In the Presence of Giants: The Three Falls Hike

When we saw a sign for the Three Falls Hike, the decision was pretty easy.

Three waterfalls on one trail?

We were doing it.

Going-to-the-Sun Road was still closed, so my brother and I had driven the long way around Glacier National Park to the east side. We'd already spent a couple of hours on the road and stopped at several places for photographs before reaching the Sun Point Trailhead.

Traffic was heavy with everyone traveling as far into the park as the road closure would allow. When we saw the sign for the hike, I actually had enough cell signal to pull it up on AllTrails.

About six and a half miles round trip.

After my experience hiking to Avalanche Lake, at least this time I knew what I was getting myself into.

I also brought more than one bottle of water.

We started down the trail with St. Mary Lake beside us and mountains rising everywhere around it.

And once again, Glacier reminded me just how small I was.

I grew up visiting the Smoky Mountains. The Appalachians are mountains I've known for most of my life, and I've always thought of them as big.

Then I went to Glacier.

There's something different about the scale there. Mountains like Red Eagle, Mahtotopa and Little Chief rise across the water, while the trail carries you through a landscape that seems determined to make you feel tiny.

Photographs can't really communicate it.

I've tried.

Standing there is different.

Before reaching our first waterfall, we came across a crowd gathered along the trail. Two large mule deer bucks were nearby, and several people were attempting to get much closer to them than either my brother or I thought was particularly wise.

We stood back.

Thankfully, the deer eventually decided they'd had enough of their new friends and moved on, allowing us to get around the crowd and continue toward our first destination.

Baring Falls.

The hike from Sun Point hadn't been particularly difficult yet, and after roughly a mile we reached the falls.

It wasn't the tallest waterfall I'd ever seen—maybe fifteen or twenty feet—but there was plenty of water moving over it. The clear mountain water, the surrounding forest and a fallen tree stretching across the scene immediately caught my attention.

So naturally, I stopped.

Baring Falls shot with my 28-70mm Sony Lens

There was something peaceful about that first stop. We rested for a few minutes, I made my photographs, and then we continued toward St. Mary Falls.

As we moved farther along the trail, the landscape began to change.

A wildfire had passed through the area a year or two earlier, and its scars were still everywhere. Some trees had fallen. Others remained standing as blackened trunks without branches—the skeletons of the forest that had been there before.

Yet underneath them, the forest was already returning.

New growth covered the ground beneath the burned trees.

The devastation was impossible to miss, but so was the recovery.

With fewer trees blocking our view, the mountains across St. Mary Lake seemed even larger.

Little Chief Mountain taken with my 28-70mm Sony Lens

It was one of those places where I kept stopping simply because I couldn't quite believe what I was looking at.

The trail became steeper as we continued, and between the elevation and a body much more accustomed to Alabama than Montana, I occasionally needed those stops for reasons other than photography.

Eventually, we reached St. Mary Falls.

And once again, it was the water that surprised me.

The color was incredible—an intense, clear blue that seemed even stronger than what I'd seen along Avalanche Creek.

Standing on the footbridge, I photographed the upper portion of St. Mary Falls as the water rushed beneath me.

St. Mary's Falls taken with my Sony 28-70mm Lens

Then I turned around.

Behind me, the same water that had just been roaring through the falls seemed to settle into the landscape.

St. Mary's River taken with my Sony 28-70mm Lens

That photograph still reminds me of the contrasts along this hike.

Rushing water and calm water.

Blackened trees and new growth.

The scars of a wildfire surrounded by a landscape very much alive.

And above all of it, those mountains.

We continued climbing toward Virginia Falls, passing smaller cascades along Virginia Creek as we went.

Earlier on the trail, someone had pointed across the landscape toward water spilling down the mountainside.

"That's Virginia Falls. That's your last stop."

From that distance, it had looked impressive.

Up close was something else entirely.

Virginia Falls drops through multiple tiers, and finding a composition that showed as much of it as possible wasn't easy. From near the bottom, I found an angle where I could capture the lower section while still showing the water emerging higher on the mountainside.

Virginia Falls taken with my Sony 28-70 mm Sony Lens

By then we'd covered most of our six-and-a-half-mile hike, climbed to around the highest point of our day, and I was more than ready to sit for a while.

I was also still slightly disappointed that I hadn't seen a moose.

You can't have everything.

Before leaving, though, we climbed farther toward the top of Virginia Falls.

I set my camera on the tripod, walked into the frame, and used my phone as a remote shutter release.

It's not a photograph I made for my fine art collection.

But looking at it now, I think it may explain this hike better than any of the others.

Bama Price and Virginia Falls shot with my Sony 28-70mm Lens using the Sony app to trigger the shutter

There I am.

One person standing beside a waterfall, surrounded by a landscape so much larger than me that the photograph almost swallows me.

We set out that morning because a sign promised us three waterfalls.

We found all three.

But that's not what I remember most.

I remember standing beside St. Mary Lake looking across at mountains that made the Appalachians I'd known all my life suddenly feel small.

I remember the remains of a burned forest and the new growth already reclaiming it.

I remember impossibly blue water, the roar of waterfalls, and repeatedly stopping along the trail because the landscape demanded another look.

Most of all, I remember the feeling that followed me throughout my time in Glacier National Park.

Awe.

The feeling of standing in the presence of giants.

Available as Fine Art

Baring Falls, Little Chief Mountain, St. Mary Falls, St. Mary River, and Virginia Falls are available in my Glacier National Park Collection. You can view these photographs and the rest of my Montana fine art prints here:

Glacier National Park Collection