Here at the Austin EcoNetwork, we like to keep things local. But, in homage to the season (and a favorite elementary school assignment), today, I’m taking you outside of Austin. Let’s pack our bags and take a ride all the way to the far reaches of northern Montana, all the way to Glacier National Park.
This is what I did on my summer vacation.
A Trip Back in Time
Imagine it’s the year 1910. President Taft has just signed a bill establishing Glacier as the nation’s 10th national park. It’s given that name for obvious reasons. At the time the park is created, it’s home to nearly 150 breath-taking glaciers.
It might be a hard thing for us to imagine here in Texas, but glaciers are the result of strong winters and mild summers. They’re formed when more snow falls in the winter than melts in the summer. As snow accumulates, it becomes ice, which gets heavier and heavier over time. This weight actually causes the bottom layers to move, which according to the National Park Service, can erode and shape the landscape. Many of Glacier National Park’s stunning landscapes were carved out by the very glaciers that gave it its name.
I snapped this photo while leaning out the car window (don’t worry, I wasn’t driving) on Glacier’s famous Going-to-the-Sun Road. In it, you can see some of the park’s most distinctive landscape and features.
Today’s park would be barely recognizable to the people of the early 20th century. Although the landscape is still riveting, the park’s famed glaciers have dwindled from 150 to only 25 at last count. (A park ranger I spoke to predicted that the number is actually closer to 10. Every few years, the park conducts an official glacial count and the last study was done several years ago.) Scientists predict that all of glaciers in the park will be gone by 2030, if not sooner.
One of the main drivers behind the loss of these beautiful features is climate change. As global temperatures continue to increase, it becomes more and more difficult for glaciers to stick around. Since the park opened, its average annual temperature has increased by about 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this might not sound like much, it can have a big impact on the local ecosystem. Recently, Glacier National Park has been experiencing longer and hotter summers, which can really eat away at ice and snow that had previously survived at the park for years.
The lobbies of the park’s beautiful, historic lodges are peppered with signs of these changing times. Grand and delightfully musty places like the Lake McDonald Lodge and Many Glacier Hotel are filled with photos of the park’s glaciers when both hotels were built, in the early 1900s. Grainy black-and-white photographs show glaciers so large they nearly eat the surrounding landscape, gobbling up towering mountains like they were nothing more than delightful little appetizers. Compare that to today’s pictures, where only a few lonely ice patches remain.
Boulder Glacier in 1913 (from the US Geological Survey)
Boulder Glacier in 2012 (from the US Geological Survey)
It’s hard not to be sad when looking at pictures like these. It’s like watching your favorite professional athlete play their last game. It’s still amazing to see, but you can’t help but feel a tinge of disappointment that you didn’t have the opportunity to sit in the stands during their heyday.
Hiking around Glacier National Park, I couldn’t help but wonder, what did this place look like 100 years ago?
Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
Nobody would know the answer to that question better than George Bird Grinnell. He was the editor of the magazine “Forest and Stream” in the late 1800s when he read an article submitted by a freelancer about the great stretch of northern Montana that would eventually become Glacier National Park. After seeing it once he couldn’t stay away and continued to make regular trips to hike, explore, and write about the area’s glaciers, mountains, and lakes.
“Far away in northwestern Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain-peaks,” wrote Grinnell, “lies an unmapped corner—the Crown of the Continent.” It was inspiring words like these that helped to garner public appreciation for the region, which led to the establishment of this unmapped corner as Glacier National Park. Grinnell (who also founded the Audubon Society) is largely credited with making Glacier National Park a reality, through his dogged lobbying efforts and far-reaching stories of the area’s beauty.
Because of all of this, many of the park’s most impressive features are named after George Bird Grinnell, including the popular Grinnell Glacier Trail.
