GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont. — The late July storm broke over the valley like a wave over the prow of a ship. Hikers, emerging from the forest, dashed across stretches of lawn as lightning cut across the darkening sky. Couples in canoes awkwardly zigzagged their way toward the dock as thunder rumbled overhead.
In front of the Many Glacier Hotel, picnickers packed up their lunch and scurried toward the first open door.
Inside, a hastily built fire gained strength and filled the lobby with the scent of burning pine. Wet shoes and socks lined the hearth and, in time, not an empty sofa or chair could be found.
The rain and hail lasted two hours that afternoon, but no one seemed bothered. At the Many Glacier Hotel, where storms and bears and rugged expanses of mountainous beauty abound, the communal experience is a welcome, if temporary, respite from the call of the wild.
My wife, Margie, and I stayed here last summer during a 10-day trip to Glacier National Park. We discovered that the park is a glorious combination of the raw and the cooked, the wild and the civilized, a place where the hand of man is surprisingly at home in a world teeming with predators and untrammeled nature.
Described as a moderate climb a 1,600-foot gain over six miles the trek to Grinnell Glacier is one of the most popular in the park. As we slowly ascended the switchbacks above Lake Josephine, calling out “Aaa-ooo” to keep any unseen bears at bay always best to make a lot of noise when hiking on these trails the Grinnell Valley spread out before us.
Steep mountains with jigsaw patches of snow near their peaks cradled turquoise lakes. Meadows of wildflowers false hellebore, penstemon and columbine lapped against copses of alder and forests of elfin spruce. No wonder hikers think of Switzerland when they see these vistas.
To understand the appeal of Glacier, you must go back more than 20,000 years, when an ice sheet covered this part of northwestern Montana so deeply that only the tallest mountains were visible, rising like islands in a frozen sea.
The pressure of the ice carved the horns, aretes, cirques and hanging valleys for which the park is known.
Blackfoot Indians called this stretch of the northern Rockies “Miistakis,” the Backbone of the World. Naturalist George Bird Grinnell named it the Crown of the Continent, a title fitting both the park’s location and its mountains’ majesty.
Nowadays, however, its glaciers are getting all the attention.
Toward the end of the 19th century, explorers documented more than 100 glaciers, some covering nearly 1,000 acres. Five years ago, there were 37, and today, 27. By 2030, scientists predict, they all will be gone.
As we ate lunch, rested and watched waterfalls drop into the lake at the base of Grinnell Glacier, we felt humbled to know that perhaps we were watching snow that had turned to ice from before the time of Lewis and Clark slowly disappear.
Towering on the eastern shore of Swiftcurrent Lake, the Many Glacier Hotel overlooks the Grinnell and Swiftcurrent valleys, each green with forests of lodgepole pine and each shadowed by the broken-tooth peaks of the Continental Divide in the distance. In the still of the morning, the reflection in the lake picks up the near-perfect symmetries of the adjacent valleys.
With its white trim and brown siding and the diamond-and-cloverleaf patterns cut into the balusters on the decks and balconies, the Many Glacier Hotel is a rugged kind of gingerbread.
In the lobby, 20 Douglas firs, each 30 inches in diameter, rise four stories and support timbers of nearly equal girth. Nothing here is too perfect, too clean or too well-matched, giving the hotel a rustic ease.
The Many Glacier Hotel and the other lodges inside the park are “the last front porches in America,” said bellman Jason Snow, stepping in one morning from the porte-cochere. “In the evening, people talk with each other. Strangers go hiking with each other; they have dinner together.”
With 700 miles of hiking trails, Glacier is an open invitation to wander.
If the Many Glacier Hotel is toast and coffee, the Prince of Wales Hotel is high tea.
Straddling the Continental Divide, Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada share a 19-mile border.
Seventy-five years ago, both countries decided to unite their parks and create the Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park. Originally meant to commemorate peace and goodwill between the two countries, the designation today allows for an easy exchange of science, study and resources.
Seven stories tall, with broad decks and rows of windows, the Prince of Wales Hotel sits on a hill above the township like a wayward ocean liner.
The Prince of Wales opened in 1927. Some say that Hill built the hotel to circumvent Prohibition. During those dry years, Americans could take a boat across Waterton Lake, refresh themselves at the hotel and return the next day, slightly worse for wear. Others simply cite Hill’s affinity for dramatic location.
Later that evening, we wandered the streets of Waterton, and when we returned to our room that night, the city illuminated by street lamps seemed like a pixie town from our posh little aerie.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
