Bare Trees on the Way to Saint Mary Falls
I decided that I had enough hiking for the day. I was thinking that I need to get moving since the days were shorter and I don’t want to be driving in the dark in an unknown place. It was still mid afternoon and I was heading back down the Going to the Sun Road. Logan Pass was closed for repairs so it would not be possible for me to go to West Glacier from there. This means I needed to go around the park the long way to get to West Glacier. This is the reason for the urgency for me to get back. Along the way, I would be running into some places which I didn’t visit. One of these places was Saint Mary Falls. I saw this sign earlier but I didn’t pay attention to it since I needed to get to Logan Pass quickly. But now that I have time, I think I would give it a shot.
Lake Saint Mary at Glacier National Park
I was hoping that Saint Mary Falls would be right where the sign is. However, there is still a hike to be done to get to the falls. The hike is not that long, nor is the change in elevation that much. I think the steepest part of the hike would actually be the one where you go down to the trail itself. After that, it is pretty much a gentle slope winding its way down to the valley. Along the way, I noticed that the plant life here seems to be a bit odd. There were trees here but the tree don’t have leaves. The trunks of the trees were also white, and some of them black. I think this was the result of a forest fire which affected Glacier National Park.
Going to Saint Mary Falls in Glacier National Park
The issue of how to manage forest fires has been a contentious issue since the first instinct would be to extinguish the fire. However, it seems by extinguishing the fire and letting the forest grow, it only makes subsequent fires much worse. The prevailing thought now it to let nature take its course and realize that forest fires are also part of the life of a forest. Already, the trees here have started to recover. It would be a while before another fire would sweep through this area since it has already burned down recently, this would allow the forest to recover.
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