Avalanche Lake cliffs
— the cliff wall the waterfalls fall down.
Not only on a wall.
“A small alpine lake sitting in a cirque under the south face of Bearhat Mountain. Snowmelt from the Sperry Glacier basin falls 2,000 feet down the cliffs in long white threads, four or five at a time depending on the year. The trail is two miles up from the Trail of the Cedars, gentle most of the way. The water at the head of the lake is the cold the falls leave behind.
Avalanche Lake cliffs, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Avalanche Lake lies in a glacial cirque at the head of Avalanche Creek, about two miles above the Trail of the Cedars trailhead in Glacier National Park. The lake sits at roughly 3,905 feet, beneath the 8,684-foot summit of Bearhat Mountain. The cirque walls are part of the Lewis Overthrust block, with Precambrian argillite and limestone exposed in horizontal bands. Snowmelt from the Sperry Glacier basin drops more than 2,000 feet down the cliffs as a series of long ribbon waterfalls into the head of the lake.
The waterfalls along the south wall draw from the same snow and ice that feed Sperry Glacier, one of the park's named remnant glaciers. The number and volume of the falls varies through the season: peak flow runs from late June through July as the snowpack melts out, with the ribbons thinning into August and reduced to two or three by September. The lake itself is shallow at the inlet and deeper toward the outlet, with cutthroat trout holding in the cooler water.
The hike to the lake is a 4.5-mile round trip from the Trail of the Cedars trailhead, with about 730 feet of elevation gain. It is one of the most popular day hikes in Glacier, drawing several hundred parties on a summer Saturday. The Going-to-the-Sun Road requires timed-entry tickets through the warm months. Bear activity along the trail is steady; rangers recommend group hiking and carrying spray. The trail typically clears of snow by late May and stays open into mid-October.