Located on the park’s dryer eastern side, where the mountains melt imperceptibly into the Great Plains, St Mary Lake lies in a deep, glacier-carved valley famous for its astounding views and ferocious winds. Overlooked by the tall, chiseled peaks of the Rockies and with the northern slopes dramatically thinned from the lake shore to Going-to-the-Sun Rd by the 2015 Reynolds Creek fire, the valley views are still spectacular and punctuated by numerous trailheads and viewpoints.

St Mary’s gorgeous turquoise sheen, easily the most striking color of any of Glacier’s major bodies of water, is due to the suspension of tiny particles of glacial rock in the lake’s water that absorbs and reflects light.

The landscape-altering effects of the 2006 Red Eagle Fire is still very much visible on the southern slopes of the lake.

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