Glacier National Park 2020

Post by **volvolugnut** » 12 Oct 2020, 17:35

Breathtaking hotel lobby! I noticed the 5th column on the right (counting from the back wall) in the modern photo has a log horizontal beam between the 4th and 6th columns. This beam does not appear in the early photo.
volvougnut

Post by **BlackBart** » 12 Oct 2020, 17:48

Another major lodge is the Many Glacier Hotel, on a string of turquoise lakes in the NE portion of the park. My favorite I think - a grand complex right on the lakeshore, looking at peaks that look fake, or like a painting. It takes massive snow loads in the winter and it was always slightly crooked when I went there as a kid. Like an old wooden ship, it leaned and it creaked and the floors weren't level. They've recently done a major structural remodel without changing how it looks. It involved huge cables going up over the roofs and massive jacks and they pulled and they twisted - amazing.

They restored the lobby to close to original, and re-created the missing giant spiral stairwell in the center. Big dining room looking at the water, staffed by summer vacation students. They traditionally put on plays or musicals after dinner for the guests. There's a big stone terrace on the lake side. You take a classic wooden launch from here if you like, and head up the lake, transfer to another boat on the next lake, and get a jump on your 8 mile hike to Grinnell Glacier, named for George Bird Grinnell.

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It's also adjacent to Swiftcurrent valley, with campgrounds, cabins, and trails to Swiftcurrent Glacier.

That's Jeff Mow I think - Superintendent of Glacier Nat Park, snipping the ribbon.

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Post by **volvolugnut** » 13 Oct 2020, 08:48

Thanks for the photos. My wife and I used to travel and stay in grand old hotels like this. Various conditions now make this unlikely in the future. We have enjoyed the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park Colorado.
volvolugnut

Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 11:31

Fun! My parents, for their honeymoon trip in 1940, drove up to the Banff Springs hotel in Alberta. Spectacular place - marble lobbies, just hangs there in the wilderness on the side of this mountain. They had to chew gum to put it on the pinhole in their gas tank to make it up there, hah!

Yeah, I don't see any major trips in the near future.

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Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 11:40

Lake McDonald Lodge is on......you guess........on the west side of the park, near the west entrance. It was a private hunting lodge at the Park's founding in 1910, and I believe it was purchased and refurbished as a hotel. It's smaller, very comfortable scale, and has a dock and a launch that just motors around on the lake. It's on the Going to the Sun road before you start climbing. They keep this one plowed and accessible in the winter, although I think the hotel is closed.

I've never stayed here, but it's fun to drop by after a hike and sit in the lobby. This is the western end of the red buses route, where they turn around and go back up the pass.

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Here they were prepping to protect it during the Sprague fire which burned down the Sperry Chalet up the mountain. Fire hoses on the roof.

Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 11:46

So, the chalets, the subject of our lecture!

Built mostly 1910-1913. To give tourists a wilderness experience in the American Alps.

Cut Bank Chalet was essentially some log cabins. This was north of the big Glacier Park Lodge and the train station, your first day out. I think you could also motorcar here on dirt roads from the lodge. It's long gone, there may be a backcountry ranger station near there.

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A later historic pic...in the 30s..? Note crookedness!

Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 11:49

Next stop north was the St Mary's Chalets, on the hill above the lake. It wasn't long before cars started arriving in the park, and no one stayed here, it was just a way station. The dining room was apparently popular, however.

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Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 12:02

You would take a wooden launch (boat) up Lake St Mary's to Sun Point, or "Going to the Sun." Fantastic vantage point on cliffs sticking out into the narrow lake.

There was a dock at the bottom of the cliff, and stairs up to the buildings. You can still find the foundations of some of them, and holes drilled into the bedrock.

It's a shame this is gone, because it looks very cool.

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Some of the boats still exist, and are kept in sheds in the winter and repaired. You can pay for rides on them.

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More of the Chinese lanterns...

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The staff in their Swiss get-ups. Boys in Lederhosen!

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The logs on the roofs kept the wind from ripping off the shingles, and mostly to keep the snow from sliding and taking the shingles with it.

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Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 12:06

From there, you'd take a packhorse train on up the shoreline of St Mary's, turn left up a canyon, and end up at Gunsight Lake, where there were log cabins. These were built with the others about 1910, badly damaged by a Grizzly bear and repaired in 1913 (stored food maybe?), and then crushed by a rock slide in 1916. They gave up at that point.

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Post by **BlackBart** » 13 Oct 2020, 12:39

Then a long steep trip around cirques and over Gunsight Pass to Sperry Chalet, my favorite. Partly because it's so pretty, partly because of the setting, and partly because we've stayed there several times. My wife used to go with her family as a kid and it was $20 a night...no more! Now it's a reservation a year in advance if you're lucky.

It's made from big chunks of native rock right off the mountain, with a timber structure inside. There's a dorm building where you sleep on old iron spring cots and can hear all your neighbors, a dining room building with the kitchen, an employee dorm and laundry added later, and a toilet building with a techy solar toilet mechanism, which sadly never worked right. They have to helicopter out the waste from a tank in the fall.

You get a lemonade and a muffin when you arrive from your steep 6 1/2 mile hike up from Lake McDonald. Dinner is served at a specific time, then the staff maybe puts on a show, or they go around the room and guests introduce themselves with a bit about their story. There are people from down the road, and from Germany - it's great. Hearty trail breakfast in the morning, and they make you a sack lunch with their famous Sperry Bars for your day hike.

One year we had reservations for mid-July, with our little boys. Big sign on the trailhead said, We're sorry, the Chalet is closed, too much snow, we can't get supplies up there. Call for a refund. We asked if we could just day hike up there. Sure, if you can make it, was the answer. Off we went.

We encountered big drifts and snowfields burying the trail, and then staffers with shovels and picks chopping a path. We made it to the Chalet and asked if we could stay since we were there. They said, well, it's only the staff, and we only have paper plates and canned spaghetti sauce. Fine, we said! We grabbed shovels and headed back down to help chop a path for the pack mules. They made an attempt that afternoon with about a dozen mules, and the boys got to watch them unload equipment and fuel and linens with these tough cowboy guys. The boys got a big thank you from the staff, and later after spaghetti, they played cribbage with the cooks in the empty dining room. Mountain goats put their front hooves up on the window sills and looked in. It was the best trip ever.

The Chalet is perched on a rock shelf above the valley, and just below the cirque or bowl up to the shelf where Sperry Glacier is. You hike for miles in thick forest, and then as it thins out you get your first glimpse of these tiny buildings way up there. "We're going up there?!"

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Original construction, 1910. Imagine, no power tools, no hoist, no lumber mill, cut your own rock, make your own food, you've got three months before it snows.