For as much time as I’ve spent exploring Glacier, I’ve never made it up to Bowman Lake. It hasn’t been for lack of trying but every previous attempt of mine has been thwarted.

My friend Becky came from the Bitterroot Valley to help me change my record. We’d planned on biking before the road opened to vehicles but missed the window due to scheduling conflicts & weather. Besides a few vehicles dusting us out as we rode from the Polebridge Ranger station to Bowman Lake, we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.

We were planning on biking the Going to the Sun Road the next day but we did get turned around by a snowstorm on our drive in. Had it just been Becky & I we would have ridden it out but it doesn’t seem fair to ask a 2-year-old sitting in a rear bike seat to endure a snowstorm on top of everything else a ride like that entails. So we pivoted last minute into a new adventure and headed up to the Spotted Bear Ranger Station for a hike over the swinging bridge.