Stuart Snyder’s life has a lot of ups and downs, much of it taken at 25 mph. The volunteer interpretive guide rides the rails with sightseers aboard the Amtrak Empire Builder, explaining the sights, telling stories and answering questions.
The Lake Stevens resident rides from Seattle to Havre, Montana (and back), going over the Cascades, across Idaho and hugging the southern border of Glacier National Park in a Trails &Rails program sponsored by Amtrak and the National Park Service.
He also does the Seattle-Portland portion of the Coast Starlight route.
“I enjoy people immensely and what an opportunity to meet travelers from all over the world,” he said.
Snyder joined the mid-April to mid-September program when he retired from the NPS in 2007. It’s a partnership between Amtrak and the NPS. Amtrak provides Snyder passage, meals and a bunk for an overnight stay.
Guides will either talk in the sightseer lounge car or over the speaker system. Going eastbound, the train adds the lounge car in Spokane.
Riding along Puget Sound is Snyder’s chance to talk about the second largest estuary in the U.S.
From the Snohomish Valley, passengers may see Mount Baker and Mount Pilchuck, Three Fingers and White Horse, and 800 acres of blueberries planted last fall, Snyder said. Monroe was once the site for the Great Northern Railroad nursery; flowers would be sent to depots from Everett to St. Paul, Minnesota.
The train crosses the Boulder Drop Bridge, through some drop-dead gorgeous scenery, a panorama of Mount Index to Mount Persis view across the Skykomish River, the 500-foot sheer granite Index Town Wall and Sunset Falls.
The final 2.2 percent grade from Skykomish to the new Cascades tunnel is twice what railroads like to build on, and limits the speed to about 25 mph. Snyder provides a lot of railroad history on this section. Then it’s downhill to Leavenworth and Wenatchee on the way to Spokane, Glacier National Park and his stop in Havre.
The guides rely on a basic package of cultural, natural and historical information but then add their own twists. This year, there are more than the usual words about fires. A few weeks ago, the Chelan fire created so much smoke that mountain views were minimal from Everett to Havre, Snyder said.
Snyder can talk about forests, changes in climate from Pacific Coast to Leavenworth, orchard country (Washington is first in producing apples, sweet cherries, pears, raspberries and hops in the U.S.) as well as Native American history, geology of the Columbia River, goat licks, mountain pine beetle’s spreading destruction of pine forests, elk calving grounds, gray wolves and American bison’s, the prairie, the Continental Divide, and spectacular Glacier National Park.
Snyder said that in GNP, the 2010 bear census recorded 365 grizzlies and 610 black bears by using blood-scented barbwire fences to attract the bears, which then left a tuft of hair or two to be DNA tested. And a radio-collared wolverine was tracked covering 5,000 feet elevation gain in 90 minutes on Mount Cleveland.
Then there are the drunken grizzlies.
A 1985 train derailment in Montana spilled hundreds of tons of grain on and beside the tracks. The clean-up crew was deficient, Snyder said, and the corn fermented.
“Bears came down in the spring to help with the clean-up, and there were tipsy grizzlies along the track. According to Park Service employees, they were spread out along the tracks scooping the grain into their mouths.”
Snyder’s season ends in September but he expects to be back on the rails next spring, interpreting the sights, talking about history and some of its characters, and entertaining passengers from around the world.
“I like to say that the Trails and Rails program put the ‘see’ in scenery and the ‘story’ in history,” Snyder said.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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