Glacier National Park Quotes

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie ...imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.

Glacier National Park in Montana is steadfastly considered to be one of the most beautiful places in the country.

Obey the warning signs; don't go into the wilderness alone; and don't believe for a moment that you are better, stronger, faster, or more nimble than the natural forces around you.

As with life, so with words.

Early naturalists talked often about “deep time”—the perception they had, contemplating the grandeur of this valley or that rock basin, of the profound slowness of nature. But the perspective changes when history accelerates. What lies in store for us is more like what aboriginal Australians, talking with Victorian anthropologists, called “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already by watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea—a feeling of history happening all at once. It is. The summer of 2017, in the Northern Hemisphere, brought unprecedented extreme weather: three major hurricanes arising in quick succession in the Atlantic; the epic “500,000-year” rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, dropping on Houston a million gallons of water for nearly every single person in the entire state of Texas; the wildfires of California, nine thousand of them burning through more than a million acres, and those in icy Greenland, ten times bigger than those in 2014; the floods of South Asia, clearing 45 million from their homes. Then the record-breaking summer of 2018 made 2017 seem positively idyllic. It brought an unheard-of global heat wave, with temperatures hitting 108 in Los Angeles, 122 in Pakistan, and 124 in Algeria. In the world’s oceans, six hurricanes and tropical storms appeared on the radars at once, including one, Typhoon Mangkhut, that hit the Philippines and then Hong Kong, killing nearly a hundred and wreaking a billion dollars in damages, and another, Hurricane Florence, which more than doubled the average annual rainfall in North Carolina, killing more than fifty and inflicting $17 billion worth of damage. There were wildfires in Sweden, all the way in the Arctic Circle, and across so much of the American West that half the continent was fighting through smoke, those fires ultimately burning close to 1.5 million acres. Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed, as were parts of Glacier National Park in Montana, where temperatures also topped 100. In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers; today, all but 26 are melted.

Lake McDonald, full of brisk trout, is in the heart of this forest, and Avalanche Lake is ten miles above McDonald, at the feet of a group of glacier-laden mountains. Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life.

The most visible effect of global warming in Montana, and perhaps anywhere in the world, is in Glacier National Park. While glaciers all over the world are in retreat—on Mt. Kilimanjaro, in the Andes and Alps, on the mountains of New Guinea, and around Mt. Everest—the phenomenon has been especially well studied in Montana because its glaciers are so accessible to climatologists and tourists. When the area of Glacier National Park was first visited by naturalists in the late 1800s, it contained over 150 glaciers; now, there are only about 35 left, mostly at just a small fraction of their first-reported size. At present rates of melting, Glacier National Park will have no glaciers at all by the year 2030. Such declines in the mountain snowpack are bad for irrigation systems, whose summer water comes from melting of the snow

Tectonic power and glacial force push and pull the geology, spreading it to it's absolute limit, yet layered and rich with hues of darkness, immortality, and mysteries not meant for men.

As she stares into the cool prisms of blues and whites, and the clear parts which fracture the light, she notices something deeper. It is a light from within the ice. It's beautiful; so she stays.

He says things to keep them from being true. But he sounds so honest when he says things he doesn’t want to happen even if the saying itself is a lie. Like retiring at Glacier National Park as stewards. Like a man struggles to make more and more money for forty years and then suddenly decides he doesn’t need it. Suddenly decides he can work for free.

WOULDN’T LOSE another kid on his watch. If the homecoming queen was out here, he intended to find her. Even if he had to trek through the entire western edge of Glacier National Park, beat every bush, climb every peak. Unless, of course, Romeo had been lying. “How far up the trail did the kid say they were?” Behind him, Gage Watson shined his flashlight against the twisted depths of forest. A champion snowboarder, Gage looked the part with his long dark brown hair held back in a man bun. But he also had keen outdoor instincts and now worked as an EMT on the PEAK Rescue team during the summer. An owl hooted. A screech ricocheted through

