Great Vacation Drives
Be a survivor in Glacier park. Glide over beaches. Relive the Revolution. Groove to the blues
So are the park's 37 "named" glaciers, holdovers from a mini-ice age that lasted from the 1400s to the 1850s. They've been shrinking since then. Park glaciologists believe global warming could wipe them out by 2030. Some rangers think a park name change is in order (although "Glaciated National Park" doesn't have the right ring, if you ask me).
You can see a glacier or two from the road, but this vacation was dedicated to derring-do. I wanted to walk on one of the disappearing glaciers, but they're not exactly easy to reach. Even if you take a boat ride to the start of the trail to Grinnell Glacier, you've got a steep 3.5 miles to go. I figured I had to outwit my kids to get them to agree to another forced march, er, long hike. To my surprise, they were as eager to see hoary ice as I was. We joined 40 glacier lovers on a guided hike, led by affable park naturalist Dave Benson.
On TV's Survivor, players vote each other off the island. In real life, survival means knowing your limits. Hikers gradually voted themselves off the trail, worn out by the climb and the sun. By 1 p.m., the band had shrunk to 15--with the worst yet to come. To get onto the 200-acre glacier, we had to cross a rushing stream fed by glacial melt. In early summer, hikers placed a dozen boulders in the water as steppingstones. The sun had melted a lot more ice since then. "The water's too high and fast to lead you safely across," Benson, 30, said. Groans of disappointment. But he would head over anyway, and--get this--we could follow if we wanted.
So this was it: our Immunity Challenge. Eleven brave souls inched across largely submerged rocks. My unsurefooted wife didn't dare try. My daughters and I made two false starts. That ice-cold water was calling my name, whirling like those crazy circles in Hitchcock's Vertigo. "No can do," I said. Then my kids looked at me with eyes as big as frisbees and clown frowns. I grasped a walking stick and grabbed my 11-year-old's hand for extra security. It would make a better story if I had fallen in, but no such luck. Benson has seen only one hiker take a tumble--his aunt. She got soaked to her waist.
Glaciers rock! Standing on the glacier was the highlight of our trip. It was so . . . cool, in every sense of the word. But it wasn't pretty. The top is littered with stones plucked off a cliff by oozing snow and ice. The bottom is rocky, too. Like little boys, glaciers pick up all sorts of things as they crawl along. If they stop moving (which happens if they grow too thin), they cease to be glaciers and become stagnant ice masses.
Hiking down, we were spent but giddy. We had met our challenges, and found our rewards. As it turns out, that's a Glacier tradition. In Through Glacier Park in 1915, Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote of her sometimes harrowing horseback trip and what she felt when it was all over: "A sense of achievement; of conquering the unconquerable; of pitting human wits against giants and winning."
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