Fifty Mountain Camp ...

This is an historic photo of a spot called "Fifty Mountain" ... easily one of Montana's most evocative place names. Fifty Mountain is high in the backcountry of Glacier Park, a dozen miles from the nearest road, and it's a spectacular location. That's Mount Kipp in the background.

This image, reportedly by the noted park photographer T.J. Hileman, dates from the 1920s or 1930s. Back then, the fashionable way to see Glacier was on a guided, multi-day horseback trip, and Fifty Mountain was an overnight stop for horse parties doing a popular route called the North Circle. For a few weeks every summer, the horse concessionaire operated "Fifty Mountain Camp," a collection of heavy canvas wall tents that provided hot meals and beds to the travelers. You can see the camp nestled in the trees near the bottom of the photo.

It's been over 70 years since Fifty Mountain Camp closed for the last time, but the park still maintains a small backcountry campground in the area. I recall camping there on the night of August 1 a number of years ago, and waking up to find the campground buried in new snow.

Picture-postcard view ...

There's no doubt that as a state, Montana is overrun with postcard-worthy views. I've always thought, though, that the very best of those scenes were of Lake McDonald, up in Glacier Park. Most postcard photos of Lake McDonald are shot from the Apgar area, looking down the full length of the lake at the impossibly-beautiful mountains that frame the opposite shore. But I like this closer view even better, taken from the boat dock at what is now Lake McDonald Lodge.

This photo is probably from the first decade of the twentieth century, when visits to the lake were becoming more popular but before Glacier Park itself was formally established ... the caption makes no mention of a national park, but simply says "Lake McDonald, Northern Montana."

Fur-bearing fish ...

I'm kind of surprised I didn't upload one of these postcards sooner ... after all, this is a true Montana legend.

People have been telling stories about fur-bearing fish in this part of the world for at least 80 years, and taxidermists have been encouraging the legend for just as long, by creating examples of the species. They're almost always trout, and the local version of the myth has them coming from Iceberg Lake up in Glacier Park. Other states have their own fur-bearing trout stories, too.

All in all, not quite as iconic as the Wyoming Jackalope, but still not bad. :)

Springtime rain ...

There's no doubt about it: Montana's weather definitely feels like it's been getting weirder lately. This spring, the story has been all about moisture ... lots of snow, and lots of rain. It's a year for flooding.

The situation is unsettling enough that it's got people thinking about similar times in Montana's past -- particularly the great flood of June 1964, which hit north-central Montana and the Glacier Park country with amazing force. Here's a classic photo from the 1964 flood: the Middle Fork bridge leading to the west entrance of Glacier Park, its trusses broken by the raging water.

This photo is one of many flood images captured my Mel Ruder, the legendary owner/editor of the Hungry Horse News. Ruder's reportage of the 1964 floods earned him the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a Montana journalist.

Monarchs of the Past ...

Here's another great old postcard photo: "Monarchs of the Past," by T. J. Hileman. The image probably dates from the 1920s, when Hileman was an official photographer for the Great Northern Railway, capturing views of the Glacier Park country for use in the GN's promotional efforts. The shot is highly reflective of the GN's traditional use of Blackfeet imagery in its advertising materials ... and in a broader sense, it typifies the period's popular romantic nostalgia for the rapidly-vanishing traditions of Native American life.

Topography ...

As far as those maps go, I haven't been to either Gallup City or Lonesome Prairie (yet) ... but I have made a couple of visits to Boulder Pass. This is a photo from a backpacking trip in 2003, looking across Hole in the Wall Basin. Boulder Pass is in the center of the photo, with Boulder Peak off to the left.

Talk about topography!

Boulder Pass ...

This is the last old topo map that I'll post here for a long while ... a clipping to contrast with yesterday's relatively flat landscape.

Based on late 1930s cartography, the the image below shows the Boulder Pass and Hole in the Wall areas, in the far north edge of Glacier National Park. It's one of the most spectacular spots in a spectacular state, and creates a map that fulfills most peoples' image of what a topo should look like.

The Glacier quarter ...

I was a big fan of the "State Quarters" series that the U.S. Mint finished up a year or so ago ... though I was a little disappointed in the bison-skull design that ended up representing Montana in the series. But now the National Parks quarters are coming out, giving Montana another chance to show off to the numismatists of the world -- and this time I think we got it right.

The choice of parks was a no-brainer, of course -- it had to be Glacier. And though I would have loved to have seen Lake McDonald on the coin, this composite image of Mt. Reynolds and a mountain goat captures Glacier's iconography very well. And it looks good on a coin, to boot.

Closed for the winter ...

This is how the Going-to-the-Sun Road looked in February ... no cars at all, just me and the snow and a single, inquisitive deer.

I love driving that road as much as anyone, but still ... this is so much better than the endless parade of SUVs that will fill that view a few months from now.

Winter on Lake McDonald ...

The train in yesterday's photo deposited me back in Whitefish at 2:30 AM, and it felt very good to be back in my own car again. A few hours later I was starting my day on the shore of Lake McDonald ... my favorite place on earth, even on a frigid, cloudy February morning.

Winter on Marias Pass ...

I've driven over Marias Pass a million times, in all seasons ... and as lovely as the trip is, I admit that it's gotten old hat by now. Mostly when I drive it, I'm just trying to make time.

