With glacier-carved alpine peaks, crystalline lakes and herds of hikers, Glacier Park is America's Switzerland, beginning in Canada and ending in Montana. It’s a dramatic landscape that has been shaped by fire and ice. Vast expanses of gray snags show the aftermath of forest fires, aesthetically unpleasing, but part of the natural scheme. Spring avalanches regularly clear-cut wide swaths of forest, twisting and snapping trees like toothpicks and rendering impassable the park’s only road. Waterfalls cascade from every peak, crossing the road to drop into the verdant valley far below. It is easy to see why the Lakota consider this land sacred.
But the park’s namesake glaciers are melting. Only a small number of the original glaciers remain, so small from a distance they are indistinguishable from snowbanks, and they will be gone in another 20 years.
The park’s million-plus acres, with nearly impenetrable forest and little access to humans, may be the grizzlies’ last stand, scientists believe. Unlike Yellowstone, animals here are seldom seen, except by intrepid backcountry campers, who are encouraged to hike in groups and carry bear spray. Deer, relatively uncommon in Yellowstone, were spotted frequently along hiking trails, in campgrounds and grazing on the lawns of hotels, and we caught a brief glimpse of a black bear. In general, though, Glacier’s wildlife remained safely sequestered from human eyes and the perils of auto traffic. And, despite the still-deep snow on passes, it was at Glacier that we found the warmest weather of the month.
Thanks to wilderness camping and no Internet, this is being posted weeks after our return!
Photos (copy and paste link) at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/GlacierPark?authkey=Gv1sRgCJKW-bqk1JyKCA&feat=directlink
