While I’m sure Grinnell Glacier Trail is beautiful on a sunny day, the mist and heavy drizzle in the woods was positively ethereal.

The sparkling raindrops hanging heavy on naked branches reminded me of the diamond forest in The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

For scale, that little building is the five story Many Glacier Hotel, constructed by the Great Northern Railway in 1914-1915. It doesn’t look like it from here, but the hotel has over 200 guest rooms.

You see a lot when you’re standing, but you miss a lot as well. And as fun as it is to get a bird’s eye view, it’s just as fun to lay in the grass and check things out from there.

I love the juxtaposition of the human-made road and the nature-carved mountains. The road — linearity, designed for permanence, and created with a singular purpose. The mountains — constantly eroding, slowly changing, tall peaks and deep valleys, purely a byproduct of moving ice over geologic time.

While the view from Hidden Lake trail was beautiful, the most exhilarating part was flopping onto the ground and sliding all the way back down.

The water was as still as Mt. Grinnell itself. I’m not a morning person, which means waking up at 4 am is not at the top of my “Thing’s I’d Willingly Do” list. But it’s on there, and scenes like this are why.

The beautiful colors of sunrise reflected in Swiftcurrent Creek! The rapidly melting Grinnell Glacier is one of several sources of water for this creek and its source, Swiftcurrent Lake. It’s difficult to imagine what this will look like once the glaciers disappear.

The Loop — an unassuming name for acres of ghostly, torched trees, steep, wooded mountainsides, and colorful alpine meadows, leading to Granite Park Chalet.

As wonderful as the mountains were, you could also clearly see how much the glaciers had receded, an ominous reminder that glaciers wouldn’t stay in Glacier National Park for much longer.

The border between the US and Canada — not that this means much to the denizens of the mountains. I love this image for its aesthetics, for how it visually emphasizes the contrived, and how it shows how tenuous our control is in the grand scheme of things.