Glacier National Park is losing the glaciers it was named for. Around 1850 roughly eighty of them filled these Montana peaks; fewer than thirty are left, and they are still shrinking. What the ice built is not going anywhere, though: sharp horns, U-shaped valleys and more than 700 lakes, many of them milky turquoise from the rock flour still suspended in their meltwater. People have called this stretch of the Rockies the Crown of the Continent for more than a century. Across the Canadian border it runs straight on into Waterton Lakes without a break, and in 1932 the two were paired as the world's first International Peace Park, later listed by UNESCO.
Cutting through the heart of it is the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a narrow ledge blasted along the cliffs up to Logan Pass on the Continental Divide. Over its 80 kilometres the forested lakeshores give way to alpine meadows, and a fresh peak swings into view at nearly every bend. Wild Goose Island sits alone in St. Mary Lake, framed by mountains in the morning light, while short trails to Hidden Lake and Grinnell Glacier bring you within walking distance of turquoise water and standing ice. White mountain goats pick across sheer rock as if it were level ground, and this is still some of the densest grizzly country in the lower 48. Under the clear shallows of Lake McDonald the pebbles come out red and green, which is not a trick of the light. The road opens end to end only once the snow is ploughed clear, usually by early July, and the highest meadows flower for a few short weeks before winter closes in again.