Crown Of The Continent

Early morning rise with a 3.5 hour drive and a 9 mile hike into this spot. You expect to be tired but nope, this area kept you on your toes purely by the scenery. The Belly River region of Glacier National Park, is renowned for its grand views and amazing trails. I spent a summer as a backpacking guide here and I was always stoked to be able to lead trips into this region. Though on this trip, this was with my girlfriend, my sister and her partner of the time. In this image you can see the Crown Of The Continent: Mount Cleveland Elevation: 10,466 ft. The highest mountain in Glacier National Park. This is where the sun is setting over. The hike in was great. Shortly after arriving, it was sunset and I was right here photographing. As I have before. Upon returning to camp, just as the stars began to come out, a pack of wolves began to howl across Cosely Lake. They went on for fifteen-minutes. What we could make of it was they had just gotten a kill and were celebrating. Though, there is no way of knowing. We would eventually see those wolves three days later on our hike back out of the Belly River area. This was day one, and on day two, we hiked from Cosely Lake to Head Elizabeth Lake Campground. The hike was 7.4 miles of bliss! Though the bridges across the rivers and streams had been taken down for the season so we had to take off our boots and hikes through the running water. At the Elizabeth Lake head, we had amazing low fog and crazy weather. Rain soon came in and we went into the woods, where the campsite was and stayed for a while to make dinner and sleep. The next morning, our third day, we hike down to the foot of Elizabeth Lake and camped there for the third night. The wind was howling but it was great. On the Fourth morning, snow had fallen on the peaks, and the sunrise was pink and purple, with huge mountains standing all around. It was bitter cold with high winds and just after breakfast, we left camp to hike the 9.5 miles back to the parking lot where our vehicle was. The wolves were crossing the trail, just 20 feet ahead of us as we were hiking on it, toward them. One stopped on the trail and starred at us for a moment. As two other larger black ones trotted across the trail and into the forest. We began hiking as they dipped into the trees. Just moments later we noticed we were being followed. The three wolves were parallel to us, hoping over and under fallen trees, just 20-feet away from us, keeping pace. We met up with my sister and the wolves began to howl. What came as another surprise was there were maybe 6 other wolves on the other side of the trail that began to howl, though these wolves were likely 100 yards away. This went on for 10-minutes. We were in awe and loved every second of it! Mountains shown: Mount Cleveland Elevation: 10,466 ft, Whitecrow Mountain Elevation: 7,247 ft, Stoney Indian Peaks Elevation: 8,862 ft, Pyramid Peak Elevation: 8,159 ft and Cosely Ridge.