Before taking a vacation several years ago to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, my wife and I casually tacked Glacier National Park in Montana onto our itinerary. But later in the trip, after 10 days of travel to and through the first two parks, we were nearing satiation. We had seen and enjoyed such beautiful scenery and wildlife, as well as trying to learn the history of the area, that the 400-mile drive north to Glacier began to look onerous.
We considered cutting the trip short, but finally reasoned that we might never be so close again to Glacier. So, almost reluctantly, we headed north.
It was one of the best decisions we ever made.
The trip took us along the Gallatin River, north of Yellowstone, where we saw river runners challenging frothy rapids fed by heavy snowmelt. As we watched one raft of men, frantically hacking at the water with their oars to push their way down one tumultuous stretch, we marveled at being so close to the action while cocooned in the warmth of our car.
The trip to Glacier presented us with many such juxtapositions – the civilized comforts of paved highways, roadhouses and the sophisticated air of the state capital at Helena, all played out against a backdrop of a mostly untouched landscape. Our initial reluctance at making a long drive faded as we saw how much of Montana remained wild or at the edge of wildness. For every scar on the land that jarred us we had only to raise our eyes to nearby mountains or over to adjacent woods and fields to see that the glass was way more than half full.
When we turned on the final third of our journey to drive the lonely 85-mile stretch along Montana’s Highway 83 to Flathead Lake, memories of Yellowstone and the Tetons, though still fresh were no longer so dominant. We knew we were bound on a new adventure and were enjoying all the anticipation such realizations bring.
The highway took us between parallel mountain ranges, each of them heavily wooded and their summits often shrouded, like Sinai in The 10 Commandments, in dazzling crowns of sun-struck storm clouds. The narrow valley at their feet sheltered small farms and ranches, bright green from that spring’s abundant runoff. Colts and calves romped everywhere. Again, that sense of civilized comfort gliding at the edge of stark wildness overtook us.
Traffic was light. Montana, almost as big in area as California, has 1/30th the people. With no road congestion, it was easy to creep up obliviously to 70 mph in a 55 mph zone near a hamlet named Condon. So we were not too surprised when a Montana state trooper pulled us over to administer a $5 fine on the spot. No doubt these low-cost fines, which discouraged out-of-staters from raising a stink, were one of the local economy’s mainstays.
The trooper invited me to sit in his cruiser with him as he did the paperwork, and we fell into an easy conversation about Montana and California. He’d never been to the Coast and asked me a few questions about it. I told him about some must-see places, and then asked him if Glacier Park was worth the trip. He looked as though he was going to burst out laughing, but then contained himself. He smiled, handed me my receipt and said, “Do this: After you see the park, ask yourself the same question. Then you’ll have my answer.”
We drove the final 50 miles of that day’s into Bigfork, population 1,500, a little trade center and resort town on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake. Flathead is about the size of Lake Tahoe, and similarly shaped, running longer along its north-south axis than it does east to west. The mountains that surround it are not as high as Tahoe’s, but the lake’s location in the far north of the U.S. gives them an even heavier forest cover. Its waters are a lighter blue than Tahoe’s, though at certain times of day they can become a cobalt blue that’s almost as intense as Crater Lake’s.
Flathead is Montana’s Big Cheese when it comes to boating, fishing and simply lolling about in summer cabin along a compatible shore. We saw that Bigfork was enjoying the benefits and drawbacks created by discontented big-city immigrants who’d “discovered” this far end of Montana and come to lead a less hectic life. Inevitably, they were changing the town from a sleepy middle-class resort into an increasingly renovated and upscale place. There was a resident little theater in summer and several of the restaurants had made the leap beyond frying and breading. Still, we spent the night before we entered Glacier dining on a bowling alley hamburger. As we started to go back to our motel, we saw a lonely pinball machine against a wall and decided we couldn’t resist its 10-cent price to play. “One game!” we promised ourselves.
That one dime stretched into 25 straight games. For whatever reason – divine intervention, dumb luck or a machine so totally wussy its manufacturers would have taken it out and shot it if they’d known how easy it was – we could not lose. Every ball we played racked up enormous totals, forcing the machine to feed us one replay after another. In its sweet little way, it became one of the highlights of the trip, something we still talk and laugh about years later.
