Scenic Point, Mount Henry Trail
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NPS Trail Crew Report The hike to Scenic Point on the Mount Henry Trail is one of the best hikes in Glacier National Park. From Scenic Point on the Mount Henry Trail there are commanding views of Rising Wolf Mountain, Two Medicine Lake, Pumpelly's Pillar and Sinopah to name a few of the peaks visible from the aptly named Scenic Point. The trail starts off from a small parking area on the south side of the road to Two Medicine Lake, between Running Eagle Falls and the parking lot at Two Medicine Lake. If you miss the turn on the way on the way into Two Medicine Lake, then turn around in the parking area and look for it on the right hand side of Two Medicine Road. When you are entering Two Medicine, the road rises sharply from the parking area at Running Eagle Falls, just after the crest for this rise, on the left side of the road, is the turn out for Scenic Point / Mount Henry Trailhead. It is a dirt road with a small parking area. The trailhead is on the left side. | |
 Looking towards the west from the Mount Henry Trail about 200 hundred feet below Scenic Point Overlook the mountains are from right to left in the photo: Rising Wolf Mountain at 9,491 feet, Mount Helen at 8,520 feet, Sinopah at 8,160 feet and finally the ridge line leading up to Appistoki Peak at 8,143 feet. | |
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Mount Henry Trail starts off in a heavily wooded area, after a short while there is a fork to the right going to Apistoki Falls, stay to the left to go to Scenic Point. Mount Henry Trail gradually leaves the woods behind and starts on it's upward journey through the widely scattered remains of gnarled, ghost trees. At this point the trail becomes a series of switch backs. Unlike many trails, on the Mount Henry Trail once it leaves the woods behind the dramatic views start, intermingled with wildflowers, gnarled ghost trees and colorful lichen on the rocks along the trail.
Although this trail is moderately strenuous it's relative shortness, 3.1 miles one way, allow hikers who would otherwise avoid a strenuous trail to take the opportunity to enjoy the fantastic views possible on the Mount Henry Trail. The trick to this is pace, get a early start and take your time. Beware that conditions on this trail are frequently windy! "Mount Henry, where the wind blows always a steady gale . . ." As with any exposed trail bring extra water.
Unlike Mary Rhinehart who first visited Glacier National Park nearly One Hundred years ago I am not a wordsmith. In my own way I will try and convey why I hike, and why the Mount Henry Trail has been added to my short list of trails to hike every year at least once if not twice.
Mary Roberts Rhinehart, the mystery writer who coined the phrase 'the butler did it' writes about her travels through Glacier National Park in 1917, by train to East Glacier, then by horseback through the park.
Tenting Tonight
THE TRAIL
The trail is narrow--often but the width of the pony's feet, a tiny path that leads on and on. It is always ahead, sometimes bold and wide, as when it leads the way through the forest; often narrow, as when it hugs the sides of the precipice; sometimes even hiding for a time in river bottom or swamp, or covered by the débris of last winter's avalanche. Sometimes it picks its precarious way over snow-fields which hang at dizzy heights, and again it flounders through mountain streams, where the tired horses must struggle for footing, and do not even dare to stoop and drink.
It is dusty; it is wet. It climbs; it falls; it is beautiful and terrible. But always it skirts the coast of adventure. Always it goes on, and always it calls to those that follow it. Tiny path that it is, worn by the feet of earth's wanderers, it is the thread which has knit together the solid places of the earth. The path of feet in the wilderness is the onward march of life itself.
City-dwellers know nothing of the trail. Poor followers of the pavements, what to them is this six-inch path of glory? Life for many of them is but a thing of avenues and streets, fixed and unmysterious, a matter of numbers and lights and post-boxes and people. They know whither their streets lead. There is no surprise about them, no sudden discovery of a river to be forded, no glimpse of deer in full flight or of an eagle poised over a stream. No heights, no depths. To know if it rains at night, they look down at shining pavements; they do not hold their faces to the sky.