Hike to St. Mary's & Virginia Falls in Glacier 8/17/2010

We hopped on the shuttle to the top of Logan Pass to catch the shuttle going down to the east side of the mountain ridge. Right away we notice a difference in the shuttle bus drivers. They are from the Blackfeet Tribe, that owns the majority of the land of the east side of Glacier National Park. Our driver was a newbie driver, with  two trainers standing over her, giving instructions on how to drive the bus. We both looked at each other and thought, " A newbie driver, driving us down the mountain. Pretty freaky! She drove down the mountain very fast and pretty erratic. At one point she went off the road and the 2 trainers just laughed. Let me tell you, no one on the bus, except the trainers were laughing.

Safe but not sound at the bottom of the mountain Joe and I found our way to the St. Mary's Fall trail head. The fall is only 1.1 miles from the trail head, and is fairly flat terrain.

Then we continued another .7 miles which was more of an incline to Virginia Falls.

We were hot by the time we arrived. The spray and fine mist from the falls was a welcome treat.

We found this rock right below the fall and managed to climb out to it, and enjoyed the scenery while eating our lunch. 

Right behind us the fall mist and the sun hitting our backs.

As we headed down the trail, I spotted this mushroom. It was kind of pretty, so I had to take a picture of it. Dawn, what kind of mushroom is this? Dawn is my RVer friend who taught me how to blog. She is a big mushroom loving girl!

A moss and flower covered wall along the trail.

One of the flowers on the moss laden wall.

We  got back to the bridge that crosses over in front of St. Mary's Fall.

I just love the color of the water in Glacier.

Another view of St. Mary's Fall.

A deer we saw along the trail, as we head back to the trail head. At the trail head we catch the shuttle to go back up the mountain to Logan Pass.

At the top at  Logan Pass,a deer runs through the parking lot, acting a little confused, and trying to find his way out.

The line to catch the last west side shuttle bus to go down the mountain was very long. The last shuttle driver had to call 5 to 6 more shuttles to climb the mountain and bring us all  back down. We got on the next to last shuttle, coming down the mountain. It was a long, long day. It can take the shuttles, to get to the top sometimes an hour depending where they are coming from.

A couple of mountain goats, we viewed as we headed down the mountain when the shuttle finally arrived .

Mountain peaks as we head down to camp. We mentioned to our bus driver our experience of the east shuttle side terror ride. He said he had heard a driver on the east side had been fired. We wondered who got fired. Our driver or the trainers.