I hate Glacier National Park. I know I shouldn’t hate something as sweet and innocent as a national park, but I do. (It’s like hating a puppy!) I hate Glacier Park more than I hate cilantro. I hate I hate Glacier Park like your in-laws hate it when you get to drunk and take off your pants. I hate Glacier Park, and sadly the feeling is mutual.
It wasn’t always this way. I madly pursued Glacier for a while. The first two times I went to Montana, our attempts to make it to Glacier Park were thwarted by snow. Both visits took place in June. Let’s recap. Snow. June. Obviously, some sort of conspiracy was taking place to keep me from the park. Fear not, I was assured, for if we visited just a little later in the season the weather would be fantastic and our trip to the park would be spectacular.
This year would have no excuses, as we were in Montana in August and my sources here told me snow in August was about as likely as coming upon a hairless moose playing an organ. On Monday, seventeen of us made our way to Glacier park, anxious to take in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Our trek got off to a difficult start when we decided to all take a shuttle up the mountain together, but had to wait 50 minutes for a shuttle with enough space to accommodate us all. Undeterred, we slowly made our way up to the top of the park. During the ride, we began to sniff out some clues that the weather was not going to cooperate with us. One of the waterfalls (which, I was told, usually flows downhill) was actually shooting water uphill, owing mainly to epically strong winds blowing the stream 20 feet into the air. We also noticed that mountains behind us kept disappearing into a thick, dark storm.
At 4:30, we finally reached the top, at which time the shuttle driver informed us that a weather advisory had been issued for a storm that would soon blow through. Not really sure what to do, we quickly ran into the visitors center. Once inside, the skies really opened up, drenching everything in a cold, windy monsoon. Then the thunder and lightening started, followed shortly by a hail storm. It would have been really sad, except for being able to witness the steady current of underdressed hikers return to the visitor center drenched and freezing. Can anyone say, “Wet tee shirt contest?” I did, many times, although my fondest memory is not seeing the mother of two boys in a see-through tank top, but, rather, hearing her kids (while sobbing and shivering uncontrollably) shout, “WWWWWWhy ddddiiiiiddddd yyyyyyyou mmmmmakkkke usssssssss gggggggo onnnnnnn a sssssssstuppppid hhhhhhhike? WWWWWWWWWWWWWeeeeeee hhhhhhhhate yyyyyyyou!!!!!”
Thanks for bringing me to Glacier Park, daddy.
After huddling in the visitor center for about an hour with the other thousand or so tourists trapped by the storm, we figured we were going to need to stand back in line to catch the shuttle back down the mountain. When we got in line there were 20 or so people in front of us. When the last remaining members of our group made it into line, there were about 75 people in the line. When the first shuttle came, it picked up a grand total of seven people. I did the math and at that rate, (with shuttles coming every half hour) we were going to be on a shuttle in 90 minutes, while the rest of the group would get back sometime around Thanksgiving. Luckily, the park figured out that they needed to get everyone off the mountain and sent every shuttle they had to pick up passengers. Eventually, we piled into a shuttle and the trip down the mountain was wet and cold, sad and quiet.
We finally got home without seeing anything. People still tell me that Glacier is a beautiful place to visit, but they are clearly full of shit. Glacier is an awful place that no one should ever visit, and I hate its guts. The next time we head up here and Amy’s family suggest we go up there again, I’ll tell them that prefer to do something a little more enjoyable, like a colonoscopy or maybe have a mountain goat chew off one of my fingers. Glacier, for all intents and purposes, is dead to me.
Tags: trainwrecks
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Good Day Then?
Good times, good times…
For who?!
I’m pretty sure that Glacier park returns the sentiment.
That’s why my hatred burns so fiercely.