Just to recap with some basic information on Glacier National Park – the park is located in northern Montana, it is bisected by the Continental Divide. It is one of the wildest parks in the lower 48 and remains to be my favorite National Park outside of Alaska. The weather is generally very good for photography year-round, there is a lot of wildlife in the park. Each season brings with it something different, yet fascinating, to photograph. The park includes over 1 million acres of protected wilderness, over 130 named lakes, some of the most jagged peaks in North America, jaw-dropping waterfalls, more than 1,000 species of plants, and 62 species of mammals. Although named ‘Glacier’ National Park, only 25 glaciers still exist in the park of the 150 that once were there. It is estimated that by 2030 the Park will have lost all of its glaciers. Unfortunately, Glacier National Park is not the best place to see glaciers, and I’d recommend traveling to Alaska if glaciers are your priority. However, the park offers so much else and is one of my top places to photograph.

In case you’re wondering, summer and fall are my favorite times to visit the park. Fall has really great color displays and some of the most dramatic weather of any place in the world. A friend of mine who is extremely well-traveled claims that autumn at Glacier National Park and in Patagonia are the two best places in the world for dramatic weather. Summer is great because of the amazing wildflower blooms that carpet the park. The Park experienced a super-bloom this year. Wildflowers were everywhere. It was also a super bloom for beargrass, one of the iconic flowers in the park. Beargrass usually blooms once every three to five years so every so often the Park experiences a huge super bloom. This was the year; the flower usually peaks mid-July though so we were just a little late for it this year. We still found a lot of Paintbrush, Fireweed, and a few daisies that were doing their best to hang on. 

Before I dive into each specific day, let me just preface by saying this particular workshop was one of the most productive that I have been on. We really had it all, wildlife to fiery skies. That’s why I love Glacier…there’s always so much to shoot and when the weather comes together…buckle up!

Day One
On day one, we met in beautiful Whitefish, MT, as we do for all our Glacier National Park trips. Some folks traveled the day prior and had some time to explore the quaint downtown area before meeting us. I would equate Whitefish to like a mini-Jackson, Wyoming.

After all four of us guides introduced ourselves, we did a quick ice-breaker as a group and covered some logistics about the workshop. Discussing bear safety when at Glacier is always near the top of our list, and then of course and then went off to enjoy our first meal together at Ciao Mambo, a great little Italian joint in downtown Whitefish. As always, we ate our hearts out, but all looked forward to getting to bed ahead of our early start the next day.

Day Two
We all jumped out of bed (right?) early on day two, packed up the vans, and got an early 5 a.m. start towards the west side of Glacier. We were headed for a sunrise from the shore of Lake McDonald. The forecast predicted clear skies, but there were actually some clouds building up so we were hopeful for a nice sunrise to start things off. We arrived at Apgar Village with plenty of time to spare. We ventured down to the shore of the largest lake at Glacier and scouted our shooting locations for the morning. It is really amazing how much a location can change based on light. A week prior I had been at Lake McDonald and it was misty, clouds everywhere, foggy…on this morning, there were great clouds forming over the mountains and the lake was dead calm. 

We had an incredible, yet unexpected wildlife encounter at the gorge as well. As our group was getting ready to pack up, a marten popped out and actually ran right across the feet of our guide P.J. Martens are an incredibly rare sighting in the Park, and especially in an area of high human concentration like Avalanche Gorge. It happened in an instant so none of us got a great photography, but it was really cool to see a marten so close. 

We headed back to the vans after that and started our drive across Going-to-the-Sun. We were greeted by mountains and beautiful weather on day two, and all jaws were dropped as we made our way towards Logan Pass. Up at Logan Pass we ran into another celebrity of the park, the mountain goat.

We saw a momma and her billy meandering across the meadows. We were able to pull over quick and get some awesome shots right from the vehicles. We were having a great wildlife day already, but that would be made even better when we traversed down to the east side of the park. Right around the Two Dog Flats area we saw some traffic congestion and that usually means one thing, bear! We circled around and were able to grab a parking spot and sure enough, we had a grizzly spotting on Day 2 already. We got some shots of the bear and watched it for a while, and as we lost sight of the bear and were almost packing it in, another bear ran across the road about 100 yards from us. Two grizzlies on our first day in the park, come on! With a marten, mountain goat, and grizzly on our first day, we had really lucked out with wildlife.

We ate lunch at Two Sisters Café and got checked into our lodging for the week. After a quick break, we gathered back for dinner and headed out to the shore of St. Mary Lake for a view of Red Eagle Mountain. Everything seemingly broke our way, we had some really nice sunset clouds over the lake and pretty calm water.