Missing in Action: Animals at Glacier National Park?
As absurd as this may sound, I do not see a single (large) animal in three full days at Glacier National Park. I rise at 7 am, and get to where I need to be around 8 to 830 am, and still no luck. Hours on the trail – nothing. After five glorious American bison and mule deer and prairie dog-filled days at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, this is a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, as other images have shown, the beauty of Glacier is unmatched. I was just hoping for some life.
Perhaps it is the crowd. Compared with Teddy Roosevelt, the trail traffic in Glacier is like Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive at rush hour. Ok, maybe not that bad, but you get the drift. Perhaps it’s the grizzly bears, who according to park rangers have begun to gorge in advance of their winter hibernation. This, in turn, drives the mountain goats and bighorn sheep up to even higher ground, which is even less visible to tourists.
All I want to see is a mountain goat. One single goat. Even an elk will do. It’s rutting season. Aren’t they supposed to be out there trumpeting or bugling or playing the ukulele? I may have seen a little gray pika, but it was gone before I could feed it some trail mix. It just looked like a chubby mouse anyway, No big deal.
What I do see are chipmunks. Lots and lots of chipmunks, usually on the ground around people – like little cute beggars. Save one (see photo above). I can honestly say this is the first chipmunk that I have ever seen actually up off the ground, in a tree. There were two of them, and they were literally feasting on maple tree whirlybird seeds. If that’s all you got Glacier, I’ll take it.
NOTE: While most of these images were shot with my Apple iPhone 8, the mountain bluebird, raven and least chipmunk were captured with the telephoto lens on my Canon PowerShot 620SX. This is the only reason I still bring it along.
