Mt Brown lookout in snow

Sunday February 21, under a clear sky, I hiked up to the Mt Brown Lookout in Glacier Park.  This trail is the steepest trail in the Park.  I climbed 4,305 ft in 5.8 miles.  The maximum elevation was 7,487 ft.

Needless to say I was tired after the 11.6 mile hike of almost 8 hours (though to be fair I spent over an hour up at the lookout).
 
The hike was all in snow.  Enough people had used snowshoes to get to the lookout that the snow was packed enough that I was able to reach the lookout without using my snowshoes.  I did carry them on my back the entire way as I thought I may need them when I got on high.

Leah was also at the Park on Sunday and took the following two photos.  I believe the lookout is where I marked the photo with the red O.  I started the hike at the lake level.  Mt Brown is the mountain behind the lookout.  That is about 7 miles away.

Here is the view from near the trail head at Lake McDonald.  The lookout is the white bump under the u in 'Lookout'.  In this view you can see the mountain with the lookout is separate from Mt Brown.  The final photo also shows that.

The views were great and I took 200 to 300 photos.  I haven't had time to go through them to weed duplicates and bad photos and to stitch other photos together.  But here are a few photos.

Lots of snow up there!

Leah's first photo was taken at the far end of Lake McDonald near Apgar Village.  That is about 7 miles away.

 

The mountain just under and to the right of the snow hanging from the lookout roof is Huckleberry Mountain.  I don't remember if I wrote about that hike that I did last Fall.  As you can see there is so much snow that the walkway around the lookout was filled to the railing level.

Photo 1: the rightmost peak of the three peaks is Heaven's Peak.  I forgot the names of the other two peaks.
Photo 2: Mt Brown

Blue

Blue skies lead to a blue mood?

Yesterday Joyce and I drove 100 miles and crossed the Continental Divide in search of a blue sky.  We found it once we reached Maria Pass.  The mountain tops held the clouds back and it was solidly clear and blue to the east.

Sun!  Oh, glorious sun!

Around East Glacier everything was coated in a thick frost.

We skied 7 miles to Two Medicine Lake and close to the shadows from the clouds trying to get past the mountains.  The wind brought occasional snow flakes flying floating by.

Late afternoon we watched the looming clouds and anticipated the loss of sunlight as we drove back to and under the massive line of clouds.  Even after we entered the cloud's shadow we could still see the snow covered mountains to our side lit by the sunlight.  Then all traces of sunlight were gone.

Today I have a 'hangover' from my blue sky experience.  It is gloomy and gray here yet again for another day and the forecast has this forever.  I miss seeing the blue sky.

Tonight there was a story on the local weather forecast that said that the Flathead Valley has had five days of blue skies since December 1.  Only five days!  Fortunately I spent a few weeks back in Minnesota and North Dakota since December so I saw more than just five days of sun.  Still... I want more sun.

It didn't help that Leah forwarded me some photos taken by a friend of hers who hiked up to Mt Brown Lookout last weekend.  This hike is on my list of things to do this winter and I haven't made it up there yet.