Does all work and no play make Jack a dull boy? Winter caretaking at the Many Glacier Hotel.

I was thinking back to the Winter of 1987 the other day.  It was a horribly cold day in Spokane, but February can be that way.  Temps in the negative teens below zero with howling wind.  That really fine snow.  The stuff that gets thru every seam of your clothing.  Looking for just enough warmth to melt and get you wet and take that chill right to the bone.

It had me musing about the Many Glacier Hotel up there in my favorite area of Glacier Park.  The snow was a little thin for late December, and I was actually able to drive my college 1976 Mustang all the way back to the parking lot at Swiftcurrent and park at the Redrock Falls trailhead.  Anyone who has ever been there in the summer would truly appreciate how remote it can be in the wintertime.

We cross-country skied a couple of miles over what we thought was probably the trail.  Bitter cold, and very very quiet in a spooking kind of way.  Just at the point when we were deciding where a turnaround point should be, we crossed some fresh mountain lion tracks in the snow.  BIG paw prints.  And I’m pretty sure we were the only thing on the menu for the entire valley this deep into winter.  Back to the car at a very quick pace.

Racking the skis and driving out, I stopped by the Many Glacier Hotel.  I wanted to walk out on the ice which had a couple of feet of snow on it.  While there, the caretaker and his wife came out of their cabin to see me.  Just chit-chat some.  They talked my ear off.  What I didn’t realize until years later is that the 13-mile road in from the highway is NEVER clear enough for vehicles this time of year.  They close a gate on it now just to keep people from trying to drive back there and getting stuck and most likely dying. 

I’ve done some reading about what the caretakers do and realized how isolated they are.  From late October until April, they are basically locked in the place.  They have to do five months of food shopping before they close the road, and then spend a lot of dark days in the belly of the beast keeping tabs on the boarded-up lodge and trying not to go crazy.

So as I looked off my back patio at this roaring storm, I asked myself ‘Could you take this type of weather for five months?’

I just smiles and sipped my coffee.  Hell yeah.  That is the experience I have been waiting for my entire life for.  I’m targeting when I turn 65.  So probably be the winter of 2030.  I’ll have to be sure and toss some cake mix in the pantry.  A good time to write the great American Novel as well.