On to the park
The next morning, we drove the final miles to Glacier Park with anticipation, but still afflicted with doubts that it could match what we had seen in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Fortunately, the park accommodated our doubts in a memorable way.
We entered from the southwest, a gateway that took us along the eastern shore of Lake McDonald, a slender 10-mile-long glacial lake that angles into the heart of the park. The lake, rimmed by low mountains on its opposite shore, opened up a view deep into the park’s interior where high peaks loomed. Eager to reach them and see them up close, we kept dividing our attention between them and a cedar forest that flanked our side of the road.
Finally we stopped to step into the forest and see if it was as beautiful as it looked.
It was. The straight, fluted boles of cedar trees, rising from a floor of ferns, sorrel and low bushes, was every bit as stately as our beloved redwood groves at home, diffusing the sunlight to create the look of a holy place. A creek gurgled through where we had picked to stop, gently dropping its water along the final descent to Lake McDonald. My wife and I looked at each other, beaming: Both of us loved a climax forest, and this was one in its full glory. What else might we find in Glacier’s 1,600 square miles?
And so up the road. We knocked 15 miles per hour off our rate and became instant fogies, enjoying the drive and in absolutely no hurry. Glacier was beginning to work some magic on us.
We’d been told that the road we are on, which is called “Going to the Sun Road,” is one of the greatest drives in North America. We noticed the road beginning to rise, cutting across the base of a mountain and giving us a heightened look back at the cedar forest that had so impressed us. A few miles beyond, at a switchback in the road, we pulled off to see where we had been. Our view, deep into a local range of the Rockies, was exhilarating – tall, massed peaks, green at the base with trees and gray at the top with exposed sedimentary rock.
Glacier’s mountains are not particularly tall – the highest peak in the park is just over 10,000 feet, but no other national park in the lower 48 states puts visitors so close to such superbly sculpted mountains. They were once beds of sediment under shallow seas that were raised far above sea level in the convulsions that created the Rockies. Later, Ice Age glaciers sculpted them into often pyramidal or steeply sloping forms. The namesake glaciers were long gone – at least the ones that aren’t hidden in far corners of the park or at the very tops of peaks.
There we were, skittering across their massive faces like a spider up a high wall. Much of Glacier is alpine country, with great meadows and bare rock, and wetness from snowmelt and volatile mountain weather. Itinerant streams would come leaping down the mountainside and rush across the road, watery versions of a darting animal. We were aware of just how narrow the road was and how far we could fall if we made an error. But if such thoughts threatened to become too glum, one of Glacier’s famous White bus tourist coaches would round a corner, filled with elated people, and we’d return to our previous state of giddiness.
(The buses, which have big cutouts on the top so that riders can stand and admire the scenery, have symbolized Glacier since the 1930s. By the 1990s, they were worn out and increasingly hard to maintain. Rather than see them junked, Ford Motor Corporation offered to refurbish them from the bottom up, restoring their bodies and modifying them to accept more powerful engines. Ford set aside $3 million for the task and wound up spending twice that much. But it saved some of the national park system’s most important symbols.)
The road crested at 6,600 feet, low by Colorado or California standards. But here in the country’s far north, it seemed precipitous enough. We slowly began descending, skirting Lake McDonald, the mountain-girt glacial lake that, along with White motor coaches and Rocky Mountain goats, has come to symbolize the park. Finally, the road let down at the eastern edge of the park to the Great Plains, home of the Blackfoot Indians who once trapped and hunted in these mountains.
Our foray across the park was just that – a tiny taste of its offerings. Glacier is primarily wilderness, making it one of the top backpacking parks in the country. It is easy to be in the wild simply by stepping 100 yards off the road. Hikers can go weeks without seeing or hearing a car, or very many people for that matter.
The grizzly bear finds a refuge in Glacier, too. But they are shy creatures and most visitors never see them. The refuges for humans are outstanding. For whatever reason, Glacier boasts several great lodges, including Many Glacier Hotel, Lake McDonald Lodge and the backcountry Sperry Chalet. The park’s season is short – May to October at best, so accommodations in any of the in-park hotels are prized. Glacier is a place that calls for better planning than our makeshift decision to come see it.
We didn’t have the time to walk the park the way we had done in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Even so, our small taste was enough to let me know how that state trooper back in Condon would have answered my question.
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