The railroad line used by Amtrak's Empire Builder also crosses Marias Pass, of course, but I've only ridden a train across the pass a few times. And even though the tracks nearly parallel the highway, differences in elevation and angles make the ride a wholly different experience than the car trip. Much more interesting, I think -- and of course the views are easier to appreciate because the speed is lower and one doesn't have to think about driving.

My train ride over Marias Pass last week was cold and grey, but still thoroughly spectacular. Here's a shot from the trip, taken high on the western approach to the summit.

North Fork sunrise ...

Eating pizza with a friend on Saturday night, the subject of Polebridge came up ... and that was impetus enough for me to dig up another photo from one of my favorite parts of the world. I took this shot last fall during an early-morning drive up the North Fork valley -- this is a mile or two south of Polebridge, looking east towards Glacier Park.

Riding the rails ...

Back when I was a college kid working in Glacier, I made fairly regular trips into Kalispell ... errands, a movie, pizza and beer, whatever. For some reason, on one of those excursions I ended up at the public library there, where I came across a book of evocative photos of freight-train-hopping hobos. A number of the images were taken in Montana, and they stuck in my mind for a long time afterwards ... to the point where I finally decided I needed to find myself a copy of the book. And I'm pretty sure I found it: a little volume called Riding the Rails, by a photographer named Michael Mathers. Here's one of the shots I remembered.

Though it was certainly a hard existence, there's also a lot of romantic appeal in the mythic life of a hobo, and I definitely felt that. I don't know if the photos in that book influenced my own freight-hopping misadventures from those years, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Kishenehn ...

Nowadays, the park rangers in Glacier mostly spend the winter months holed up in a handful of the larger ranger stations, but back in the early days of the park many of them lived in the wilderness year-round, in primitive log cabins often completely inaccessible by road. It was a rugged and solitary life, especially in the winter.

Kishenehn was one of the most remote of Glacier's backcountry ranger stations, just a few miles from the Canadian border along the North Fork. The park stationed a single ranger there, summer and winter, for nearly thirty years ... the only park employee for miles. The place has been mostly deserted for over seventy years, now, but the old buildings are still up there.

This great old photo recorded the rarest of events at Kishenehn -- a party. The date is Thanksgiving, 1933, and all of Glacier's west-side rangers have gathered at Kishenehn to celebrate. These are the men who protected Glacier park nearly eighty years ago.


(And I need to confess to a self-indulgent reason for posting this particular photo -- I recently wrote an article on Kishenehn for Montana: The Magazine of Western History, and it was published in the Winter 2010 issue. It was a fun project, writing about a part of the world that I love.)

Red Chevrolet ...

I've seen a million photos of the Going-to-the-Sun Road over the years, but I found this one on the web recently and it immediately became one of my favorites. It's from a box of slides taken in June 1963 by an unknown family from Great Falls, on vacation in Glacier. They're heading up the east side of Logan Pass, and that's Going-to-the-Sun mountain in the background.

That old Chevrolet is just so wonderfully red.

Two Medicine ...

Anyone who's explored Glacier Park knows that its east and west halves are very different places... the east side is higher and windier and with fewer trees, while the west side has deeper valleys and great forests and lakes. I much prefer the west side of the park, overall ... it feels far more like Montana to me, and its easier to get away from the mobs of tourists, too.

I make an exception when it comes to Two Medicine, though ... it's my very favorite part of Glacier's east side. It's quiet, and the scenery and the hikes are lovely. I took this view of Two Medicine Lake last fall, the same day I photographed East Glacier's purple spoon.

The North Fork ...

Speaking of the North Fork, here's a photograph I took of it last summer ... this is maybe 25 miles south of the border. In a state with many lovely rivers, this is one of the loveliest.

The land on the far side of the river is part of Glacier National Park.

Gratuitous cuteness ...

Just a little bit of gratuitous cuteness for today ... this is a baby mountain goat I photographed in Glacier back in the summer of 2006:

Favorite road ...

After a couple of posts about license plates, it seems appropriate to follow up with one of my road photos ... and it made me ponder which Montana road might actually be my favorite. I can't answer that question for certain -- there are way too many Montana drives that I love -- but this little road is as close to being my favorite as any.

This is a shot of the Inside North Fork Road, up in Glacier Park. Running north from Apgar almost to the Canadian border, the road predates the park's establishment, connecting a series of remote lakes, tiny campgrounds, and log ranger stations ... and many days you can drive it for hours without seeing another soul. It's the antithesis of the overcrowded Going-to-the-Sun Road, where interactions with people and cars sometime overshadow the wonderful setting, and it's why the North Fork country is my favorite part of Glacier.

Big Eden ...

If you're looking for a feel-good Montana movie, there's no doubt that the film to rent is Big Eden. Completed in 2000, it's the story of a gay New Yorker who goes back home to Montana to take care of his ailing grandfather. There, he has the chance to finally become part of a real community, and perhaps to find love, as well.

Perhaps more fable than drama, there's no doubt that Big Eden is unrealistically rosy in its portrayal of small-town acceptance, but there's also no doubt that it's an engaging and heartwarming story. And the settings are among Montana's most gorgeous -- much of the movie was shot in Glacier Park, and if you've been to Swan Lake you'll recognize the general store in the film.

Here's a screencap from Big Eden's 4th of July celebration, which was filmed in Apgar. You can't help but recognize those mountains!