The (Extreme) Challenges Of Plowing Snow At The Start Of Summer In Glacier National Park

Most of you probably don't want to think about snow now, and I'm one of them.

Photo from the National Park Service taken on
May 30 shows crews clearing Going-To-The-Sun Road
in Glacier National Park. Looks even worse than
a Vermont winter. 

But still, it's entertaining and interesting to read the efforts that have been going into reopening snow-buried high elevation roads in Glacier National Park for the summer.  

If you do like seeing snow at any time of  year, maybe consider getting hired by the this crew of  snowplow guys and gals working high atop the Continental Divide. 

The local Flathead Beacon had a great descriptive story of how on Memorial Day weekend, there was still vacation homes, attractions and roads still buried in feet of snow in the high passes of this national park. 

You can see how they get the glaciers in Glacier National Park, though even those are dwindling due to climate change. Given the description of this year's snow, I wonder if it's possible the glaciers will get at least a one year reprieve this year.  Perhaps the snow will last all year and help some glaciers grow.

Then again, don't underestimate the extreme summer heat waves that are increasingly blasting the Rocky Mountains.  

Still, as the Flathead Beacon told us over Memorial Day weekend, the snow for now is impressive as crews try to clear out the parking lot of the Glacier Park visitor center, and Going-To-The-Sun road over Logan Pass at the Continental Divide.

"A colossal snowball located just east of Logan Pass, the Big Drift currently towers 80 feet above the roadie at precipitous angles, dwarfing the fleet of plows working to pioneer a route through what a casual observer amounts to an impenetrable wall of white."

And you thought shoveling your driveway after a Vermont February blizzard was challenging.

 As the Flathead Beacon and the snowplow people describe it, the winter wasn't actually all that impressive for snow in Glacier National Park. But then a snowy spring hit.

"'What's interesting about this year is that, when we started in April, we were using a small crew and less equipment but we still made record time to Big Bend,' (Glacier National Park Road Crew Supervisor Brian) Paul said on May 30.  

The task to open that high elevation road is Sisyphean. Between May 13 and Memorial Day, 34 avalanches have smashed onto the Going-To-The-Sun Road, leaving huge piles of snow and debris where crews had already cleared out the roadway. 

A week before Memorial Day weekend, another storm dumped three feet of new snow on and near Logan Pass, also undoing a lot of the work that had been completed. "We had to dig a long way just to get back to our equipment," Paul said.

Snow often falls on and around Logan Pass through the spring, but there's usually thaws in between the storms. This year, not so much. Freezing temperatures preserved most of whatever snow was already on the ground as new storms added to the accumulation. 

There's actually a chance of more snow tonight above elevations of about 5,500 overnight tonight, before a warm week finally begins the spring thaw in earnest. 

Check out the entire article in the Flathead Beacon. It's a great, well-written read.