The third largest lake in Glacier National Park in Montana, Bowman Lake offers scenic beauty with less crowded conditions than are typical of other parts of the park. It takes a slow, bumpy ride along dirt roads to get there, which is a big part of what keeps the crowds down.
Bowman Lake is one of the many lakes within Glacier National Park, and it is one of the large outflow lakes that radiate out from the bases of the highest peaks. These lakes are one of the features that are evidence of the glacial past, along with u-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, and glacial cirques. Along the western edge of the park, Lakes Bowman, Kintla, and McDonald line up like fingers pointing more or less west. This speaks to the fact that all three lakes are west of the continental divide, where all precipitation ultimately flows toward the Pacific Ocean.
Another important feature of the area encompassed by Glacier National Park is that it is home to rocks that are between 800 million and 1.6 billion years old. These rocks were shoved up and over younger rocks about 170 million years ago during the formation of the current Rocky Mountains.
Today’s photo was taken with a Canon EF100 mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens on a Canon EOS 5D Mk III. The exposure was set to 1/750 sec at f/11 and ISO 800.