Logan Pass, Mont.
In this landscape defined by glaciers, mountain goats rule.
Nimble, decked out with curved black horns, professorial goatees and thick, woolly coats, these all-terrain animals must also be a tad egotistical. Why else would they congregate along the Hidden Lake Trail within sight of the Logan Pass Visitor Center and pose for Glacier National Park visitors?
I am in a small gaggle of tourists busily training our armament of camera lenses on the goats as they graze on the wildflower-strewn emerald slopes. The goats are so close they could be models strutting a runway.
Pikas, small round-eared cousins of the rabbit, keep up their shrill barking to distract us, while towering overhead are the cirques, glacial horns and snowfields that most often come to mind when Glacier is mentioned.
Nevertheless, we fill our cameras with goats. There always will be time for scenery, but who knows what schedule the goats follow?
Not that it matters. There’s no loss in trading scenery for goats or vice versa in Glacier, a million-acre-plus park in northwestern Montana nudged up against the Canadian border. Though its glaciers are retreating – some scientists predict that, with current conditions, they could be gone by 2030 – their absence won’t make the park any less alluring, for its pristine lakes and forests and crags and wildlife are a breathtaking throwback to colonial days.
Designated in 1910, almost two decades after the Great Northern Railway brought its tracks and trains across the relatively low 5,220-foot Marias Pass just below Glacier’s southern boundary, Glacier tosses more ruggedness at you than just about any other park in the Lower 48. You can see that from atop 6,664-foot Logan Pass. The Going-to-the-
Sun Road climbs up to, across, and down the pass. It is narrow, and at times precipitous, in a constant state of repair, thanks to the ravages of the freeze-
thaw cycle. Beginning in 2007, park officials plan to launch an ambitious rebuilding program intended to gain the upper hand on both the mountainous terrain and the climate.
Logan Pass, the apex of the Sun Road, is pinched tightly between Clements Mountain and the southern tip of the Garden Wall, a massive rib of rock that carries the Continental Divide through the park’s interior. From this saddle the pass sends Reynolds Creek and Logan Creek in opposite directions as their waters cascade down massive U-shaped valleys scooped out during the park’s glaciated past. Farther north are the bulk of the park’s glaciers – thick sheets of ice named Ipasha, Old Sun, Grinnell, Swiftcurrent, Thunderbird and Rainbow – while to the south stands a maze of mountains, valleys, meadows and backcountry lakes that it would take a lifetime to know.
Many park visitors motor up to the pass aboard a Red Jammer, one of Glacier’s renowned fire engine-red, open-air touring buses. Along the way, they struggle to digest this complex landscape that the Blackfoot Nation – the park’s original human inhabitants – calls the “Shining Mountains” and the “Backbone of the World.”
Here Bird Woman Falls spills 492 feet to Logan Creek. Over there on the western horizon, Heavens Peak shimmers under streaks of its permanent snowfield, here’s a meadow of Beargrass and Glacier lilies.
Weeping Rock showers west-bound Jammers with icy snowmelt, while the Highline Trail shuttles hikers, and the ubiquitous goats, 7.6 miles into the backcountry and the Granite Park Chalet, a rustic stone- built shelter that’s a throwback to the 1910s when pack horses hauled visitors across the park.
So massive is the park that it’s both a sin and a miracle that only the Sun Road slices entirely through the interior. A few shorter roads jog briefly into Glacier, but they are mainly the domain of locals who want to vanish into the landscape.
Glacier visitors who only negotiate the Sun Road before heading elsewhere gain just a small sense of the park, with its many lakes and more than 700 miles of backcountry trails.
For them, a Red Jammer tour offers the perfect Glacier sampler, as I discover one sunny midsummer morning as we head out from Lake McDonald Lodge. For the next three hours, Barry Gray, the Jammer’s driver, regales his 17 passengers with Glacier facts and trivia, pointing out stromatoliths – fossilized blue-green algae -, the Livingston and Lewis mountain ranges, and avalanche chutes that in springtime double as “grizzly bear frozen food sections” for the carrion of goats, bighorn sheep and other critters kept on ice until foraging grizzlies dig them out.
To gain a better feel for the park and its setting, I leave Lake McDonald Lodge the next day and backtrack to West Glacier, heading east along U.S. 2 as it meanders along Glacier’s southern boundary. I am retracing the route the Great Northern trains once followed and that Amtrak now rumbles along twice daily. Passing the tiny enclave of East Glacier I continue north to Browning and the Lodgepole Gallery and Tipi Village, where Darrell Norman, a member of the Blackfoot tribe, provides me with two great nights of sleep in one of his rental teepees.
“People come here because they want to know about Native American people,” Norman says to me and his other guests over a dinner of ground bison, wild rice with mushrooms, a spicy salsa, cauliflower and broccoli joined by a bottle of red wine.
