Glacier National Park (9 page)

Dad noticed a bighorn sheep walking on a cement barrier next to the road. He slowly rode by, trying to avoid eye contact with the noble but ominous-looking animal.
You don’t see that on too many bike rides
, he thought to himself.

Then Dad rounded a bend. Two more bighorns stood in the middle of the road. He looked at them, gauging if he could ride past quickly while pedaling uphill.

Dad decided he wasn’t fast enough to get by safely. He stopped and waited. A car on the other side of the sheep was also waiting. They noticed Dad. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say,
What else am I supposed to do?

The bighorns looked at the car, then at Dad. They took a few panicked, erratic steps in random directions. Dad prepared himself to turn the bike around and flee. All of a sudden, without warning, the bighorns ran off the road and scampered up a hill.

Dad took a deep breath and rode on, watching the bighorns above him as he pedaled past.

Finally, he made it to the final pitch, sprinting up the last stretch to the visitor center parking lot. Dad pulled in just as a ranger was putting up a barricade on the road.

Logan Pass Visitor Center’s parking lot was mostly empty. Near the bottom end were several ranger cars and fire trucks. Some of the firefighters were talking with each other. One was looking through binoculars to the east. Another spoke into a hand radio.

Dad looked at the newly set up roadblock. A car pulled up to it from the west. The ranger stepped over to the driver as she rolled down her window. “The road is closed,” the ranger announced. “The fire has flared up and is running close to the highway. For now, everything east of here is shut down.”

The driver backed up and turned around. Meanwhile Dad walked over to the ranger. “My family’s down there,” he informed him. “At Rising Sun.”

“Not for long,” the man replied.

• • •

A ranger drove around the campground. She stopped at the Parkers’ site and quickly jogged over to Morgan, James, and Mom.

“Hi, folks,” she greeted the family while looking at the decorations. “I’m sorry to break up the party, but we’re closing the whole area east of Logan Pass. The fires are raging out of control and moving this way.”

Mom looked at the ranger in shock. “Now?”

“Now!”

“But my husband’s riding his bike on Going-to-the-Sun Road!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If he’s up at the pass, he’ll have to go west. If he’s somewhere in between, the rangers sweeping the road will pick him up.

“I’ll radio the situation in,” she reassured Mom. The ranger hurried back to her car. Then she drove to the next campsite.

Dad rolled over to the fire crew. He waited nearby
and watched them discuss the situation. Meanwhile, several other cyclists arrived at the parking lot from the west.

Dad felt a chill from the morning wind and the sweat he had worked up on his climb. He pulled his windbreaker out of his jersey pouch and slipped it on. Then Dad watched the smoke from the fire expanding high into the sky.

The firefighter who had been talking on the radio turned and spoke to his crew. “The wind has shifted and it’s become a raging inferno down there. And the fire’s getting close to the highway above St. Mary Lake.”

Several firefighters hurriedly ran to their vehicles. Two trucks took off to the east; the ranger with the barricade moved it so they could get by.

Dad wondered what Mom and the kids were going through. He wheeled himself a little closer. “Excuse me.” A ranger paused. “I just rode my bike up here this morning, and my family’s at Rising Sun Campground,” Dad informed them. The ranger glanced at Dad, not anticipating this kind of predicament. He held up his hand. “Hang on a moment.”

After conferring with the others, the ranger returned quickly to Dad. “You can’t go back down,” he said. “It’s too dangerous, and the road is already closed.”

“What about my family?”

Again the ranger held up his hand so he could discuss the situation
further with his crew. Meanwhile, the other bike riders pedaled over to find out what was going on.

• • •

Mom, Morgan, and James hastily broke down camp. Morgan put as much food as she could into containers. Mom and James tore down the tent and stuffed the sleeping bags into their sacks. The three of them threw everything haphazardly into the car and piled in. Mom started up the car, and they headed for the campground exit.

Morgan gazed out the window at the totally obscured sky.

Ashes drifted onto the car like snow. James saw raging flames flickering up the side of a nearby hill. “The fire’s really close,” he reported nervously.

As they approached the main road, they were met by a patrol car. The ranger there directed all traffic east.

Mom turned the required direction. “We’ll find out about Dad as soon as we can,” she said.

• • •

From their vantage point at Logan Pass, the group of cyclists stared at the massive bomblike cloud of smoke ballooning up from the horizon.

“The fire’s been going on all week,” Dad mentioned to the others, “but it’s gotten a lot worse since yesterday.”

The ranger strode briskly over to the cyclists. “We’re sending up a shuttle bus to haul you and your bikes down to the western side of the park. With all the fire crews coming up, there’s too much traffic on the road for a safe bike ride. The bus can drop you at Avalanche Creek Campground or anywhere farther west.”

Then the ranger looked at Dad. “I suggest you go to Apgar. If your family checks in at St. Mary, we’ll inform them through the emergency dispatch that you are there.”

The cyclists wheeled over to the bus stop. They all sat down and waited for the shuttle. Dad told the small group about how he got separated from his family. Others told of similar situations. “I’m supposed to meet my family at Rising Sun,” one said. “I don’t know how we’re going to meet up now.”

“I wonder where we’ll all end up tonight,” another added.

• • •

Mom drove east along with a line of evacuating cars. To the south, flames roared up on the other side of St. Mary Lake.

