After looking over the map for the Park I decided that with the limited time I had, the Trail of the Cedars and the trail to Avalanche Lake looked most interesting. The morning was clear when I got up so I left the tent and most of my stuff at camp and hopped on the bike to head east on Going to the Sun road.

My timing couldn't have been better. I arrived at the trailhead and parked with no problem, changed from boots to hiking shoes, and secured the bike. The morning was a bit misty but pretty dry, especially when compared to the day before. Trail of the Cedars is a short loop and part of it was closed due to some work the park people were doing. It is actually wheel chair friendly so you can imagine how challenging it is... The trail to Avalanche Lake begins at the middle part of the cedars trail loop so I branched onto that trail when I got to it.

Once on the trail to Avalanche Lake I only ran into one other group of people and they were moving at a pretty slow pace so I quickly passed them and then had the entire place to myself. It was a bit eerie because the trees were growing extremely close to each other and were shutting out almost all the sunlight. There is very little underbrush for this reason. The trees also did a good job of absorbing almost all sound so only the river, due to its close proximity, was heard.

Besides the group I had passed I only saw one other person as I made my way toward the lake. An older guy, by himself, cruised right past as though he had someplace he wanted to be. I was in no hurry and so I do what I usually do and attempted to meld into the woods. You know you have been successful when you start seeing and hearing things you had missed before. This female mule deer had obviously seen her fair share of people and was cautious but not panicky when she realized I was standing a few yards from her taking pictures. She looked like you would expect a deer to look after a long winter and she wasted no time taking advantage of all the tender, fresh green growth. She was one of two deer I saw along the trail but was the only one close enough for me to want to photograph.

The trail to the lake is "officially" only about 2 miles and climbs about 500 feet if I remember correctly, so hiking is easy. The nice thing about this is that there is no rush and you can stop and take pictures if something catches your eye. This morning I would have preferred something a bit more challenging though since I had been sitting the entire last week.

Once I was under the trees I realized I really should have brought a tripod or monopod because of the low light levels. Instead I had to try and handhold or prop the camera while using slow shutter speeds. I did what I could but a steadier platform would have been extremely useful.

Avalanche lake itself is fairly small and is filled with logs. I have no clue whether or not this is a natural phenomenon or is a result of some sort of logging or other human activity. The water is so clear that it is easy to see the logs laying on the bottom of the lake and there were lots of them. There were signs mentioning fishing but this possibility never occurred to me so I did not bring any gear. The water was so clear I did attempt to spot some fish from shore. Even after sitting very still for some time I saw nothing.

If I couldn't get to the other side of the lake I certainly could get a closer view of some of the waterfalls that fed the lake. The trail I was on meandered its way to the snow field you can see in the lower right hand side of the picture above with the logs.

Once I reached the end of the trail I found that the snow field was a little wetter and softer than I had hoped it would be. Not wanting to have to walk the three miles back in wet shoes I grabbed a couple of pictures, sat for a bit trying to absorb the surroundings (or be absorbed by them), and headed back.

Talk about timing. On the trip back I probably passed 40 people heading to the lake. One group had about 20 elementary aged children with them. If I had gotten started an hour later I would have not had the lake to myself and I doubt I would have seen any deer. Unfortunately, my morning's good luck did not hold for the rest of the day. After putting on my riding gear I made the poor decision to ride the Going to the Sun road to St. Mary again for lunch. About 10 minutes after I got started the rain began. It rained all the way to St. Mary and to ice the cake my overpants started leaking. Leaking bad. Leaking so much that the initial cold chill of water in the groin never really warmed up as it usually does. The main problem is that they had not leaked so far this trip so I hadn't bothered putting rain pants on when it first started raining. After I was wet there wasn't much I could but grin and bear it.

I made it to St. Mary, ate lunch and headed back. Yep, it rained the entire way back as well. I had planned on riding a narrow, poorly maintained dirt road into the northern part of the park but when I got back I stripped off all my wet clothes, dried off, and climbed into the tent to take a nap until the rain stopped. It wasn't until about 18:30 that evening that it finally did. It was too late to ride the 40 miles of dirt road so I put on some dirty, but dry, pants and rode to the south entrance of the park for dinner. After my ride back to camp I lazed around and did a bit of reading on what would be my last night in Glacier. Tomorrow I would start heading south and look for drier weather.