Confluence | Many Glacier
Description
In our search to understand how Grinnell has changed, we meet someone who last visited the glacier over 30 years ago and hike with a researcher who discovered the power of portraits.
Featuring: Gerard Byrd, Bob Adams, Diane Sine, and Lisa McKeon
For more info, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters
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TRANSCRIPT:
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
GRINNELL INTRODUCTION
Michael: Okay, Andrew. It's summertime as we're recording this.
Andrew: Yep.
Michael: But I want to rewind the clock to mid-may of this year. Think cool air, drizzling, rain, you know, spring.
Andrew: Okay. I'm with you.
Michael: This may I volunteered with the Harlequin duck project and we were trying to capture ducks on Upper McDonald Creek. And as we talked about in the Goat Haunt episode, you catch them by stringing a net all the way across the creek, and trying to catch them as they fly down. But with all the melting snow in the spring, that creek is flowing too fast to safely walk across. So a few people, and one end of net, get carried across to the other side in a raft.
Andrew: So did you get to go across the Creek?
Michael: Well, no, I stayed behind to help spot the birds with binoculars. But at the end of the day, everyone on the other side had to come back, and I volunteered to help catch the raft and pull them to shore. The raft—really conveniently—has a handle on the bow that helps you grab it. And I leaned over to grab it, totally missed, and fell face first into McDonald Creek.
Andrew: [laughs] Ouch.
Michael: Yeah, I was totally soaked.
Andrew: Well, it's pretty cold in the spring. Did you have a change of clothes?
Michael: Well, yes and no. Uh, it was very cold, but I didn't have any spare clothes. But the volunteer paddling the raft that I failed to catch had a spare pair of long johns. And despite my insistence that I'd be warm enough, made me go change into them.
Andrew: So you had warm legs and a bruised ego... But isn't this episode about Many Glacier?
Michael: Okay, let me finish. That volunteer's name is Gerard, and I'd met him before cause he drives a school bus for some of the local students I've led on field trips. But through the Harlequin project, I got to know him a little better. And a few weeks later I had the chance to get him in the studio.
Gerard: Yeah, my name is Gerard Byrd, born and raised about nine miles from Glacier National Park in a little town of Martin City.
Michael: He's the sort of wonderful person that seems to know everyone and can do anything. What were you doing just before this interview?
Gerard: We were helping band songbirds. Yeah. Trapping and banding.
Michael: I think he volunteers with every single wildlife research project in the park.
Gerard: We started about 12—maybe 13—years ago helping out with the wolverine project, got involved and we put in roughly 175 back country miles.
Andrew: Did you make him come into the studio just to return his long johns?
Michael: No, he's, he's got wonderful taste and long underwear, but that's not why I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk to him about a trip he did with the Glacier Institute in 1986
Gerard: Glacier Institute was founded in 1983, started working in '84, I came on board in '85. I'm a school bus contractor. They were looking for someone to transport students around the park, specifically up over Logan Pass.
Andrew: Wait, so what is the Glacier Institute?
Michael: The Glacier Institute is one of the park's three official partners. They offer hands-on, field-based learning opportunities for both kids and adults all throughout Northwest Montana. And they do a lot of work here.
Gerard: There's grizzly classes, flower classes, and then some geology classes, which included glaciology as well. And this one particular class, we were hiking into Grinnell Glacier—and it was a geology class, but one of the founders had wanted us to go and meet this gentlemen that was giving... I can't remember where he was from now. But anyway, he was giving a speech on Grinnell Glacier. And so—
Michael: The guy's name was Bob Anderson, and he was a geologist with the California Institute of Technology. And he wasn't just giving a talk on Grinnell Glacier. He was giving a talk in Grinnell Glacier.
Gerard: They had an access point that we were able to enter underneath this glacier
Michael: Into an ice cave.
Andrew: Whoa.
Gerard: It was about maybe three foot high, and it kind of went back maybe 20-some feet.
Michael: The times I've spent in other park units like Mammoth Cave National Park. One of the biggest takeaways was just how dark it got, like what was the lighting?
