Tag: 2010 centennial

Glacier Centennial Activities

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Glacier National Park2 Comments

from NPS Glacier National Park

100 Years of Goats in Glacier

Thursday, September 2, 2010 (registration required)
Glacier Institute Course
The mountain goat, neither true goat nor sheep, now lives exclusively in North America. Despite increasing threats to their habitat, goats continue to thrive in what remains. Although mountain goats sometimes frequent lower elevations, their normal home is a stark alpine aerie above the timberline and sometimes as high as 10,000 feet above sea level. The rugged high country of Glacier National Park is part of that habitat.
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Belton Chalet Employee Reunion

Sunday, September 5, 2010 (registration required)
Belton Chalet, West Glacier, MT

Calling all Belton Chalet alumni and employees! Join the Belton Chalet for a celebration of 100 years of history with generations of past employees- sharing stories, reviving old recipes and uniforms, and highlighting our tie to Glacier National Park and the Great Northern Railway.
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Gear Jammer Reunion

Wednesday-Friday, September 8-10, 2010 (registration required)
Glacier Celebration and Gear Jammer Reunion
Glacier Park Lodge, East Glacier, MT

Red Bus tours have been an integral part of the Glacier experience for most of the 100 years Glacier has been a national park. Through sun, rain, snow, wind, bears, and adversity, Gearjammers have made sure that visitors have reached their destinations safely and provided them with a fun-filled informative commentary on the unsurpassed, gorgeous scenery. The unbroken history of gearjamming in Glacier is unique to the United States. To become one of the special breed of Red Bus drivers has always been a high honor.

This reunion affords former Gearjammers a Glacier revisit to recall their youth, renew old acquaintances, and a chance to revisit a park that was a pivotal point in their lives.
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Rotary International Peace Park Ceremony

September 9-12, 2010 (registration required)
Hands Across the Border Rotary International Peace Park Ceremony Many Glacier Hotel, Glacier National Park, MT

Local Rotary Clubs on each side of the 49th parallel inspired the U.S. Congress and Canada’s Parliament to establish the world’s first International Peace Park in 1932. Rotarians, park managers, and school children reaffirm the peace with an annual hands across the border pledge. The conjoined park is now a United Nations World Heritage Site.
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Great Northern Railway Historical Society Convention

September 12-15, 2010 (sold out)
September 12 (free open house)
Great Northern Railway Historical Society Convention Glacier Park Lodge, East Glacier, MT

No walk-in registrations will be accepted due to space considerations.

Glacier Park Lodge was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1912 on a site known as Midvale purchased from the Blackfeet Nation.
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Each purchase of this mountain adventure novel benefits the park

Glacier Centennial: Bears don’t eat beargrass

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Glacier National Park8 Comments

Often considered the park flower, common beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) is one of the most popular wildflowers in Glacier National Park. Captain Meriwether Lewis collected a specimen in 1806 in Idaho and referred to it as a species of beargrass.

Flickr commons photo by Curt
Since this perennial, a member of the Lily family, isn’t similar to eastern plants named beargrass, Lewis’ rationale for the name are unclear. He did say that the horses wouldn’t eat it, and described watertight baskets made of the leaves and cedar bark by Native Americans.

In his book “The Old North Trail,” Walter McClintock reports that the roots of beargrass (eksisoke in Blackfeet) were ground up and boiled to stop bleeding from cuts and to fight the inflammation accompanying sprains and fractures by the Southern Piegan in Montana. It was also used to stop hair from falling out.

But bears don’t eat it, and it’s not actually a grass. Mountain goats eat the leaves and elk, deer and bighorn sheep eat the blossoms. Grizzly bears occasionally haul the plants into their winter dens for nesting materials.

Visitors to the park will find the creamy yellow, six-to-eight-inch dense raceme flowers on stalks up to six feet tall along the trails to Grinnell Glacier, Iceberg Lake, and Swiftcurrent Pass from June to August. The displays of this flower are often quite profuse, and few hikers with cameras come home without several striking photographs taken along forest trails and in sunny meadows.

When I worked in the park, we told guests that bears dried their paws on beargrass after trying to wash off the rather indelible juice from huckleberries. No doubt, today’s bellmen and bus drivers are still spinning a similar yarn.

If you’re planning a trip to Glacier during this centennial year and are interested in wildflower information, “Wildflowers of Glacier National Park” by Kimball and Lesica is a handy resource.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of a mythic adventure novel set in Glacier National Park called “The Sun Singer.”