Hey everyone,

You may remember that I moved from Columbia Falls, MT, last fall. I still had a few to-do's on my list for Glacier, so when I had a week off I decided to head back to my old stomping grounds. The further north I went, the smokier it got, but it was a beautiful drive anyway. Most of the crops were in bloom including a huge field of sunflowers.

We drove up the North Fork for the night to camp. We found a nice spot to take in the smoky sunset. One of the things I wanted to do while up here was to summit one of Glacier's 10K foot peaks, Mount Siyeh. But if it was going to be super hazy, I was starting to second guess the idea of climbing into a haze. Both seeing and breathing are high on my list for things I like to do when hiking, and smoke doesn't help with either of those.

The next morning I made my way to Lake McDonald before sunrise, up to Logan Pass, and parked at the trailhead. The weather looked like it was better than the day before, so we packed up beers and made our way for the summit.

Once we made it to Floral Park the sun just started to peak over the ridge.

We could finally see our target, Mount Siyeh, and its summit just above 10K.

We slowly picked our way up the talus chute, walking back and forth along the ledges. The down valley views just kept getting better and better. We even had some decent wildlife encounters on the way up.

After a break or two, and an hour or two of route finding, we gained the ridge. From there we just needed to follow it to the top. Looking behind us, we saw that we weren't the only ones climbing that day.

At the top we were greeted to new views of one of the most iconic lakes in the park, Cracker Lake. I've hiked and backpacked to the lake a couple times, but this was a whole new level of awesome. From the summit, it's a nearly vertical 4,000-foot drop down to the lake, and you can sit on the edge. I've heard of horror stories about the wind, but there was ZERO wind on our summit day AND the views were better than we had hoped. 

We cracked our beers, sat on the edge and soaked in the views. Which are basically 360 degrees.

After a while, the other group made it to the top. Always fun to share a summit with cool people!

This summit had been on my list since 2010, when I first visited Glacier. I had tried a few other times but got weathered out every time. It was nice to finally reach the summit and the stoke was high!

After a while we decided that we should probably head down so we could drive to East Glacier. No summit day is complete without some margaritas and loaded nachos at Serrano's. Overall spectacular day. Wildflowers were popping to boot!