TourTheSouthwest.com LLC
         Your Source for Custom Designed Private Tour Services of the West & Southwest USA

Glacier National Park

We offer custom private tours and scheduled tours to Glacier National Park and the other local attractions. Please call us for tour details.

Deserving of its Native American titles of “the Shining Mountains” and the “Backbone of the World,” Glacier National Park’s spectacular fusion of sheared-off cliffs, glacier-scoured valleys, alpine meadows, coursing streams, sapphire lakes, native prairies, luxuriant forests, prolific wildflowers, and a superlative assortment of wildlife make this an open-air paradise. A focal point in the “Crown of the Continent” Northern Rockies, these 1,000,000+ acres (4,047 km2) of organic beauty encompass parts of two mountain ranges and have been designated as not only an International Biosphere Reserve but also a World Heritage Site.

This impressive park is named, not for the 26 glaciers currently in residence, but instead for the ancient glaciers to which it owes its formation. Massive accumulations of snow and ice, glaciers move unhurriedly but relentlessly downhill, scouring, sculpting, reshaping, and often relocating the earth they traverse. On melting, they leave behind precipitous U-shaped valleys and telltale piles of debris culled from the glacier’s path and deposited in disordered heaps called moraines. The rocky contents of moraines can be boulders as large as houses, or stone pulverized into rock flour by the grinding ice. It is the high mineral content of this rock flour suspended in glacial rivers and lakes that sustain the algae that turns the water turquoise in color.

The largest of Glacier’s 130 lakes, Lake McDonald is a brilliant sapphire in a detailed setting of red cedar and hemlock forests bounded by towering snowcapped mountains. Her alpine backdrop frames one of the best wildflower displays in North America.

Bisecting Glacier’s wild interior, the breathtaking Going-to-the-Sun Road offers visitors stunning vistas as it coils lithely around verdant mountainsides, along the lustrous shorelines of Glacier’s two largest lakes, and through the very heart of this superbly beautiful National Park.

Reclining at the highest elevation reachable via automobile within Glacier National Park, Logan Pass rewards its visitors with dramatic panoramas of wildflower-strewn meadows, craggy mountain peaks, and sparkling glacial lakes, as well as the knowledge that the site on which they stand is annually buried by up to 80 feet (25 m) of snow.

Glacier’s varied topography is home to hundreds of species of animals, including bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, black bears, wolverines, gray wolves, beavers, cougars, lynx, moose, whitetail and mule deer, hoary marmot, river otter, pika, northern bog lemmings, and the core of one of the largest grizzly bear populations in the contiguous United States. More than 260 species of birds are found in Glacier’s diverse habitats, including ptarmigans, black swifts, Clark's nutcrackers, martens, osprey, golden eagles, Harlequin ducks, bald eagles, dippers, and timberline sparrows.

Glacier is truly a hikers paradise with 747 miles of maintained trails. But beyond hiking, there are a great many activities through which to enjoy Glacier, including boating, biking, camping, canoeing, climbing, fishing, photography, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, swimming, horseback riding, and wildlife watching.