Gerard: Straight up? I mean, it's no different than a regular cave. If there were human bodies blocking that entrance. Yeah, it was, it would be no different than being in an underground cave. As I looked around, there was probably 20 of us crowded into this small space and there was a flash photographer taking tons of photos—leaned over and I said: "Lex, what? How come this is so obnoxious?" He goes: "Gerard, National Geographic's in here doing a photo-op here under this glacier."
Andrew: National Geographic was there?
Michael: Yeah! They published a 20 page article, not long afterwards, which really reads like an introduction to Glacier: where it is, what it's all about. A harrowing search and rescue tale. And here's the one photo they use from the ice cave.
Andrew: Wow, this is crazy. So this is under Grinnell Glacier?
Michael: Yeah. The photo, it's really dark—this guy's wearing bright yellow pants sitting on the ice and yeah, it's in Grinnell Glacier.
Andrew: I've been to Grinnell Glacier a handful of times, and this looks nothing like anything I've seen up there. It's like a totally different world.
Michael: Yeah. And it's hard to tell in the photo, I asked him what the weather was like outside, and he said it was sunny. But it doesn't look at all like that.
Andrew: No.
Michael: It just looks dark.
Andrew: And cold.
Michael: Gerard described these little threads of ice that would dangle from the ceiling of the Glacier. And if you looked at it too long, either your breath or your headlamp would even melt them. So it was a really powerful experience for him.
Gerard: Well, the funny thing was, is, um, I had visited with my wife when I came out and I said, Oh my gosh honey you got to come in and look at this. I said, this was incredible, I was so moved. Well, raising five kids and whatnot, it just was about three years later—and we decided that we could go back in. And we hiked in, come to this rock face, And I, [stammering], this is where the glacier was. I kept looking at the rock face, thinking, God, maybe I'm on a whole different, but I, I, I did recognize the area where we . And the glacier had melted back about 200+ feet. I was absolutely astounded.
Michael: Three years.
Gerard: Three years. That's when I really became aware of, of man's impact on our beautiful planet. Yeah.
Andrew: So if that's how much it changed in just three years, what has he noticed in the last 30 years since then?
Michael: Yeah, that was something I was really interested in, but he surprised me. When's the last time you went back to Grinnell Glacier?
Gerard: It was back then probably '89.
Michael: Really?
Gerard: 80's, yep.
Michael: Haven't been back since?
Gerard: I haven't been back there since then. I've done a lot of different areas in the park since, but um, not, not been back there since '89.
Andrew: Wow. 30 years. I can't imagine what he'd say. If he got to see it now
Michael: I know. We have got to get Gerard to Grinnell Glacier this summer.
Andrew: Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many Native American Tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people.
Michael: We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here.
Andrew: I’m Andrew.
Michael: I’m Michael.
Andrew: And we’re both rangers here. And today we're going to be taking you on a journey to the Many Glacier Valley.
Michael: Nestled in the northeast corner of the park. Many Glacier is one of its most spectacular destinations. I know every time my family has come to visit, we've made a point of taking Highway 89 on the east side of the park, just to get there. Typically the road is open from mid-May to late October, but the high elevation trails have a much shorter season because they're only reliably clear of snow in August.
Andrew: According to longtime Many Glacier ranger, Bob Adams, there are two trails in particular that people come here to see.
Bob Adams: ...that would be the Grinnell Glacier Trail. And that would be the Iceberg Lake Trail, which...
Andrew: This area is popular, like really, really popular.
Bob Adams: ...but there are lots of people, roughly 600 or more a day.
Andrew: That's 600 is on each trail.
Michael: So this isn't the place for solitude?
Andrew: Not exactly. And to make it even more extreme, Bob sometimes has to close one of those trails for bear activity. And if the Iceberg Lake trail is closed, then...
Bob Adams: You'll get 900 people on the Glacier Trail.
Michael: 900 people on the Grinnell Glacier Trail?!
Bob Adams: So that may not be what you want. It may be exactly what you want because you maybe feel safety in numbers. That's,
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