Glacier N.P. - Piegan Pass Hike

Sunday, August 04, 2019

Glacier National Park, Montana, United States

For my last hike in Glacier I decide on Piegan Pass, a hike that was highly recommended in one of my Montana hiking guides as ranking near the top for best hikes in the park but also one that was ranked considerably further down on some other lists of best hiking trails. Piegan Pass can be accessed from two sides or can be crossed in one direction if you can work out transportation between Going-To-The-Sun Road on one side and Many Glacier Hotel on the other. Many of the most popular trails in the park are actually quite close to each other on the map only separated by mountain ranges and accessed from different directions.

I decided to do the easier out-and-back route from what’s known at Siyeh Bend on the Going-to-The-Sun Road a few miles to the east of Logan Pass. As such the starting point is already a fairly high elevation of around 6,000 feet. Like everywhere in Glacier nowadays, you need to get an early start if you hope to find a parking spot anywhere near the trailhead. I got there about 8:45 for a 9:00 set off on the trail and things were already getting a little tight.

Bear Grass

I really liked the description of the trail and really liked what I found on it. It is 4.5 miles up for a 9.0 mile round trip hike, a little longer actually since you go down a little on the other side of the pass to get the best views. That makes the 1,750 foot elevation gain a very gradual and mild one. The trail starts out along Siyeh Creek and rises gradually through thick forest in the opposite direction from the pass. After about a mile it makes a big turn to continue climbing in the direction of the pass, first through forest, then open wildflower meadows, and finally a long way on a scree slope on the side of the mountain as the views toward the south and the small nearby Piegan Glacier of Mount Piegan and larger more distant Jackson and Blackfoot Glaciers to the south come into view. I didn’t see any wildlife beyond a marmot or two on this trail, but the wildflower meadows were some of the best and the areas of flowering bear grass some of the most extensive on any of the hikes. And I also crossed the only snowfield I encountered in Glacier, a rather easy 50-foot crossing on a fairly steep slope.

Blackfoot Glacier

Why is snow lingering so long here in what seems like a sunny spot out in the open?

The trail is pretty easy right to the pass between the two valleys, one that’s surprisingly broad for this land of knife-edge ridges, noting like some extremely steep ones I crossed last year in the Swiss Alps. The view on the other side toward the north is absolutely “know-your-socks-off” with the so-called Garden Wall and small glacial tarns. In the far distance I could make out a faint somewhat diagonal line on a mountainside above forest and a lake, which I recognized as the trail to Grinnell Glacier I did two days earlier. I had my lunch and recruited a friendly older lady from Kalispell to take a few pictures of me before heading back.

Maybe I’m just getting better with about 80 miles of hiking under my belt this week, but this hike seemed especially pleasant and easy. I arrived back at the trailhead around 2:00 P.M., almost exactly five hours after starting. I got into a conversation with a Polish-Canadian man about the hike when he asked me if I was English or Australian. He insisted I don’t sound like an American. It’s weird but that happens fairly often. I guess I just have an accent all my own.