The Parkers approached the visitor center. A ranger stationed there directed all traffic to keep on going.

Once out of the park, Mom pulled over at the intersection. A ranger and fire truck were parked next to a Road Closed sign. Mom, Morgan, and James hurried over to the emergency personnel.

“My husband is on that road with his bike somewhere,” she told the ranger anxiously.

“Ah, the bicyclists. We were told about that.”

“And?”

“Apparently several cyclists are stuck at the summit.”

“So everyone’s okay?”

“From what I’ve heard, yes. They’re going to be shuttled down to the west side and have been told to reunite with their families and friends at Apgar.”

Mom remembered where Apgar was. “With this road closed, how do we get there?”

“The only way would be to head south to the junction at East Glacier. From there you can pick up Highway 2 along the southern end of the park. But it won’t be easy or quick. There’s a second fire there, near the highway. It’s extremely smoky, and pilot cars are escorting groups through.”

“Thanks,” Mom said. She put her arms around James and Morgan. “Come on, we’ve got a long journey ahead.”

• • •

The bus came a while later and picked up Dad and the others. As they wound their way down the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, a line of fire trucks climbed in the other direction.

One of the cyclists looked at Dad and kindly asked, “Do you need any food?”

“Thanks,” Dad replied. “I still have a couple of energy bars. And I also have some money. There’s a store at Lake McDonald and at Apgar. I’ll be fine.”

The bus continued to descend to lower elevations. Eventually the road leveled out. The skies on the west side of the park were surprisingly blue.

The other cyclists exited the bus at Avalanche Creek Campground. “Good luck!” one called out to Dad as he hauled his bike off.

Dad exited the shuttle at Lake McDonald. As he lifted his bike down,
Dad said to the driver, “The rest of the road is mostly flat, so I might as well ride. Thanks for the lift.”

Dad watched the bus drive away. Then he hopped on his bike and began pedaling toward Apgar.

In the northern part of the park, a male moose bellowed. It pranced out of the forest and noticed a female and her calf. But there was another male nearby
.

The two competitors sized each other up. They stepped forward, then trotted closer. The males collided, grunting while shoving together forcefully. They locked antlers and attempted to push each other back. Both moose breathed heavily and continued to push for further leverage. At different times, each gained and lost steps while adjusting the position of his antlers
.

Finally, one of the moose shook his head back and forth, then thrust his antlers forward and knocked the other out of balance. The defeated moose scampered backward and trotted into a nearby marsh
.

The dominant moose lifted his head upright and pranced into the vicinity of the female. It pawed and scuffed at the ground, eventually digging out a depression
.

The moose stepped out of the hole and walked up to a tree. The bull rubbed his antlers against the trunk, scouring off the new fuzzy growth. He shook his antlers several times, letting bits of fuzz drop off
.

The female moose watched the proceedings. Finally, she stepped toward the newly formed den created by the bull
.

At the town of East Glacier, Mom turned the car southwest on Highway 2. A few miles later, the Parkers approached a line of cars. Mom pulled up and waited.

Morgan stared out the window. “It’s so smoky,” she said anxiously, thinking about Dad breathing in the polluted air as he rode his bike. Ashes continued to waft onto the car and pile up while they sat there.

After a thirty-minute delay, a pilot car heading northeast passed with a long line of cars following it. After the last car went by, the pilot car turned around to pull in front of the Parkers’ group.

Slowly, the waiting travelers began moving. Soon they were inching along at twenty-five miles per hour on the road paralleling the southern end of the park.

Outside was an eerie fire scene. Fire trucks next to the road blocked one of the lanes. Some were pumping water into the smoldering brush nearby.

Dark, dense smoke choked the whole region. Mom turned on her headlights. Flames flickered on hillsides, and several hot spots flared up right next to the road.

“It looks like a war zone out there,” Mom observed worriedly. “But I know the rangers were watching this develop. I’m sure Dad is in a safe place by now.”

Suddenly, two dark forms escaped from the smoke and flames and ran onto the highway. “Look,” James exclaimed, “wolves!”

The stunned animals froze in the headlights of the cars. One wolf quickly galloped south toward a nonburning forested area. The other limped after his companion.

“That one looks like the one we saw the other day!” Morgan said. “But it’s hard to tell with all the smoke.”

Soon the wolves had run out of sight.

• • •

Dad pedaled along Going-to-the-Sun Road. Eventually he made it to Apgar and rode up to the visitor center. A bulletin board was posted in front of the building with an update on the fire conditions. Dad read the information and looked at a map.
Kristen and the kids must be here on this highway
, he thought.

Dad put his bike against a wall and walked inside to find out more.

After talking with the rangers, Dad stocked up on snacks at the store across the street to energize himself for the several-mile-long ride up to Fish Creek Campground and whatever easy meal he might need later. He paid for a site near where they had stayed a week ago. Dad pedaled up to it, walked his bike onto the dirt, and sat at the picnic table. Dad stayed there, staring through the trees, thinking about his family and where they might be now and how they would find each other. He looked at the lake and wondered what to do next.

Dad rode back to the campground check-in station, borrowed some paper and a pen, and wrote a quick note:

Dad anchored the message to the picnic table with a rock and rode back into Apgar Village. He also posted a message on the bulletin board in Apgar. All he could do now was wait.