View from the Grinnell Glacier Trail (photo by Amy Stansbury)
Grinnell himself loved this strenuous hike, last making the trip to its summit in his late 70s. But, like most things at the park, things have changed. Grinnell Glacier disappeared in 2008. The large white patch of snow you see in this picture is actually Salamander Glacier. Grinnell Glacier used to exist directly below it (where you can still see a few remaining snow and ice patches).
Photo of Grinnell Glacier in 1911 from the US Geological Survey
When Grinnell was first exploring the exciting and wild terrain of this place, he described the glacier as being a wall of ice 1,000 feet high. That wall is now gone.
Wildlife
One of the most exciting parts of Glacier National Park is its sheer wildness. The park itself contains over a million acres of undeveloped, raw, natural space. Barring some trails, and one major road, large swaths of the park are rarely touched by human beings. This shows in the wide array of plants, animals, and wildlife that call the place home.
Over 68 animal species live in Glacier National Park, including the grizzly bear, which is listed as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act. Grizzly bears once roamed throughout much of the western US, but as they interacted with settlers in the 19th and 20th centuries were nearly driven to extinction. After being listed as “threatened” in the 1970s, their numbers have rebounded, but to nowhere near what they once used to be. Today, there are less than 1,500 grizzlies left in the continental US (about 31,000 still live in Alaska), primarily living in five different protection areas. About 300 of them live in Glacier National Park.
A family of grizzly bears walking near the Grinnell Glacier Trail (photo by Amy Stansbury)
I was lucky enough to spot the rare American grizzly bear near the Grinnell Glacier Trail. I watched for hours (at a safe distance) as a mother and her two cubs climbed mountains and played in the snow pack. There is nothing like seeing such large and formidable creatures up close to make you appreciate the great outdoors.
It’s just you and the bears.
Even though the grizzly family virtually ignored me this time around, chances are, they won’t be able to ignore me or the impacts of my presence for long. Although it is not exactly clear how man-made climate change will affect these 700 pound animals (male grizzlies can actually be as large as 1,700) pounds, scientists expect there to be some sort of an impact.
Surprisingly enough, these hulking, muscular animals mostly eat berries, grass, and roots. The distinctive hump on their backs actually developed from days spent digging in the ground for food. If climate change destroys some of their more traditional food sources (or drives them further and further north), bears are likely to leave the safe confines of the national park in search of greener pastures.
Luckily for them, grizzly bears are fairly adaptable. A group of scientists at a US Fish and Wildlife/ Wildlife Conservation Society workshop concluded that, “climate change will not threaten their populations due to ecological threats or restraints.” The problem, they decided, could arise when grizzlies leave protected areas in search of new food sources and run into human populations. As it turns out, we are the greatest threat to their survival, in more ways than one.
A family of grizzly bears digging for food in Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
The story does not stop there. As climate change brings warmer temperatures to the park, entire ecosystems will become vulnerable to dramatic shifts. These rising temps have already led to a rising tree line along the park’s many snow-capped mountains. At first, this just looks like a happy accident. Better weather means that more trees can survive at higher elevations. And who doesn’t love more trees?
Mountain goats. Bighorn sheep. Both of these large animals like cold, high alpine meadows. This just means that they live on mountains, at high elevations, and above the trees, which allows them to spend their days grazing on grasses and being all around incredible rock climbers. The mountain goat’s miraculous ability to remain steady on the edge of a cliff appears like a near supernatural phenomenon.
A mother and baby mountain goat at Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
In a world where thousands of amazing experiences are available to you from the comfort of your couch and with a mere click of a button, watching real-live mountain goats in their real environment is a real treat. Here were these goats. I was watching them and they were watching me, and both of us were just living our normal lives when we encountered one another. I didn’t buy a ticket to see them in a zoo or click on a Youtube video that guaranteed me an adorable goat encounter in 60 seconds or less. In a world of superficial experiences at lightening fast speeds, this felt different. It felt slow. It felt genuine.
