Magnificent McPartland Mountain

McPartland Mtn from where we live
in Avalanche campground.

Falling immediately in love with Glacier National Park my first summer working there led to becoming the senior campground hosts on the west side of the park and becoming a Montana residents. Also a part of the transition from midlander to westerner was the obsession with knowing the mountains around me.  That may not sound like much of a challenge until you realize that we live smack in the middle of the Livingston Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Livingston Range is just one of the three mountain ranges in Glacier - Livingston, Clark and Lewis - with one-hundred, fifty named mountain peaks over 8,000 feet high.  That's a lot of mountains to learn. 

Well, year seven is rapidly approaching and I don't really know half of the one-hundred, fifty mountains, but within the first year I knew the mountains around me.  Our campground, Avalanche, is the oldest campground in the park.
Glacier was designated a National Park in 1910.  Avalanche is an eighty-six site campground at the junction of two marvelous mountain streams - McDonald and Avalanche - nestled in among three mountains - Cannon Mountain, Mount Brown, and McParland Mountain.  When we arrive on May 1st there is still a great deal of snow so these two streams are wild torrents cascading through narrow gorges of gigantic boulders dropped there during the Ice Age and mountain valleys carved by the powerful streams.  The roar of rushing water makes it almost impossible to talk when you are standing near the stream and can be heard a mile away.  Even though it still gets quite cold at night during May (spring actually starts in June) we love to leave our windows open and go to sleep to the sound of the rushing water of McDonald and Avalanche creeks. In the early season this sound is only interrupted by the frequent rumble of avalaches two miles up in the cirque. It is not uncommon to have the ground vibrate under foot as massive walls of snow and ice fall from the sides of mountains.

As visitors get their first glimpse of the panorama of mountains on the north end of Lake McDonald some sixteen miles south of us, we tell them the names of the closest mountains - Stanton, Vaught, McPartland, on the left (west) of the McDonald Creek Valley, with Canon, Brown, Edwards and Gun Sight on the right (east). 

Driving up the Going-to-the-Sun Road one is struck by the massiveness of Brown and the grandeur of Cannon.  Stanton and Vaught get their share of oohs and awes, but McPartland so often goes unnoticed. In truth, McPartland doesn't put its best face toward the visitors coming up the lake but from our vantage point living in Avalanche campground, McPartland is the epitomy of the beautiful and magnificent mountain. 

Being almost due west of where we live, McPartland greets us in the morning with sunlight reflecting off its peak well before the sun is visible above the mountains to our east.  Framed by giant cedars, hemlock and the big Montana sky, McPartland is watching over me at every turn as I make my way around the campground on morning rounds. Most of our campers are still asleep so I have the beautiful giant to myself. The mountains give me strength and provide encouragement.  McPartland is my protector against the onslaught of violent storms.  In its shadow I find solace. Standing on its flank I know courage.

McPartland, like so many of our mountains, was given the name of an old, rich white guy. The Kootenai had given the mountain a perfectly good name; Crossing Over Victor. The Kootneai on the west side of the park and the Blackfeet on the east side generally did a better job with names, but it sure beats being named after Frank McPartland.  Frank was, as you undoubtedly guessed, a rich white guy. He drowned in nearby Lake McDonald while boating with Libby Collins, the Cattle Queen of Montana, and her brother. He drowned because he and Libby got in a fight over a bottle of whiskey and he capsized the boat. Wow!  Isn't that how you want to be remembered?  Perhaps that was Frank on one of his better days. And no, he didn't die trying to save Libby. Quite the contrary. He got a mountain named after him because he was a rich white guy. Sad but true. Sorry.

I try not to think about my beautiful mountain being thoughtlessly saddled with such a name. I look up at it each morning and there is no name that fits; no words that can describe; the magnificent giant creation of nature. Looking up at it I can not really imagine the tremendous forces that lifted it up thousands of feet and the glaciers, tens of thousands of feet deep, that carved it. It is a natural work of art sculpted by forces beyond our comprehensive nevertheless our ability to copy or mimic.  It is unique. There is no other mountain like it in the world, nevertheless the four thousand mile long Rocky Mountains of which it is a part.

For the second year in a row we had to evacuate our campground because of a forest fire.  This year we were driven by fire from our home in the wilderness over a month before we would normally be closing the campground. I am not ebarrassed nor will I apologize for getting teary-eyed as I took my last look at McPartland. For some unknown reason - perhaps preminition - I took the picture above just hours before we were ordered to evacuate.  If you know what the big Montana sky should look like, you know that haze and smoke from the fire, not five miles to the left, is beginning to shroud the beautiful sumit. But the mountain seems to say to me, 'don't worry. I will always be here for you.'  Leading a ragtag convoy of campers through the fireline to safety I get one last, fleeting look. I trust the mountain.

I trust the mountain but I honestly do not trust the heartless, greedy government and corporate people who would, for even the sallest of profit, take this from us. I would not be the only victim. We would all lose. We would not only lose access to magnificent wilderness but we would suffer because this marvelous wilderness is the source of clean air and water. Water quality throughout the entire North American continent - less Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and perhaps New Mexico -   is effected by Glacier's wilderness.

Look again at the picture of McPartland Mountain. Let its image permanently implant in your memory.  Do this not because this is the most important mountain but because it will remind you of what we all have to lose. Let it remind you to stand firm against the powerful, selfish people in government and business who would take such places from you thereby not only denying you their pleasures but destroying your very existence.