Cracker Lake 2014

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by

Jake Bramante
Cracker Lake Sunrise

While I had been to Cracker Lake a couple of times, my wife Kristen had not. We decided to celebrate the 4th of July in the American idea of National Parks and camp at the lake. We ended up with a beautiful lake, mountain goats, a pika, snowshoe hare, and loads of wildflowers.

A note about the three campsites at Cracker Lake, is that they don’t have any sort of tree cover. This means that if the sun, wind, etc are relentless, there’s not a whole lot of escaping them. Our rainfly smacked around in the wind all night keeping us up. In hindsight, removing the rainfly would have helped us very much. 🙂

Cracker Lake 2014
Tennessee Warbler

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Comments

4 responses to “Cracker Lake 2014”

  1. Maia Avatar
    Maia

    Looks super gorgeous! I’m a Californian headed to Glacier this August and I’m super duper excited!

    Reply
  2. Angie Poetter Avatar
    Angie Poetter

    My husband and I just stayed at Cracker Lake Campground a few nights ago. I wish someone had warned us about how exposed the campsites are! The wind was absolutely terrible and it was cold and rainy throughout the night (nothing we haven’t handily camped through before, in normal, less exposed sites). We had to literally brace the tent in place every time we heard another wind gust coming – our tent has never had any structural issues before but very nearly collapsed on us numerous times in the night. We had to stay up all night. We definitely just googled “deaths at Cracker Lake” to see if this has ever gone worse for someone!

    Full disclosure: it was absolutely gorgeous and the hike was fantastic, but we shouldn’t have assumed the wooded trail up to the lake and the sheltered conditions on the rest of the hike would be in the campground. If you plan on staying at the campground, leave yourself time in the day to hike back if you don’t have gear rated for high winds.

    Reply
    1. Jake Bramante Avatar
      Jake Bramante

      I agree fully! We barely slept ourselves. 😉

      Reply
  3. Kristopher Hassett Avatar
    Kristopher Hassett

    Hey Jake. We got our third choice for a Glacier permit! Cracker Lake in late August. So excited! I’ve watched your Cracker Lake video several times in the last few days! Can’t wait to get out there. Planning to do Avalanche Lake the day before and maybe sneak a few other short hikes in too. Thanks again for your talk at the Kalispell REI! ? ?

    Reply

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