Day 5 - Tuesday (7/26)

On Tuesday we visited the park art studio in the St. Mary’s area. This was a special treat for Doris, Monica and especially Martha. We got a chance to create some wildlife artwork and contribute to a large mural project that the ‘artist in residence’ for the park led. This was also a good plan as the morning was cloudy, wet and rainy. After the visit to the art studio, we drove back up the valley to the St. Mary’s Falls area. We hiked to a number of different sites in this area. About mid-afternoon, we drove up to Logan Pass and visited the visitor center. At the visitor center we took a hike to the Hidden Lake overview. This hike was about 99% in snow. As previously mentioned, there were a large amount of trails still closed due to either snow depth or bear activity. The large amount of snow left the pass snowed in until the third week of July, just two weeks before we arrived and about a month later than usual. The day was wet and rainy and we had hoped that the clouds would lift when we were up at the pass. That didn’t really happen. Since the hike was across snow and through the fog, we had a difficult time following the trail. We finally reached the lookout but were not able to see much. The girls were quite concerned that were going to get lost on top of the mountain as you couldn’t see the trail well and you couldn’t see where we started or where we were going. The hike across the snowy terrain was interesting though and we were able to see what the high alpine spring thaw looks like. We also got to see a marmot up close, which was quite a treat. We returned back to the campsite for the evening with a much shorter drive back down the mountain that we had the previous day.