Our Take on Glacier

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CELEBRATING 100 YEARS
MONTANA
July 4, 2010

Yes, the glaciers do appear to be melting in Glacier National Park in this its centennial year. SInce this was my first trip to Glacier, I had nothing to compare as I looked at Jackson glacier, the largest in the park. I had only previously seen the glaciers on the Canadian side in the Colombian Glacier Field.

In 1993, I had actually walked on the glacier in Canada but after looking back at my pictures from 1993, I decided that if I could have gotten up to Jackson glacier, it could have been as large as was the Canadian Athabasca Glacier.

As we traveled the “Going to the Sun” highway in Glacier, the scenery was breath taking. Around each bend in the road there was a new view of snow covered mountain ranges, sparkling waterfalls and rushing streams.

The mountain sides were dotted with numerous waterfalls bubbling with snow melt down the alpine cirques and cliffs. Some are called step falls because the rock layers have eroded at different rates giving a step effect. The ribbon falls, just do that, fall as ribbons down shear cliffs from hanging valleys. These hanging glaciers marked where small tributary glaciers had carved intersecting valleys high above the floor of the principal glacier.

Along the road we passed the weeping wall where water weeps and falls to wet the road and splash your car. Many hands reached out to catch some moisture as they passed by.

The passes were marked with snow pilled as high as 25 feet where road clearing equipment had cleared the road. The road was still closed by snow until the last week in June, just a few days before we arrived.

On the “Going to the Sun” highway, we traveled along Lake McDonald for ten miles. It is reputed to be 475 feet deep and offered beautiful reflections of the mountain ranges. The Lake McDonald Lodge on the banks of the lake brought to mind a Swiss Chalet.

At Logan’s Pass, which has an elevation of 6646 feet and where we passed the Continental divide, the snow is quite deep around the visitor center and offered fun for kids and dads to pelt each other with snow balls. The mountain goats also seemed to like the visitor center and readily posed for my camera.

Speaking of the Continental divide, we passed Triple Divide Peak which was marked as having runoff to the Pacific Ocean to the West, the Atlantic Ocean via the Mississippi River Valley to the East and Hudson Bay to the North.

Construction along the “Sun” highway gave us pause to enjoy the wildflowers which were in full bloom those first two weeks in July. My favorite was called bear grass. Each plant had one plume of hundreds of tiny white flowers. These plants covered the ground where they had open sun, especially in the areas recently cleared by wild fire. Bright pink and red Indian Paintbrush gave a colorful accent among yellow monkey flower, blanket flower, glacier lily, white yarrow, cow parsnip and blue forget-me-nots, wild geranium, lupine and many other flowers that carpeted the ground.

Another colorful sight along the “Sun” highway were the numerous antique red open air tour buses. These buses from the 1930’s are treasured by the drivers as well as the park. “It just don’t get any better than driving this fine antique bus through this kind of scenery,” said one contented bus driver.

There are thirty buses in the fleet and it takes six full time mechanics to keep them in working order. The busses gleamed as if they had just rolled off the show room floor.

As soon as bears are spotted along the highway, rangers quickly make their way to the site to control crowds and keep everyone safe, including the bears. We spotted two Grizzly bears in a meadow, far enough away to be captured by a telephoto lens. They appeared to be mating. The ranger said it was a few weeks late in the year, but it was possible.

At one spot a braver mom and her two cubs excited crowds along the road, but she went behind a crop of trees before we got to the site. When I mentioned to a ranger that I had bought a walking stick with a bell, his comment was, “That’s not enough to scare them away. Make a lot of noise when walking the trails.” So much for my new bell stick.

Shining glaciers, high mountain waterfalls fed by melting snow, rivers with numerous rapids and falls, animals from as small as a marmot scurrying into holes to the mammoth grizzly bears and graceful elk moving about the meadows and sightseeing crowds such as ourselves filled the space of what the natives rightly call the “big sky country.”