Trying to figure out how to keep Sierra from breaking up with him. “At least I have a gun,” Sam said. His Remington rifle, which he kept in his trunk next to his police bag. Just in case. Because bear or not, living in the shadow of Glacier National Park, Sam knew to expect trouble. “Did you find her?” The voice ricocheted up the path and Sam turned. Grimaced. The frantic and desperate Quinn Starr, aka Romeo. About seventeen, with dark brown hair chopped

the Whitefish Golf Club, digging into a New York strip and a mound of garlic mashed potatoes. Trying to figure out how to keep Sierra from breaking up with him. “At least I have a gun,” Sam said. His Remington rifle, which he kept in his trunk next to his police bag. Just in case. Because bear or not, living in the shadow of Glacier National Park, Sam knew to expect trouble. “Did you find her?” The voice ricocheted up the path and Sam turned. Grimaced. The frantic and desperate Quinn Starr, aka Romeo. About seventeen, with dark brown hair chopped

Lyell Glacier Resting on the northern slope of Mt. Lyell (the highest peak in the park), Lyell Glacier is the largest glacier in Yosemite. It’s also the second largest glacier in the Sierra Nevada and one of the southernmost glaciers in North America. Both the mountain and the glacier are named for Charles Lyell, whose 1830 book Principles of Geology has been called “the most seminal work in geology.” (Ironically, when the theory of Ice Ages was first advanced in the 1830s, Lyell did not believe it, and he argued against it for decades.) Over the past century, Lyell Glacier has been shrinking due to warming temperatures. In 2013 it was determined that Lyell Glacier is no longer moving, and thus should be technically classified as an “ice field.

In 1850, 150 glaciers were recorded within the boundaries of Glacier National Park. In 2015, only 25 active glaciers remain. After decades of research, scientists have concluded that the glaciers for which the park was named could be gone within fifteen years as a consequence of the burn of global warming.

Adirondack Park, a 6-million-acre wilderness area and parkland in the Adirondack Mountains, is larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Olympic national parks combined.

There were no more glaciers in Glacier National Park.

THE ADIRONDACK PARK, a vast wilderness area sprawling over six million acres in northeastern New York, is the largest public land preserve in the contiguous United States. Roughly the size of Vermont, it is larger than seven other American states—so large, in fact, the national parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Smoky Mountains could all fit neatly within its boundaries.

a frozen pizza cooking in the oven, filling the kitchen with the tantalizing smell of melted cheese and sizzling pepperoni. Six beers cool in the fridge. A map of Glacier National Park is spread on the table, accompanied by sheets of paper filled with scribbled notes and calculations. Sitting around all day is not healthy for any human, but it is certainly not healthy for thru-hikers. After spending the day brainstorming possibilities, sharing ideas, and speaking our desire to finish the hike, Koozie and I decide to get all logistics down on paper. During our most recent conversation, we were both moved to tears expressing how important hiking this trail is and what it means for us. Working for 5 months toward this goal, only to be halted 75 miles from the finish, is an insult to the previous 2,460 miles hiked and every sacrifice made to get to this point. Our determination is not to be doubted, but our finish-vision can easily get us into trouble that would be better to avoid.

The problem of habituated, food-conditioned grizzly bears is not superficial. In the worst cases these circumstances have been associated with grizzly bear–inflicted deaths. Between 1967 and 1980, nine deaths occurred in Glacier, Yellowstone, and Banff National Parks. Eight of these deaths were caused by seven different grizzly bears, all of which were habituated and food-conditioned. The ninth incident was caused by a habituated grizzly bear that didn’t have a known history of feeding on people’s food or garbage (see page 63). These tragedies were probably avoidable.

By the end of the summer, Exit Glacier was measured to have retreated an estimated 262 feet—the most significant year ever recorded.

Since 1835, the Exit Glacier has retreated, on average, about forty-six feet per year,” she said. “And more recently, say 2014, it retreated 151 feet. So a huge increase in the rate of retreat.

The parks are our indicator species. Living laboratories where we can see—sometimes in something as simple as a photograph—that trouble is coming. If glaciers continue to melt at their current rate, then one day soon entire Alaskan villages will be underwater. People are already dying from wildfires caused, in part, by the longer, hotter summers brought on by climate change.