A mountain goat at Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
But opportunities for these kind of unplanned, chance encounters are fading at Glacier National Park. As the tree level rises, it pushes the alpine meadows that animals like mountain goat and bighorn sheep rely on further and further up the mountain. As one ranger described it to me, eventually, they’ll have nowhere to go. The mountain only rises so high.
Bighorn sheep at Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
Once the alpine environment disappears, it will be a loss. It will be a loss for the living, breathing animals that call the place home, but it will also be a loss for the community of people who quietly gather to watch these animals in awe and wonder each year. Nowhere else have I seen adults and children alike so singularly focused and excited as when a goat or a sheep walked by at Glacier National Park.
A baby bighorn sheep nurses while a protection mother keeps an eye out, at Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
Water
The first thing I noticed when I arrived at Glacier National Park was the water.
In Texas, we clap our hands in delight when we find a muddied, 6-inch deep, 80 degree stream to splash around in. Not so in northern Montana.
In the summer months when the ice and snow are melting, the sound of rushing waterfalls thundering down the mountains can be heard from every angle, enveloping the landscape in the vibrations of plenty.
Apikuni Falls at Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
Stick your head near the falling water and you’re simultaneously deafened and treated to the fresh, wet air of the fall’s terminus. Icy cold droplets of water float around your skin and clothes, leaving you damp before you even have the chance to realize what’s happening. It’s refreshing in the truest sense of the word.
The water is coming from the park’s many towering mountains, which provide runoff in the form of rain, snow, and melting glaciers that feed waterfalls, streams, lakes, and rivers year round. Globally, more than 50 percent of the world’s freshwater supply comes from mountain runoff, and a quarter of the water in mountain streams comes from glacial meltwater.
Even in a world not affected by climate change, you would still see melting glaciers. During the summer, glaciers consistently melt, but they do so at a slow rate, and are largely replenished during the winter. This means that glaciers are able to provide a steady water source even during the hottest days of the summer, when many other water sources have dried up.
But now that glaciers are melting faster than they can be replenished, trouble is setting in. Ecosystems that rely on a constant water source are under threat. Hotter summers and earlier springs are also leading to flooding as snow and ice melt faster than ever.
Back to Texas
Leaving Glacier National Park and flying back to Austin, it was easy to see the landscape change dramatically. High mountains and white peaks gave way to small, rolling hills and cracked soil. The 70 degree summer days of Montana now seem like nothing more than a dream. Why should a place so far away matter to all of us, still sweating it out here in Texas?
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. Deep down, I feel an intrinsic connection and tug back to the place, but not the words to qualify it.
The national parks have often been called America’s best idea. They are source of great pride that attracts visitors from all over the world. Sitting in the lodge at the end of the night, I could hear dozens of different languages buzzing around the room as happy and exhausted hikers swapped stories of incredible vistas and chance bear encounters.
Even though the parks were established as an environmental and conservation initiative, they are so much more than that. They are a rich, living, cultural resource. When I dip my toes in the stark, freezing waters of Two Medicine Lake, I can imagine Eleanor Roosevelt and her children doing the same. When I stare up at a 300 year old tree, I wonder how many other Americans have craned their necks searching for the top. It’s a very real and visceral connection.
No monument, museum, or statue can do that.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons to protect places like Glacier National Park. Climate change doesn’t just affect northern Montana. It affects Texas as well. Just as our actions contribute to the greenhouse emissions that cause climate change and melt the park’s glaciers, the consequences of those melting glaciers reach all the way back to us. We are all connected.
But underneath all of that, there is a deeper reason for admiring the towering mountains and cavernous valleys of Glacier National Park. It all goes back to that unexplainable gut feeling.
I guess the answer is as simple as this – I want to live in a world where there is wonder and excitement and unexplored territory. I want to live in a world that is wild. I want to live in a world where I can enjoy Glacier National Park.
And that’s what I did on my summer vacation.
Glacier National Park (photo by Amy Stansbury)
