In the shadow of glaciers

This past week I had sometime off and took a little bit of a mini-vacation so my cousin Derek to the Rockies. Officially this trip was more of a vacation/ camping trip than fishing trip, but really what fly fisherman can stand traveling to Montana and not wetting a line. On the third day of the trip we decided to make a little jaunt into Glacier National Park to do a bit of sight seeing, hiking and of course fishing. What we didn't plan on was that this would also be a day with free admission to the park, resulting in the masses descending upon this alpine wonderland. With plenty of company in tow, we made the winding drive up the Going to the Sun Road first and did the hike into Hidden Lake at the top of Logan Pass. Like usual there was plenty of company on the trail, but not all of them were people...

Some high country locals enjoying the meadows

As with the previous time I made the trip to Glacier, I didn't bring fly with me on the hike to Hidden Lake and ended up kicking myself all of the way back down the trail.

Hidden Lake... Maybe I will fish it next time.

On the way back out of the park we found a nice stretch of a stream that holds native Westslope Cutthroat and figured that it was as good of a place as any to do a bit of fishing. We rigged up with some bushy attractor dry flies and once on the water we were almost instantly into fish. Most of these fish were on the smallish size, but all of them were beautiful and lots of fun on the little 1wt that I have become accustomed to fishing in such places.

A small but native Westslope Cutthroat

Of course this was one of those places were the fishing was less about catching fish and more just about being on the water in one of the most dramatic landscapes on the planet. Needless to say the it was hard to keep my eyes on my dry fly at all times as this was one of those places where you can't forget to look up from the water once and a while and just marvel at your surroundings. This meant more than a few missed fish...

Breath taking comes to mind...

Still there were plenty of fish around including a few nice, albeit photo-shy ones...

A beautiful but not so photogenic Cutthroat...

After a few hours on the water and with the light fading it was time to cruise on out of the park and continue traveling across "big sky" country.

One last look at the rugged Northern Rockies of Montana