Last night the sunset was at 9:40 which I was
expecting. What I didn’t expect was that the sky would stay light for so
long after sunset. We took Lovie out for her bedtime walk at 10:30 and it
was still so light we didn’t need a flashlight. I love having light so
late in the evening. (Getting dark way early in the winter would be awful
though.)
I took lots of pictures today and had a hard time picking
ones to include so there are a few more than usual.
We spent the whole day driving through the park, doing the
50-mile-long Going to the Sun Road and then the Many Glacier section which is
entered by another road on the east side. Glacier is a very big park
which isn’t all that easy to see. It has three roads which don’t connect
with each other. There’s a good road outside the park which connects the
east and west sides but it’s about 100 miles from west to east entrances.
Doing the return trip on the Going to the Sun Road sounds better than driving
double the distance outside the park, but when the traffic is heavy (as it was
today) and going anywhere from 15 to 40 mph I’m not so sure. Of course,
the reason for being here is to see the mountains inside the park so going both
ways on Going to the Sun Road is what we did.
The first big sight upon entering from the west is McDonald
Lake, 9.4 miles long, 1.5 miles wide and 472 feet deep. Glaciers 2000
feet deep gouged U-shaped valleys throughout these mountains during the last
ice age. When the glacier that dug this lake bed receded 10,000 years ago
the debris it left behind dammed McDonald Creek which then filled the
lake.
A strange thing in Montana (and maybe in more western
states) has been the use of the words “river” and “creek.” This
picture is of McDonald Creek which carries a lot of water out of the mountains
into McDonald Lake. This is called a creek while a waterway we saw a few
days ago that was barely three feet wide was named a river. We’re
guessing that when you’re in arid country with hardly any water you’re very
proud of what little you’ve got.
McDonald Creek going over Bird Woman Falls. It looks
tiny in the picture but it’s 492 feet high.
Waterfalls all over the place. Clouds were covering
the peaks this morning so this doesn’t show the height of the mountains above.
The U-shaped glacier-carved valley through which McDonald
Creek flows.
Three of the few remaining glaciers……Jackson, Blackfoot and
Pumpelly. I don’t know where they start and end but the Park Service map
says there are three here. Up until the mid-1800’s glaciers were still
forming in these mountains. In 1850 there were 150 of them. Thanks
to global warming there are now only 25 glaciers left and it’s believed they
will all be gone by 2030.
After traversing the park on Going to the Sun Road, we went
north outside the park and then back into the park again to see the Many
Glacier section. It’s a 12-mile out-and-back road in pretty rough
condition. The views of the mountains at the head of Sherburne Lake are
spectacular. The map doesn’t show all the glaciers in the park so I don’t
know if what we were seeing was glacier or snow field. The only way to
tell the difference (besides having a park ranger tell you) is to wait around
for the snow field to melt. Glaciers are moving rivers of ice and, while
they are indeed melting because of climate change, their melting doesn’t happen
over the course of one season.
The knife-edge mountains in the middle and the funny little
point on the one to the right are evidence that these are glacially-carved
mountains. Glaciers grind mountains into sharp shapes that aren’t found
elsewhere.
The gash around the bottom of the mountains in the picture
above is the Going to the Sun Road. It was built in the late 1920’s,
finished and dedicated in 1933. It was a monumental job with sheer
cliffs, short construction seasons, sixty-foot snow drifts and tons of solid
rock. During construction, workers dangled from manila ropes, drilled
into the rock cliffs, packed the holes with black powder and blasted a bench
for the roadbed. The road goes across 6646’ Logan Pass, about the same
elevation as Mount Mitchell which is the highest point east of the Mississippi.
The rock wall they made by blasting is anything but smooth
and it was made decades before vehicles got so big. Vehicle restrictions
are 21’ long and 8’ wide which they specify must include mirrors. Our
truck barely fit the requirements if you don’t count the mirrors. Of
course we went up anyway and ours wasn’t the only dually up there.
These are the Park Service’s own tour vehicles which are
definitely much bigger than 21’ x 8’. (They’re modeled after ones used in
the early days of the road.) We met one of them in a hairpin curve which
was nerve-wracking to say the least. It was over the center line on our
side but Jim managed to squeeze through without hitting anything. In
fact, he squeezed through a lot of too-tight spaces where rock was poking into
our lane. When we got back he was very relieved to hear I was not going
to ask him to drive that road again. :-D Before we went up I was thinking
of driving back so he could see more of the view. As we went through the
rocky part I quickly decided there was no way.
One more view of Bird Woman Falls with the knife-edge peaks
of Mt Oberlin and Clements Mountain above it. What a fantastic place this
is.
Tomorrow, if the rain holds off, we’ll see if we can find a
suitable hiking trail. The only other roads in the park would require
either a 100+ or 200+ mile round trip to get to them and we’re just not up for
that, particularly with the rainy forecast.
Speaking of weather forecasts, some of them are rather
interesting in this neck of the woods. The forecast for Missoula,
Montana, which is where we’re going on Sunday, includes “falling rock and mud
slides.” We’ve never seen this in a weather forecast before. Hail,
yes, but falling rock and mud? Doesn’t give a tourist who is unfamiliar
with the roads a great feeling of confidence.
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