They can experience what he calls “Native American tourism” for a night in one of his teepees, and take it home in the form of some of the jewelry, photography, paintings, sketches, ceremonial drums and other American Indian art he and his German-born wife, Angelica, and other Indian artists make. Norman also doubles as a one-man chamber of commerce for the Browning area, the center of the Blackfoot Reservation. It’s a community that has one of the highest unemployment rates in Montana. But it’s also an area of breathtaking scenery.
Between Browning and St. Mary, two-lane U.S. 89 provides sweeping vistas to the east of what the vast Indian nation must have looked like circa 1850.
I head to Babb, north of St. Mary, where the simply named “Glacier Route Three” leads me 12 miles west back into the park to Many Glacier with its magnificent four-story lodge set along the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake. Opened in 1915, the Swiss alpine-themed Many Glacier Hotel is ringed by craggy mountains. Though the rooms are small and cramped, the lodge is a great base for wilderness forays, day hikes and paddles across the lake.
Down at the dock, a scenic cruise is ready to embark on a trip across Swiftcurrent Lake, while a family launches a canoe and kayak into the water. On the far shore, a bull moose is knee-deep in water. I gaze at the surrounding mountains, longing to see more of this wondrous landscape. But the rest of Glacier is too expansive to fully sample in one week. Rather, like a rich chocolate mousse cake, the park is to be taken a slice at a time and savored.
Kurt Repanshek is the author of “National Parks of the West for Dummies” and “National Parks with Kids.” He is blogmeister of nationalparkstraveler.com
INSIDER’S GUIDE
STAY
Lake McDonald Lodge, Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, 406-892-2525; glacierparkinc.com. A picturesque lodge next to Lake McDonald with massive timbers and trophy heads on the walls. Renowned Western artist Charlie Russell was a frequent visitor. Open late May through late September. Doubles from $105.
Many Glacier Hotel, Many Glacier, Glacier National Park, 406-892-2525; glacierparkinc.com. Though the rooms are small, the setting is spectacular, and activities are numerous. Open early June to mid-September. Doubles from $125.
Apgar Village Lodge, Apgar Village, Glacier National Park, 406-888-5484; westglacier.com. Twenty-eight charming cabins and 20 standard motel rooms near the mouth of Lake McDonald. Open April to early October. Doubles from $68.
The Resort at Glacier, St. Mary, 800-368-3689 or 406-732-4431; glcpark.com. Located just beyond the park’s St. Mary entrance, these are the best accommodations in or out of the park. Rooms range from inexpensive cabins with pine-paneled walls to roomy, upscale suites with fireplaces and Jacuzzis. Open mid-May through mid-October. Doubles from $139.
Lodgepole Gallery and Tipi Village, Browning, 406-338-2787; blackfeetculturecamp.com. A dozen miles east of Glacier, this outfit offers a great experience for families with youngsters or Western-history buffs interested in American Indian lore. Open mid-May into late September. $40 for the first person, $12 each additional adult, $6 for children under 12.
DINE
Russell’s Fireside Dining Room, Lake McDonald Lodge, 406-888-5421. Inside the lodge, this dining room shares the hunting-lodge feel with massive support timbers and beams, a stone fireplace and wood floor, walls and ceiling. Upscale fare ranges from roast duckling and beef tenderloin to seafood and poultry dishes. Open late May through late September, 6:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. No reservations. Entrees, $6-$29.
Ptarmigan Dining Room, Many Glacier Lodge, 406-892-2525. Sweeping views of Swiftcurrent Lake. The Swiss-inspired cuisine offers bison stroganoff and wiener schnitzel for dinner, while breakfasts feature a waffle station, as well as a filling buffet. Open early June to mid-September, 6:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. No reservations. Entrees, $6-$27.
Snowgoose Grill, the Resort at Glacier, St. Mary; Phone 800-368-
3689. Wild game, beef and fish dominate the menu. Jaw-dropping views of Curly Bear Mountain and Red Eagle Mountain. Open mid- May to early October, 7 a.m.-10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m. Entrees, $12-$28.
Belton Tap Room and Grille, Belton Chalet, West Glacier, 406-
888-5000. Inside a historic railroad building. Beef and buffalo, poultry and seafood plus tasty vegetarian entrees such as honey- roasted squash served with a mushroom risotto. Open 5 p.m.-10 p.m. during the summer. Entrees $9-$28.
MORE INFORMATION
Glacier National Park: 406-888-7800; nps.gov/glac.
Glacier Park Inc.: 406-892-2525; glacierparkinc.com. (Glacier Park Inc., is the park’s main concessionaire. It runs most of the hotels, motels and restaurants in the park, as well as the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier.)
