Earlier this month I spent a couple of days backpacking in Glacier National Park in Montana. Now, sitting in front of my computer screen, hands pursed at the keyboard, I wonder how I will be able to communicate such a moving experience…

Glacier National Park is the most breathtaking, dramatic landscape I have ever encountered. Most striking was the sensation of standing in the middle of an enormous valley and looking out onto pure boundless wilderness. You truly get the feeling that you are beyond the reaches of civilization. No roads, no signs, no people. You think that somewhere, someone is going through a McDonalds drive-through, or riding an elevator to the top of a skyscraper, but none of that exists here; you are in a parallel world. It’s similar to the feeling you get snorkeling in crystal clear water. When you look down, the ocean floor appears closer than it really is, because the visibility is so extreme. Your eyes play tricks on you in the same way here. Maybe it’s because our brains have been conditioned to looking at cities and landmarks to gage space and distance. Here, the mountains swell as you get closer to them, the valley stretches, the forest grows denser. Space is redefined; sky is everywhere, it’s sweeping and reaches and kisses and envelopes the mountains, the tops of ponderosa pines, our tiny tent. In its enormity, everything is connected.

Six winding miles ascending mountain ridges, over rocky creek beds, through thick forests of spruce, fir and pine, and across shaky moraine, we arrived at our backcountry site for the night, Cracker Lake – a vast, U-shaped valley cut by glaciers during the last ice age. The lake, fed by the melting Siyah Glacier, on the 10,014 foot Mount Siyah, is a milky rich turquoise color as bright as the Caribbean Sea, sunk between the red and brown slopping mountain sides and rocky valley walls.

That night, as the warmth of the red sunset faded and darkness filled the valley, my friends and I sat by the waters edge in the eerie white glow of the glacier lake. Under the big Montana sky, millions of blurry stars pierced through the wildfire haze – somewhere in the wild, I imagined, a forest was burning. Other than the sound of our own voices, and the occasional insect, the only sound we could hear was the distant waterfall hidden in the mountains. The next morning was cold and windy, yet vividly clear. We hiked up Mount Siyah to explore the glacier. The approach included a long daunting scramble up steep, rocky debris, and when my feet finally crunched into the white slushy ice, I was amazed at how massive the glacier is. It continued far beyond the exposed portion we were on, it extended under most of the moraine we trekked up. All of the unsettled ground around us made it easy to understand how these giant moving ice rivers shaped the land.

From the vanish point of the glacier, I took a moment to look back at where we had come from – a view that really put the valley into perspective. Our tents were barely visible; I could only make out little dots on the hillside, swallowed by the giant embracing curves of the earth.

The further up the glacier we climbed, the steeper and scarier it got. When we spotted a deep crevasse we realized the ice beneath our feet was a lot thicker than we thought, and decided it was time to turn back. The only safe way to get down was to slide, so we used our boots as makeshift skis, and pointed rocks as ice picks until the terrain leveled out enough to walk on. We followed the rushing stream of melting glacier water to the lake and worked up the courage to take a very cold, but extremely exhilarating dip.
Glacier National Park has become the poster child park for Global Warming. Dan Fagre, a senior climate change ecologist in the park, has been carefully tracking climate change for the last 16 years. He predicts that the rivers of ice that have flowed in this park for the last 7000 years will be gone in just 30. The mean summer temperature has jumped three degrees Fahrenheit in the last century – double the worldwide increase. Of the 150 glaciers counted in the park in 1850 – the close of the 300-year ice age – only around 27 remain (we stood on one!), and the ice volume has declined by 90%. It’s saddening to think that by the time my own children visit this park, the very glacier I stood on may no longer be there.

We hiked out of Cracker Lake late that afternoon and left Glacier Nation Park just in time to make my flight. On the airplane, still clad in my well-worn hiking clothes, sporting the dirt from the trail, I stared out the window as the sun set over Montana. I watched the wilderness get smaller and smaller, and the total shape and form of the landscape came into view. I could see the source of burning wildfires, the lakes and connecting rivers, the white tipped peaks of the mountains and their glacier cut valleys. The view extended until it included streets and buildings, and then in the waning light as we disappeared into the clouds, the vastness of Montana faded away…

For more information: Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center

Repeat Photography Project - shows shrinking glaciers over time

More Pictures

Photo's
1. The Garden Wall
2. The trail at Logan's Pass, near the Continental Divide
3. Mountains at Cracker Lake
4. Mt. Siyah and the Siyah Glacier
5. Morning sun in the wildfire haze fills the valley
6. Resting on the steep moraine on our way up to the glacier at Cracker Lake
7. Siyah Glacier
8. A view of Cracker Lake from the glacier. In the shadow on the right side of the lake you can see two white dots; those are our tents – dwarfed by the enormous arms of the valley.
9. Another view of the valley from higher on the glacier. Here you can see how the glacier is hidden under the rocky debris and reappears again, grayish colored, further down. This part of the glacier looked like a moving stream, but it was actually solid. The melt begins a little further down and turns into a stream that runs into the lake. The rocky mounds of unstable rock are a result of the glacier moving and is one stage in the shaping of the landscape.
10. A close-up of Cracker Lake shows its intense color – this is caused by light reflecting off suspended silt in the glacier water.