High water

Today (Friday Nov 10) my hiking group and I went to Glacier Park to see the high water on McDonald Creek from the recent heavy rains. Apparently Glacier Park received over 11 inches of rain over five days last week. This is the most rain they have ever received over a five day period.

Group: Bill, Joyce, Arnie, Sue Ann, Me
Lake MacDonald Lodge --- Avalanche Creek
Mileage: 5.7 miles one way
Time: 10:25 am to 12:30 pm

When driving to the Park on Hwy 2, as we drove though Badrock Canyon, we could see that the Flathead River was higher than normal.

The Going-to-the-Sun road was closed and gated at the Lake McDonald parking area. We had the road to ourselves as we walked except for a Park Ranger in a pickup as he drove by several times during our walk.

The sun tried to come out a few times but by the end of our hike hours later it was completely cloudy with increasing snowflakes filtering through the trees.

McDonald Creek:

A little further up the road is the horse bridge across McDonald Creek. As you can see from the photos, the bridge was destroyed.

First are the National Park Service photos posted on their web site Nov 7. See how high the water is?

The next series of photos were taken Nov 10. You can see how the bridge was destroyed. Notice how the iron beams were bent.

Scenery on the Sun Road on the way to the next stop:

Here is the observation platform Nov 7 and Nov 10:

More scenery on the way to Avalanche Lake trail.

More of the hike will be in a later post.

Glacier Park and flood damage

While it has been rainy this past week in the Valley, Glacier Park got hit hard. Flattop Mountain got over 8 inches of rain. To put that into perspective, the Valley's annual total rainfall is 16 to 17 inches. Needless to say, there is some major flooding in the Park.

Our hiking group plans to drive to Lake MacDonald lodge tomorrow to check it all out. The road is closed past the lodge due to flooding with water over the Sun road.

I'll try to take some photos to share with you (though I haven't even gotten my Flattop Mountain hike photos up on my blog yet!)

Here are a few photos from the Glacier Park web site. I copied a few, but more photos and a few videos can be found at their Nov 7 site and their Nov 8 site.

Some friends may recognize this spot as I have taken them here to see MacDonald Creek during the drive to Logan Pass. This overlook is just off the road. One usually stands on the platform and looks down to the creek. This photos explains all the large logs one sees in the river.



The historic Many Glacier hotel is an area where we had three of our hikes this year. I heard the hotel suffered water damage on the lower floor. The hotel is the building now temporarily in the Swiftcurrent Lake.

Here is a link to a few photos of the inside of the Many Glacier hotel. The area in the photos is on the main floor, which is the second floor on the lake side. I don't think this floor was flooded.






The Going-to-the-Sun road was washed away in some areas. Here the entire road was washed away. This is on the east side of Logan Pass, just east of the tunnel.