Cold and Spatial Glacial Placial

We left Seattle the following morning, flipped on the Potter (Harry Potter books on Mp3 read by Jim Dale) and took off across Washington, Idaho and a bit of Montana en route to Glacier Multinational Park. Not wanting to deal with the unknown of crossing the border into Canada we stayed in the Montana section of the park. Glacier is split into an eastern side and a western side, divided by the rather magnificent continental divide. Joining the two sides is a rather famous road called the Going to the Sun Road, a rather ironic name given the heat of the Sun and the cold of the road buried under the load of the snoad.


Continental divide


Skipping stones in the larger Glacial lake in the Park

Turns out that the high elevation of the pass through the continental divide causes the road to be under snow for about 9 months of the year, giving us a three month snow free window which we missed by about three days. Despite the pass being closed, we were still able to drive along the road for about 12 miles and settle down for a couple of nights at the final open campground on the road. The following day we hiked to the Apgar lookout along an inclined trail which escorted us through acres upon acres of Mountain Pine Beetle torn forests.



It is believed (by scientists, people who study data) that global climate change has spurred a longer wild fire season which simultaneously burns sections of the forests and attracts and contributes to the reproductive success of these highly invasive beetles. This became relatively apparent as we climbed higher and higher and noticed the vastness of dead, yet not burned, trees spanning the mountains with rare patches of uninfected green conifers. Perhaps the best thing about a mostly dead forest is how easily colorful birds stand out, and it wasn’t long before we spotted a rather lovely Western Tanager whose orange head and yellow body stood out like an average height person in a group of Japanese tourists.

After a couple of nights on the western slopes we drove around the southern border of the park and re-entered the eastern side for a night. Notable experiences from this side of the park include a hike to see three different waterfalls, all concentrated just above a large lake, all massive in their own right, and all from different rivers, a testament to the colossal quantities of water that are released as the mountains drip dry in the pressing summer heat.





After the hike we attended a bear talk from a bear man who stressed that in order to coexist with bears we must understand what a bear’s world is like from a bears perspective, for a bear does not see, smell or hear things as we do, but as a bear does. Incidentally, the bear man who has spent many years working in Brooks Range in Alaska (hot zone for the study of Grizzlies) informed us that despite the popularity of bells to warn off bears, bears take neither interest nor offense to the rather insignificant sound of a bell, after all, what does a bell mean to a bear, nothing. (If you would like to learn more about bears, do some research or call 1-800 I AM BEAR)


Black Bear IN Glacier

The sun dropped the moon popped we slept, woke and crept out of Glacier heading further south towards what we hoped would be slightly warmer and drier weather.