The first of May is one of the most magnificent times to be in Glacier National Park and other high Rocky mountains. Spring doesn't actually arrive until mid to late June but the winter storms have abated. There is still lots of snow and additional snow storms are not uncommon. The temperatures are also becoming more moderate. At three to four thousand feet elevation, daytime temperatures are generally in the sixties with night-time temperatures often dropping below freezing. Temperatures at higher elevations are routinely above freezing during the day. They are marvelous days. It is awesome weather.
With such hints of spring and warm weather the snow pack is beginning to melt. Couple this with glacier melt and you have lots and lots of water than must go somewhere. Gravity makes that decision gorging streams that have been frozen with great amounts of water. Sometimes this tremendous flow creates water caves under the snow and ice which frequently make their way to the surface spewing out water like a natural water canon. Some of these water spouts can arch hundreds of feet down the side of a mountain.
Our campground, Avalanche, is situated between two such creeks nestled at the foot of three mountains. The roar of the water can be heard over a mile away and is so great that one can not stand near the creek and talk to another person. One of the great perks of living so far out in the wilderness is that we are lulled to sleep at night by the soothing sound of rushing water.
Avalanche Creek, for which our campground is named, drops a bit over five-hundred feet over about two miles to meet McDonald Creek. The water starts its journey in Avalanche Lake which is located in a cirque. A cirque is, by definition "a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion". It looks like you are looking at a bowl cut in half. Avalanche Lake is fed by snow fields and water from a glacier just over the rim of the cirque. That will eventually be an arête, which is a knife-like edge caused when glaciers have carved away at both sides of a mountain. The combination of snow and glacial melt means that Avalanche Lake's water is very cold. If one gets hot they simply need to stand near Avalanche Creek. If they need to ice their legs after a strenuous hike, they just sit and dangle their legs in the water.
Unless you go off-trail along the upper half of Avalanche Creek, it is almost impossible to actually see the creek. It is at the bottom of a deep valley created between Cannon Mountain, Bearhat Mountain and Mount Brown. In this early season, water coming down between Cannon and Bearhat from Hidden Lake, right on the Continental Divide near Logan Pass, literally gushes over the rock outcroppings between the two mountains. Like the other tributaries to Avalanche and McDonald, the Hidden Lake creek often has water-canon features. It is the lower half of Avalanche where you can see the powerful, rushing water almost violently crashing between house-sized boulders left by glaciers during the Ice Age. It is awesome. It verges on frightening, and it definitely gets the adrenalin pumping.
Pamela, my soul-mate and co-adventurer, has often been heard telling visitors that they are allowed to go home once they have hiked to Avalanche Lake. She knows the once-in-a-life-time experience that lies before them. She knows that, in May, they will be among snow covered mountains and can hear one or more avalanche each hour. You generally can not see the avalanche, but you hear and feel them. If the visitor is not physically capable of making the five-mile round trip hike, she insists that they at least walk the Trail of Cedars, a one-mile handicap accessible trail through the magnificent cedar and hemlock rain forest. On that trail one crosses a wooden bridge just below a spot called 'The Gorge'. It is the picture above. It is a spot where an unbelievable volume of water attempts to pass between enormous, house-sized boulders. The roar is deafening. The view is spectacular. The experience is invigorating like no other.
Over the years the joy, the excitement, the invigoration of these two creeks has never diminished for us. We spend our winters in southern Arizona. We love the desert too, but by March our hearts are homesick for northwestern Montana and the phenomenal experience of Avalanche Creek. We love to take our kayaks out on Bowman Lake. It takes about fifty minutes in our half-ton heavy 4x4 to drive the last six miles into the lake. We have taken our kayaks down McDonald Creek below the lake. We go white-water rafting in one of the last truly wild rivers in America. We fall asleep to the sounds of Avalanche and McDonald. The only single descriptive word which comes to mind is "paradise".
Very close to us, as the eagle flies, is the Triple Divide. Avalanche is the oldest campground in the park. We do not have electricity, telephone or cell signals. We are sixteen miles into the wilderness surrounded by all of the magnificence of the wilderness. Our water comes out of the side of Cannon Mountain. It is a 100% gravity water system giving us absolutely pure water. It is marvelous water. Pure water is a luxury which most North Americans do not enjoy. The town where I lived for so many years before Montana got its water from the Ohio River. It had to filter out the sewage that was dumped into the river upstream. Our children depend upon reservoirs that are contaminated by industrial and agricultural waste. Glacier and the Triple Divide are so important to water in North America that we always have a large contingency of international scientist studying it. The water that flows northeast from the Triple Divide flow into the Saskatchewan River and eventually into the Hudson Bay and rivers north. This water effects the water quality for the northeastern part of the continent clear over to the Atlantic. The water that flows southeast flows into the Yellowstone, Missouri, Mississippi and effects the water quality of the entire central and southeastern portion of the continent. The water flowing west ends up in the Pacific Ocean anywhere between southern California and Alaska. In short, in North America the only places where water quality is not effected by the Triple Divide are the States of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and probably New Mexico.
It is almost Halloween. Do you want me to frighten you? There are companies and government officials who want to drill for oil within a few miles of this super-sensitive water area. With one oil drill they could destroy the water quality for almost the entire North American continent. If you don't find that super-frightening . . . .
Pamela and I know that we are incredibly fortunate to live among such beauty and pristine water. Perhaps our acute awareness of what we have, that others do not have but deserve, is why we are so sensitive to what mega-corporations and government want to do. Don't take my word for it. Do your own research. You will find that, in the name of "capitalism", "progress", and "profits", they want to destroy or risk what little remaining pure water we have. Come. Experience the pure water of the high Rocky Mountains that belongs to you. Never again will you be content to allow greedy people to take that away from you for their personal profit.
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