Two Lanes, Two Wheels, and a Camera: Glacier National Park

It was a very incredibly beautiful but somewhat painful ride…

In 2017 I awoke in a cold, soggy tent alongside the lake in Saint Mary, Montana. It was my birthday, and it was — well — raining. I waited about an hour in wet jeans, and socks reading my Kindle and becoming even more excited for my ride through?Glacier National Park on the Going to the Sun Road.?I was going the descent route, east to west. I had just come from the Canadian Rockies where I had to bail on my Alaska goal due to the fires all over western Canada.

The rain stopped. I mean it just stopped in about 10 seconds. I stepped out to a very wet and muddy Montana morning with a tiny bit of sun starting to peek over the trees and the clouds rapidly dispersing.

That is something you see a lot at that altitude. Storms come in really fast and leave just as quickly. Silence, roar, and thunder, then silence again. Seemingly instantaneously.

There was a wonderful mist in the air that gave the mountains and lake a mystical and somewhat ethereal feeling. I got the Nikon out of the protected bag and ready in my carry bag.

What a perfect day for photography, I thought.

I got dressed in dry clothes, had a decent breakfast at the only diner in town, promptly dropped my bike in the parking lot — pulling my left arm nearly off my shoulder — and headed out to the high country of Glacier. Belly full, excited as hell, left arm nearly useless, and screaming loudly every time I tried to use it.

On a motorcycle.

On?Going to the Sun Road.

I couldn’t do much with my left arm, but for some reason, it seemed to work fine on the bike, and thankfully for holding a camera at least to eye level. Putting on a jacket, strapping up my helmet, and trying to drink from a bottle of water… yeah, that hurt. A lot. The bruise that covered my entire left shoulder and arm was like a spectacular tattoo!

(“Stop whining” — ed)

Sorry. Anyway, after a few gorgeous miles along the lake, a strange brown cloud began mixing with the beautiful white mist of the recent storm. I soon realized it was smoke.

Glacier National Park was on fire. The smoke eventually became so thick that the vistas were impossible to see, the air simply impenetrable. And although it was a terrible time to be there, I decided to go ahead and photograph it anyway.

It was this time, it was this place, and I was there. The earth does as it does, and I make photographs of it at the moment it is doing what it is doing. Perfect.

And at that moment a savage and devastating fire was raging just a few miles from me. A few days later I read about what was lost in that fire and it saddened me. A bucket list item was removed forever.

I pressed on although the acrid smoke was filling my lungs with every breath.

I ended up with a dozen photographs that I really like from that trip. This is one of them (above) of Saint Mary Lake, early that morning. It was the first of the images and the smoke was just beginning to obliterate the lovely mist. A few miles later and the sky is far murkier, and visibility was barely a couple of miles.

I do want to go back. Time is my foe, but I swear I will ride Going to the Sun Road again on my bike. The sheer excitement of that thin piece of asphalt going up, and up, and up is too glorious for a one-time adventure.

I went from east to west - down - the first time I rode it, and this time I want to simply climb into the sky (west to east) and do it with a shoulder that doesn’t scream every damned time I try to put my helmet on.

All photographs are by the author. Images were taken on a Nikon Df and 28–85mm lenses.

My travel kit that year was a Nikon Df, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lenses. I carried a small flash and umbrella for portraits and hand-held the flash. Traveling on a motorcycle means taking only the gear you need. Also on board was a small tripod, an action camera (that never worked), and my iPhone 7.