I see smoke

The first of each May Pamela and I head toward Glacier National Park tucked away in the far northwestern corner of Montana.  It is like going home for us so it is a time of anticipation and excitement. Our first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as we approach Denver starts us singing Rocky Mountain High and Oh, Montana.  The excitement really starts building as we turn north at Missoula, Montana and start up US 93.  When we get to the south end of Flathead Lake we usually turn off onto a secondary road that goes up the east side of the lake and intersects US 2 just east of Columbia Falls. Columbia Falls is our closest larger town about 45 miles from where we live in the park. It has almost 3,600 people.  Once on US 2 it is hard to contain our excitement. This is the last leg of our annual 2,004 mile migration.  Now it's just Hungry Horse, Coram, West Glacier and then we're home.

Last May (2015) we were as excited as ever but we were also a bit concerned. It was warmer than usual and many of the lower mountains were already losing their snow. Things didn't look like May in Montana and that had us worried. After checking in with old friends and colleagues we learned from those who live at Glacier year round that it had been a very mild winter with little snow. The Big Drift was still 80 feet deep, but it's always 80 feet deep.

We have certain things that we do as soon upon arrival as possible. We'd do them all on the same day but that would be impossible. We always go to Polebridge, hike to Avalanche Lake and listen to the avalanches, and ride our bikes as far up the Going-to-the-Sun road as the snow removal crews will allow.

Robert fire of 2003 directly across from where we live.
The heat was so intense that you could not stand it
a mile away across the lake. 

Over the winter we had made some new friends through Tin Can Tourist - a vintage trailer club - whom we ended up talking into taking a post as hosts at Apgar Campground.  We included them in our ritualistic activity.  We were anxious to make the 2.5 mile hike up to Avalanche Lake. We told our friends, Terry and Beth, how there would be snow starting about 2/3 the way to the lake and you could sit at the lake and hear the thunderous sound of two or three avalanches every hour. I had on my high winter gaiters. We got to the lake. No snow except high up the mountains. No sounds of avalanches. There just hadn't been enough snow and it hadn't been cold enough. That was the beginning of our worries.

The weather situation seemed to go from bad to worse. We could make the trip all the way to Logan Pass by June 6th.  Normally May and June are wet and on the cold side. We have been known to have as much as 30 inches of snow in the pass in late June. This year it rained only two days in May and three days in June. The Going-to-the-Sun Road, which had not been cleared of snow until July 2nd the year before, was open by mid-June.  I saw bare earth on mountains where I'd never seen the ground before.  Streams that are normally swollen and thunderous to the point that you can't stand next to them and talk were little more than trickles and McDonald Lake was so low that there were beaches where there had never been beaches before.

I saw Mountain Goats panting and looking for patches of snow to get cool. We had one bear in the campground this year. It was a young bear that wandered through a picnic area and down an access stairway to the lake. He saw people to his right so he went left. He appeared to be dragging as he walked along the water looking for a place away from people to lay in the water. I was following him from a short distance so I could protect his privacy. When he did start back up the mountain he came to a fallen tree. Normally a bear his size would hop over such a tree. He climbed up one side, paused and jumped off the other side. The heat was almost more than he could tolerate.

By the end of June I must admit that I was beyond worry.  I was frightened every time a camper insisted upon having a campfire when the wind was blowing. Most places around us had fire bans. In fact we were the only place in the northwest US and Canada that didn't have a fire ban.  By June there were countless fires in almost every state and province west and north of us. We would actually have days where the smoke from a fire(s) in another state reduced our visibility.  I never did figure out why Glacier didn't ban fires. Even the campers and visitors were surprised that we were permitting fires.

Robert Fire, Glacier National Park, 2003. 

I know I should not have been so fearful, but there were extenuating circumstances. Forest fires are not only natural but they are natures way of cleaning house and enriching life. Not only is fire good for the soil but there are actually trees which depend upon forest fires to germinate. Forest fires are a part of the cycle of life.  Why then was I fearful?  Because government agencies are playing with nature. In truth all of the agencies involved mean well and have the forest's best interest at heart. The problem is that much of the damage has been done by previous generations and none of them can agree on how to deal with fires around developed areas. At that point buildings become more important than the preservation of nature. The National Park Service insists that, to comply with the mandates of the Wilderness Act of 1964, fallen wood must be left where it falls. That's fine if you permit natural fires. When you avoid fires and have gone for decades longer than the normal cycle of fires, you get an accumulation of flammables on the ground that makes a fire many times hotter than normal. That can cause trees that are capable of surviving a normal fire to burn and die. The heat can cause combustion across fire breaks. And studies have been shown that it takes much longer for a forest to recover from an excessively hot fire. In short, it is a disastrous situation. But the fire management debate between agencies isn't the purpose of this story. I only share it because we were living and working eleven miles into a tinder box with only one road out. But worse than that I was worried about what a major fire would do to the park we love.

Reynold's Creek Fire just minutes after I reported it to dispatch.

July 21st was our day off.  Pamela had decided that she was tired of not being able to go on hikes and climb mountains because of her bone-on-bone arthritis in both knees. She decided that this day she was going to climb Mt Oberlin.  It was a beautiful day.  Much warmer than normal, but we were growing accustomed to that after almost three months.  Even though it was our day off we ended up being involved in finding a fallen climber and we were standing at about 7,500 feet on the side of Mt Oberlin.  I was on the radio with a ranger about a mile or so down the mountain. That's when we saw the smoke.

It appeared like a thin grey line rising from the valley floor several thousand feet below us. That shouldn't be there was my first thought.  I asked the ranger below me if he could see the smoke. He couldn't see it as well as we could but he saw enough. "Call it in!"

Reynold's Creek fire burning eastward down the St Mary Valley

It was a sickening feeling and I had trouble getting the words out as I keyed the radio. By the time I had reported the smoke to dispatch it had gone from a fine ribbon to a thick band of smoke rising. I knew the area. There was a back-country campsite, known as Reynold's Creek, right about where the smoke was rising. Within minutes the valley below us was filled with smoke. Glacier had a major forest fire. By the time we got off the mountain hundreds of visitors were stranded in the high mountain pass while many hundreds more were be evacuated from campgrounds and hotels in the St Mary valley down which the fire was roaring.

When the fire was finally out over 4,000 acres - over 6.25 square miles - of forest was burned. They had actively fought the fire because of the number of campgrounds, hotels and other buildings and dwellings in the fire's path. It had been contained naturally by the mountains on each side.

Throughout the summer it seemed that the west was burning. Smoke poured into western Montana from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Canada.  There were times that it was so hazy that it appeared like smog.

Four and a half months after this fire the west is still burning. Today 9.8 million acres have burned. 9.8 million acres is 15,312 square miles and is the equivalent of burning all of the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and some of New Hampshire.  It is the worst fire year in recorded history.

We can deny reality and scientific fact.  We can pretend it isn't happening or that we can't do anything about it because it is just some deity who's really pissed at us. Regardless, if we don't try to do something it is only going to get worse. You can't drink oil and there are no nutrients in coal. If you don't want to burn or starve or drown I would suggest that we not only hold our government to the COP21 agreement but insist upon doing better.  FEEL THE HEAT.