Montana’s Glacier National Park – A Camper’s Paradise

One of the best places on the planet for scenery and outdoor life has to be Glacier National Park, which is located in the north-western region of Montana and borders on Canada.

This is the place to be if you enjoy hiking, fishing, camping, swimming, animal watching, rafting, diving, mountain biking, and any other outdoor activity you can think of.

The park is so huge, about a million acres in size, that it borders both the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. It houses sections of two different mountain ranges and has well over 130 lakes and dozens of streams, with Lake MacDonald being the largest. There are over a thousand plant species and hundreds of different types of animals.

Hikers will be glad to know there are over 700 miles of trails to explore. However, there are grizzly bears, so make sure you’re well prepared and have some bear spray with you.

The park represents one of the most intact and largest ecosystems that can be found in North America. It gets its name because there are more than 50 fifty glaciers in the park. In the overall scheme of things, the glaciers are all relatively new as they’ve all been formed over the past few thousand years.

However, they’re all shrinking at the moment as they’re melting at a quicker rate, perhaps due to global warming.

Basically more snow and ice melts each year than accumulates on the glaciers. However, that’s the nature of glaciers. They form and melt over periods of thousands of years.

Glacier National Park itself is divided east to west by the 50-mile long Going-to-the-Sun Road. This road offers some of the most spectacular wilderness views in North America. It cuts through the heart of the park and hugs the shores of the two largest lakes in the park. It then takes you under the Continental Divide’s rugged cliffs before heading down Logan Pass.

If you’d like to explore other areas of this vast, beautiful park you can stop at one of the several visitor centers to get detailed maps of the area. Also, if you’re camping or canoeing and don’t have access to an automobile, don’t worry as there is a shuttle service every day between July 1st and Labor Day take will take you down the scenic Going-t-the-Sun Road.

Animal lovers will be amazed at the sheer numbers of creatures in the park. There are all types of wildlife species. Some of these include white tailed and mule deer, mountain goats, moose, elk, grizzly bear, black bear, mountain lions, and an assortment of birds and rodents.

Fishing enthusiasts will also have a field day as there are many species that are willing to jump onto your hook in the various streams, rivers, and lakes. The most popular species by far though is trout and you can make a dinner out of rainbow, lake, bull, cutthroat, and brook trout.

No matter what outdoor activities are your favourite, you’re sure to find Glacier National Park can fulfil your needs with its campsites, hiking trails, and waterways.