Glacier National Park: Day 3

On our third day in glacier national park, we were greeted with sunny skies and temperatures in the gorgeous 60s. Waking up to tall trees in our campground surrounded by breathtaking cliffs is enough motivation to get out of your tent and get on with the hike...except, we didn't. We were too lazy and we slept in our tent warmed by the shining sun till almost noon and missed our scheduled boat to the start of start of the Grinnell Glacier hike. 

This wasn't a problem in the least. Many glacier is located in the middle of several awesome hikes and we had planned another hike that we decided to go for. While searching for the hikes to do a few days in advance of this trip, Justin stumbled across this totally insane yet totally cool hike called The Ahern Pass Goat Trail hike. Had we not started our hike at noon, we would have totally done the goat trail but this will have to be left till next time. We did decide to follow the directions to the trail and take pictures where we thought this trail would start because it's really hard to find. The directions available online for this trail were also not very intuitive. Anyway, this goat trail starts off of the popular hike Ptarmigan Tunnel which is also totally awesome.

Start of the hike! Look at the lush green trees!!

There were gorgeous views all through the hike!

The hike is about 10 miles roundtrip and doesn't have significant elevation change from the start of the hike to the final point. Don't get me wrong, it does get steep every now and then but still not as bad as some of the more serious hikes you could do in the Teton national park. The views are GORGEOUS throughout the hike as you can see from our pictures. For the duration of the hike, you will walk through alpine tropics lined with lush green trees and coming across lovely waterfalls from time to time. The hike finally ends in some of the most beautiful vistas in the park. The tunnel that was built for horses to get around the mountains leads to another stunning view in the park.

Gorgeous view from the Ptarmigan Tunnel (above)! You can cross the tunnel and walk 50-100 meters to another stunning vista in the park (below)!

Ptarmigan Tunnel!

We spent some extra time hanging out at the top of the hike and this turned out to be an awesommeeee decision! Right in front of our eyes we saw some badass mountain goats come down the steepest goat trail I have seen. There was 8 of them including goat babies and they were trotting across impossible terrain. After coming down this trail, they ended up on a ridge right above us only about 30-40 feet away! This was one of the coolest hiking experiences I have ever had. These mountain goats were soon followed by billy goats coming down the same way to get there grazing fix. Totally cool and I was left in awe.

Look at those badass mountain goats!!! Can't believe they came down that almost vertical trail with their babies! They were soooo cute!

And Billy goats and their babies!! It kept getting better!

This hike was full of amazing views of nature and wildlife and we got to see mountain goats, billy goats, grizzly bear and moose. Since we are relatively fast hikers, it took us 4ish hours roundtrip to get the hike done. After we were done, there was still plenty of sunlight left so we could cook a nice camping meal before calling it a night. We did the right thing by not going down the goat trail that we had originally planned for because that side of the cliffs were not in the sun in the afternoon time anymore and the goal trail would have been another 5 miles making it total 15 miles after we started hiking at noon.

In any case, this was my favorite hike of the 4 days we spent in Glacier. I can't wait to get back and strap on my big balls to try the real Ahern Pass Goat Trail next time around!