearly wildlife was ahead which we expected to be moose or deer. But it was bear – two in fact – that were nibbling on berries just inside a thick grove of pines. We finally saw bears (actually all of us except for Asher saw only one of the bears)! But they were deep in the woods and hard to see clearly, so our camera only captured a fuzzy brown patch behind tree trunks. We moved on past the chaos to go on our hike.

We loaded up our bear spray, Camelbaks, walkie talkies and doused ourselves in Deepwoods Off!, before hitting the Iceberg Lake Trail. The first half mile of the trail is an aggressive uphill track with lots of blind corners and switchbacks before it levels off and follows the gentle curves of the foot of the mountain. Along the path, wildflowers and waterfalls that poured out of and over the rocks on our right side kept us snapping pictures. We clapped, Asher sang and Ronan whoop whooped around every blind curve so we wouldn’t surprise a bear. A little over two miles in we had to turn around as a creek bridge was currently washed out and left no way to pass. The views from the trail were incredible, with towering snow-covered peaks and distant arêtes surrounding us on all sides. The aspens and pines, flowering meadows and springs were hard to leave. As we came to the final half mile, a group of four hikers said that two yearling male black bears were just off the trailhead below us. We made lots of noise as we stepped cautiously down the path – my finger on the bear spray safety at the ready to pop it open if necessary. But again, no bears.

Back in the truck, we rested briefly then headed to our 3:00 boat tour which promised great views from Swiftcurrent and Josephine Lakes. And then, just outside the parking lot, we had a very clear view of a large black bear grazing on berries around a group of aspens. As (crazy) people bolted from their cars to get a closer look, the bear took off running east along the road. And then he sauntered across the road about 15′ feet in front of our truck and gave us the best view of all.

Back at the Many Glacier Hotel, we hopped aboard our boat where Jennifer our guide gave a pretty scripted overview of the history of the lake and hotel. We mostly tuned her out and just absorbed the natural story being told around us. Plus we were still psyched from our close encounter with the bear. On the other side of the lake, we docked and hiked another .3 mile to Lake Josephine where we boarded another boat and tuned out another robotic script delivered by an earnest volunteer captain and guide. Angela spotted a very large male moose grazing among the reeds on one side of the lake.

Exhausted, memories made and memory cards full, we returned to camp to rest.