Travel Reports | Cracker Lake
A short overnight trip in Glacier National Park
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Lake Nanita | Rocky Mountain National Park
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• Cracker Lake | Glacier National Park
Cracker Lake · Glacier National Park
Running at full speed, bears and horses sound almost the same. I never realized this. Although it seems almost impossible, I think they run at about the same speed too. I've never surprised a bear on the trail and never thought it likely because I'm such a loud and slow hiker. Today I have more zip in my step because the hike is short, down hill, and I am returning from a fantastic destination. I walk around a curve and there it is—tail end on the trail, business end in the thicket. It took a moment to grasp what I was looking at. Then recognition hit with a gasp and a shot of adrenaline as the bear backed out quickly and dashed to the next bend in the trail, about 30 yards away. I was glad when he stopped and turned around because I wanted to get a better look at him. But now he's just standing there smelling me—I would really like him to leave now. I clap my hands and say with all the authority I can summon, "shoo bear." Unbelievable. It works.
Yesterday, I hiked this trail in the opposite direction going toward Cracker Lake to spend the night and make some photographs. In this same location I had stopped to look for bears. It offered a vantage point overlooking Cracker Flats where I had seen grizzlies from the road before and I thought this would be a good place to see another bear or two from a comfortable distance. But there were no bears here yesterday. The only thing I saw was the open area below me where Swiftcurrent Creek meanders towards Lake Sherburne and where a prospecting town, Altyn, had a lively but short existence in the 1800's before being swallowed into the lake created when the park service dammed the Creek.
The Hiking trails in Glacier range from rather daunting to downright difficult, but the hike to Cracker Lake offers one of the best work-to-spectacular-scenery ratios in the park. The trail begins in the popular—and populous—Many Glacier area and follows the Canyon Creek up a moderate grade to the lake. Most people pass it up in favor of the more fashionable hike to Grinnell Lake. And why not? My twelve-miles round trip is too far for a casual day hike, but not satisfying as part of a long backpacking trip because it comes to a dead end. Regardless of the reason, the lack of interest has made Cracker Lake a place to find some easy solitude—and one of the finest backcountry campsites in the park.
I made it to the lake in about two and a half hours. Like most hikes to mountain lakes, I started expecting the lake to be right over the next ridge after about the first mile. Lakes hide themselves in the mountains and Cracker Lake in no different. By the time I could finally see the lake I was practically standing on its shore. Cracker Lake is about a mile long and rather narrow, perfectly placed in a cirque surrounded by vertical cliffs. The lake's turquoise color is striking. Throughout the entire day it was still attention grabbing. There is nothing else like it in nature. At the far end of the lake I could see what is left of the Siyah glacier which is responsible for the unbelievable color. This is still an active glacier, but it looks more like a particularly resilient snowdrift to me. Glaciers are big in my imagination and this looks like something I could take care of with a snow shovel and a few hours to kill, and of course like all of the glaciers here, it continues to shrink. After hiking to the far end of the lake I would find out that the scale from my current vantage point was deceiving. Everything on the far end of the lake is much bigger. The glacier still has enough mass to pulverize its underlying rocks into a fine dust, glacial sill, which is washed into the lake with the melting water. The sill is fine enough that it forms a suspension in the lake scattering light rays giving the lake its color.
The campsite is about halfway down the lake. The park service couldn't have picked a better place. There are three cleared areas for tents that sit a few feet from a ledge that drops into the lake. It would make a great diving platform if the water was more than one or two degrees above freezing. Hypothermia was not on the agenda, so instead I sat with my feet dangling and looked around amazed at my good fortune of arriving early and being completely alone. Living in Chicago, this is a rare blessing for me. Solitude isn't difficult to find in the city; it's just difficult to find it without building a box around yourself. You can be perfectly alone in a bathroom or phone booth. You can even build a mental wall like people on the train who stare at the ground with their senses shuttered by headphones, sunglasses and newspapers held high. Here you can have both an enormous space and a sense of seclusion. From the top of the ridge the area is about 2 miles long and a mile wide. You could fit several major league stadiums in here. The wall to my left is the face of Mt. Siyah. It rises about 2000 feet straight up. That's considerably taller than the Sears Tower whose modest 1,450 feet suddenly seems like an ambitious lego project.
If I were to climb this ridge and hike down a few miles I would cross the Going-to-the-Sun road not far from the Logan Pass visitor center where crowds who have come here to find an escape fight over parking spots. Driving the road is terrifying. People tailgate, drive too fast, pass, and can never seem to stay in their own lane when taking hairpin turns. This is no different from city driving except that in many places on the Going-to-the-Sun road you are a couple of feet from either a solid rock wall or a 1500 ft. drop. Because the lanes are narrow, a small car has an easier time navigating the turns, but enough people prefer driving their 10-passenger goliath-mobiles that you often find yourself being crowded uncomfortably close to the edge. They come here in vehicles with names like Expedition, Discovery, and Navigator as though claiming title to a machine with such a name will transform their inert existence into one rivaling the life of Capt. Vancouver or David Livingstone. The leather bucket seats are apparently so comfortable that a large percentage of these intrepid adventurers never leave their cars. I'm not sure why they've bothered making the trip. Maybe it's to alleviate the guilt of owning such absurd vehicles that are an unnecessary indulgence; they feel that if they can get to the mountains just once, they can say they really use the thing—they need it—because they are living the life promised by the television commercial. But they are as unnecessary here as they are in the city. There is not a place in the park where a VW Beetle wouldn't work just as well.
For most visitors, the Going-to-the-Sun road is Glacier National Park. Of the roughly two million visitors each year, only 5000 backcountry permits are issued. This means that two million people are driving on 50 miles of road, while 5000 small groups of hikers have the 730 miles of trail to themselves. Many visitors only leave their cars at visitor centers or at pullouts to take a snapshot. The road does offer some spectacular views, but it presents such a small percentage of the park that it is possible to come away with the impression that this place is small and crowded. The truth is that it is possible to hike to places where you will only see one or two groups of people the entire day. I want to tell people that they should go for a walk; they will notice more if they take a walk; they will appreciate the place in a way that is impossible while looking through a windshield. This isn't television; you can participate. You can stop almost anywhere in the park, pick a ridge and hike to the other side to discover a vast area without a trace of human activity.
The valley belonged to me for the rest of the afternoon. I hiked up to the remains of Cracker mine; a reminder of the conflict between the economic interests of miners hunting for minerals, and the Blackfeet Indians who were trying to live in this land they considered sacred. In 1898 the economic interests prevailed and the US government bought the area of land which is now the Eastern part of Glacier National Park for $1.5 million. As far as I can tell, neither party won in the end. The Blackfeet were forced from the place they had lived for centuries and the mines failed to produce anything worth digging. After only three years the mines were abandoned, leaving behind a few rusty pieces of equipment that still sit on the far shore of Cracker Lake.
I spent the rest of the day making photos, scouting for a good sunrise location and watching the endagered bull trout cruise the lake shallows until evening brought a group of two teenagers and their parents who hiked in by headlamp. The boys were working the summer at the lodge and parents, whose expressions and stooped posture didn't suggest an alpine way of life, looked genuinely grateful to have made it at all. We spent the rest of the evening trading stories about bears and mountain hikes around a camp stove until I retired to my tent for the evening, wondering if I might see some mountain goats or even a bear the next day. Bears seemed unlikely because I'm such a loud and slow hiker.
©2001 Mark Meyer