The short, easy hike to St. Mary Falls and Virginia Falls is a must do in Glacier National Park. Virginia Falls is arguably the most impressive waterfall in the park that you can hike to. As evidenced by the many small children we saw, it’s a great hike for families.
On our off day between 10-miler hikes, we decided to have an easy start, check out the Visitor Center on the east side, then make our way to the trailhead to St. Mary and Virginia Falls. If we wanted to hike in peace we probably should arrived much earlier as we couldn’t find a spot in the small parking area (it was the week of 4th of July – we were expecting this). We ended up parking in a turn off about 1/4th of a mile to the west of the trail head and walked down the road before beginning the actual hike.
The first part of the hike descended a small hill to St. Mary Falls. It’s through an old burn area with heavily scarred trees but lush undergrowth. Burn areas aren’t usually the greatest to hike through, but this area was quite pleasant with all of the wildflowers and open views of the surrounding peaks, especially Dusty Star Mountain. Fusillade Mountain and Reynolds Mountain frame the scene nicely.
At about a mile the trail reaches the bridge over the St. Mary River and the cascading falls just above it. St. Mary Falls are pretty short, falling only 35 feet, but are very picturesque as they shoot through a narrow gorge surrounded by black volcanic rock. It was a cool day with some cloud cover and the canyon was even more chilly from the spray of the glacial water.
Let’s take a moment to remember the lens cap that was fumbled into the river. RIP.
Just a couple hundred yards up the trail there are some nice open rocky ledges next to a pretty large cascade. We opted to eat lunch there and take in the views of Little Chief Mountain.
With our bellies full and some more ogling at the scenery, we headed up the hill to Virginia falls. The trail winds its way through a lush forest with lots of undergrowth and parallels Virginia Creek most of the way up. At 1.7 miles there is a split in the trail where one goes left across the creek to a viewing area and the other goes up to the base of the falls. We went to the lower viewing area first and it was stunning. The falls don’t normally have this much water, but on July 2nd of a 150% snowpack year they were raging. The clouds parted for a brief moment so the sun hit the mist from the falls just perfectly.
There were quite a few people hanging out next to the creek here (don’t blame them!), so we walked up towards the base of the falls to get a closer look. At the immediate base the mist and spray absolutely soaked us, but we found some ledges just a little lower that weren’t quite so wet, where we were actually able to take some photos without the lens getting soaked. After viewing quite a few waterfalls in Glacier National Park, we think Virginia Falls is probably the most picturesque we saw (though Bird Woman might give it a run).
