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Avalanche Lake Hike

After a lazy day boating on Lake McDonald and relaxing on the beach near Apgar Village, Jen, Mindy and I hiked to Avalanche Lake in the evening.

The trail starts a few miles past Lake McDonald Lodge near the Avalanche Creek campground in Glacier National Park. The beginning of the trail is part of the Trail of the Cedars, a popular easy boardwalk trail amongst huge cedar trees.

The trail to Avalanche Lake is awesome. The surrounding cedar forest has this eery vibe, and the vegetation reminds me of what I imagine one finds in the Pacific Northwest. This description ignores perhaps the trail's best feature: Avalanche Creek Gorge. Avalanche Creek Gorge is a rugged, mossy gorge through which glacier-fed water violently tumbles down through the flume on its way to Lake McDonald Creek. The most rugged part of the gorge is very photogenic and the evening light provided us with a great opportunity to get postcard-quality photos of the gorge on the way back down the trail.

The destination itself, Avalanche Lake, is also awesome. A logjam at the head of the lake indicated the violent process that gave the lake its name. The lake is surrounded by the steep 3,000+ vertical foot headwalls of some of Glacier National Park's highest hanging valleys. High on many of those steep headwalls were beautiful cascades that feed the lake with snowmelt. The scene was amazing, especially for a hike of less than 5 miles roundtrip. The soft late evening lighting made it even better. We relaxed by the lake until almost 9:00 PM. (One of the great things about Glacier National Park is that, because it is so far north, it doesn't get dark in the summer until well after 9:00 PM.)

Although we weren't able to make it back to Apgar Village in time to buy some firewood to have a campfire that night, it was well worth that sacrifice to enjoy the Avalanche Lake scenery and to get some great photos of Avalanche Creek Gorge.