The Loop is the only switchback on the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, a tight hairpin where the valley road gives way to the narrow road cut into the Garden Wall. A small lot sits inside the curve, with restrooms but no drinking water. The Loop Trail starts here and climbs 4.2 miles and 2,600 feet to Granite Park Chalet, a stiff day hike rather than a stroll. Just below the bend, the West Side Tunnel has two rock windows that look out at Heavens Peak and McDonald Creek. The Trapper Fire ran past this spot in 2003 on its way to the chalet, which survived with guests sheltering inside.
The lot at The Loop sits on the inside of this bend. If you're climbing, it's on your side of the road. If you're coming down, you cross oncoming traffic on a hairpin to reach it, so only cross with a clear view. Go easy and watch for people on foot. If you pulled in, uphill is Logan Pass and downhill is Apgar. There are restrooms here and no drinking water. On the whole west side of this road there's one switchback, and this is it. The Loop marks the line between the valley road and the narrow road carved into the mountainside. If you're climbing, you've just come through the West Side Tunnel. If you're coming down, it's about half a mile below this hairpin, with two window galleries framing Heavens Peak and McDonald Creek. Why a tunnel at all? Probably because the road doubles back along the cliffs directly above it, and blasting away the lower cliffs might have taken out the rock that holds up the upper road. The quarry stone on this road kept splitting, sometimes just as a mason finished shaping it, so for a guard wall contract in nineteen fifty the Park Service brought in dark gray granite from Minnesota. One retaining wall of it stands near that tunnel. There's no natural granite anywhere in Glacier. Granite Park, at the top of the trail that starts in this lot, took its name from early prospectors who misread the rock. It's either pillow lava or a dark band of rock called a sill, the one you can see high on these peaks. That trail climbs four point two miles and two thousand six hundred feet to Granite Park Chalet, so it's a real day. Carry bear spray, and have your water with you before you leave the lot. The chalet has a story of its own. In two thousand three the Trapper Fire made a dramatic run past this bend, burning some abandoned cars, and went on toward the chalet, where guests sheltered inside. It burned up to the walls and around them, and the building was spared. Now find Heavens Peak. The name first shows up on maps by Lieutenant George Ahern, who in August of eighteen ninety led a detachment of Black soldiers of the Twenty-fifth Infantry over the pass that now carries his name. Theirs was the first known party to take pack stock across it. Same wall, same valley, and nobody had built them a road.
Photo: NPS / Gaby Eseverri · Public domain