Hiking the Highline Trail to Grinnell Glacier Overlook at Glacier National Park (& huckleberry pie!)

yesterday was our first official day at glacier national park and we spent the day driving around the going to the sun road stopping at viewpoints seeing wildlife hiking to three waterfalls and swimming in lake mcdonald for our second day at glacier we're hiking one of our u.s bucket list trails the highline trail to grenoble glacier overlook we got up early to drive to the park and after a quick parking lot nap we're now ready for a very long but beautiful day a few years ago we learned about the high line trail here at glacier and it's been on our bucket list ever since and today we're finally getting to hike it we got super lucky because they actually opened up the trail about a week ago and it's august 6 right now so they opened it pretty late so our timing was perfect our plan is to hike the high line trail to the granite peak chalet and then take the garden wall trail to see the grinnell glacier overlook and then hike the highland trail back so we think the normal way to do this trail is park at logan's pass and then you take the high line trail to the grenade glacier overlook and then you take the loop trail back and then you take the shuttle from the loop trail back to your car at logan's pass but since the shuttles aren't running this year that option wasn't really possible for us well the mosquitoes they're really bad here just fyi so we're gonna do the highline trail both there and back instead we think the trail is about 17 miles long so we think this is going to be our longest day hike we've ever done so wish us luck [Music] [Music] so a few minutes into the trail you'll reach this section that's kind of rocky there's some drop-offs but they have this nice little handrail for you to hold on to if you feel nervous but to be honest this is pretty wide so far it doesn't seem very sketchy and you all know i don't like sketchy [Music] so about an hour into the trail now and the whole time we've just been kind of skirting along the side of this mountain with awesome views of the going to the sun road down below the valley down below it's been absolutely beautiful hasn't been very steep either it's been a lot of flat and then sometimes you're going downhill sometimes you go a little uphill yeah they're pretty gentle though but we hear we hear it will not stay that way when we get closer to the glacier overall [Music] we started way in that valley over there under that mountain come all the way along here we've come around the band of the along the skirting along the mountain and now we're going to zigzag up this big hill here and go up top there we just saw a uh some kind of deer from down here you can see him right on the top looks like he had some antlers so maybe he'll still be there when we get there he's still here and he has a friend over there there's one right in front of us i'll show you [Music] a couple things we're loving about this hike are the wildflowers which there are so many they're so colorful we're kind of out of them now but in the first part of the trail they're just everywhere and also we got pretty lucky that it's a cloudier day it's getting a little bit like more blue sky out but there is there's basically no coverage on this trail with trees so you're pretty much exposed the whole time so if it was really sunny this would get really really hot really really fast so really thankful for some clouds today but and the best part is it's not too cloudy like where you can't see the views like the views are perfect even with the clouds this is awesome [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay i believe we mentioned at the beginning that we were going to go to the chalet first but we kind of changed our mind along the way and i think we're going to go we are going to go to the glacier overlook first instead we hear this part is the most challenging toughest part because it's all uphill but it's 0.6 to get up to the overlook so we're gonna make our way there now here we go yeah they weren't lying it's pretty steep i'm willing to bet a decent amount of money that this is longer than 0.6 there's no way oh it's really tough now we're just about to the overlook i can see the big opening so here just a few steps should be pretty red oh yeah here it comes i'm getting so excited whoa there's a glacier wow crap oh my god yeah worth it oh my god the water the ice the mountain oh shoot this is great that view was absolutely epic but we hear if you go up this thing i'll show you in a second there's an even better view of some lakes off in the distance too [Music] oh wow wow that one's so pretty [Music] it's official i'm just gonna say it right now this is my favorite hike in the u.s that we've done so far i don't know how you beat this no there's no way i mean we've done some pretty incredible hikes in the u.s but we love glaciers and just the mountains at glacier national park are just incredible you have ridiculous top-tier views 100 of the time there's not one part where you're in i mean you pass through some woods but you're not blocked by it at all yeah so you're saying earlier very exposed it's very exposed which can be bad if it's sunny but it's really good if you want views the entire time and we're getting to see areas of the park that we could not see from the going of the sun road like this so normally you can hike to granola glacier from the east side of the park but the east side is closed for the rest of the year due to covid so you cannot so this is your only chance to really see it then there's some other beautiful lakes i think one of these the swift current i think i don't know the names of all of them and then there's also a beautiful lake on the east side called iceberg lake i don't think we can see it but if you do visit the east side is open go check that out too [Music] all right we made it back down from the grindel glacier overlook it took us about 35 minutes to get to the top it was very very steep it took probably about the same to get down mostly because we just had to keep pulling over to let people pass it was much easier going down yeah unfortunately we have another change of plans the closest we're going to get to the chalet is the turn off for the overlook kind of running out of time the weather it's getting kind of iffy we got to return the rental car by five and we have a couple hours hiking back and then a couple hours to the airport so let's get back yeah we're bummed but we really want to go see it because the thought of it reminded us a lot of our time in the dolomites but if we had to pick between doing the chalet and doing the grinnell glacier overlook i'm very glad we did the overlook first absolutely because that was so epic and i'm sure the chalet is cool too you can actually stay there so maybe next time we'll just stay the night yeah that'd be really fun [Music] this hike was is definitely harder coming back it's uh it's different than your typical hike where you're going up the whole way to the viewpoint and then you hike back down this one there's a big hump in the middle and man it was way harder coming back i guess was retired a little sleep uh i don't remember it being that tough though i think on the on your way out your the stoke is high because of all this but after after seeing it all the stoke is still high yeah he's tired now yeah but we're hitting the downhill part yeah we finally made it to the downhill part [Music] so [Music] oh man we did it you guys we didn't end up going the 17 that we planned but we went about 15.2 ish and still a lot yeah and it took us just under about eight hours but man the way back was tough it was it was grueling but it was amazing the entire way yeah the views were like a postcard the entire time like even when we were in pain we couldn't stop smiling yeah but i think we have a little bit of time to go reward ourselves with a little treat before we go take the rental car back oh my god i finally freaking saw one oh i'm shaking i'm so excited we were just about to proclaim that bears were not real and we were being duped because wow we saw someone looking over like they pulled over and they were sorry if the camera is all over i'm like this is we're a hot mess right now we just stopped in the middle of the road which is probably frowned upon but we saw these people pulled over and looking at something and so i i saw it i was like i don't have to stop it's a bear so cool that was exciting more like a baby one i don't know it was no it was a it was a black bear but it was a cinnamon i think they're called cinnamon black bears wow it was our our dream situation we saw it from the car yeah in the car yeah together and from the car and he was really close but we were in the car and you didn't care about us or she wow that was cool that seriously today was amazing so far and that just made it 20 times even more amazing [Music] you can't come to montana and not get huckleberry everything so we came to this spot called the huckleberry patch to get some huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry pie so we've had huckleberry ice cream before when we were in wyoming but we've never had huckleberry pie and we've never actually had just regular huckleberries so here we go oh it looks so good though i love it that's darn good huck yeah so they're kind of tart and they kind of remind me of they actually did kind of remind me of blueberries and i think a lot of times they get confused with blueberries some people call huckleberries blueberries and blueberries huckleberries but they're apparently completely different but yeah they're kind of tart it's sweet the crust is nice and thin that's really good but let's try it with the huckleberry ice cream we're going double huckleberry um huckleberry is kind of like a candied flavor to them they're really good sugar overload so much sugar and that is going to do it for today's adventure we now have to go return this rental car and quick little story on the rental car because maybe it'll help someone in the future but we're actually we actually have this car until tomorrow at 5. i made an error i didn't realize that we can actually drive our van to the trailhead we're doing in the morning it's like the farthest you can drive on the going to the sun road in our van so we don't need the car anymore so when i went to go change the reservation to take a day off it was going to be a hundred dollars more to to take a day away so i called alamo and i was like hey what can i do about this and the guy basically told me if you return it by 5 pm the day before you can get basically a day's worth of the fare or whatever the rental rate back so we should be getting a hundred something dollars back for returning this car at 5 p.m today so we're kind of like frantic right now because we're like oh god we're running low on time we got to get to the airport and return it and make that money back update on the rental car situation i think we got there with two minutes to spare i literally ran inside the airport and i just asked the lady i was like here's my situation blah and she's like go park the car come back in so she worked with me and we got 145 [Applause] sorry getting crazy in here so it's kind of a stressful end of the day but it worked out it was awesome yeah in an ideal world you wouldn't you would book your rental car for the exact amount of time you need you wouldn't make the mistake i did but if you do make this mistake and then when you try to change it it's more money call the rental car company see if they can help you like alamo helped us out but before all that today was just absolutely epic in the moment it's hard to describe what we're seeing like so i we apologize if we've got too many epics awesomes that's so cool but again it's just it's just hard to describe when you're there it's it's like breathtaking and it makes you speechless but in the end like we said earlier it's our number one hike now for sure favorite hike in the us that we've done it was just ridiculous and so we had an epic day again more epic wildlife so marmits bighorn sheep again tons of little squirrels and all that fun stuff some deer but the the cherry on top the highlight of the freaking year so far for wildlife at least was a bear we finally saw a bear and we saw it together this time yes together yeah i can forget that the other one happened so it counts this one counts this one counts yeah so yeah we are absolutely poop though today so tonight we're gonna get some food we're waiting outside mod for our pizzas to be ready then we're gonna get some rest because we are wiped out just a little sleep from last night but then tomorrow we'll be back at glacier for one more adventure and then we'll come outside of glacier and do a couple other fun adventures too it's going to be awesome oh yeah [Music] all of this come on take care thanks i don't know if you heard him but i was like oh do a little dance he's like i don't think i should be dancing with this pole they may arrest me i'm trying to pick the best tastiest flowers i like the flowers that one look good but i don't know okay bye i'll just go ahead and finish this off right now hi buddy you

Channel: Adventures of A+K

Views: 149,184

Keywords: first time at glacier, first time at glacier national park, glacier national park vlog, glacier national park travel vlog, things to do at glacier national park, what to do at glacier national park, hikes in west glacier national park, hikes in glacier national park, visiting glacier national park during covid, visiting glacier national park, glacier travel vlog, highline trail to grinnell glacier, highline trail glacier national park, hiking the highline trail

Id: VUdJVKzqDFA

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020