Instead, it relies on the conditions and how quickly workers can clear the road with snow plows. The road doesn’t have a set open date each year. If you’re visiting Glacier National Park in the near future, one of your biggest questions is probably “When does Going to the Sun Road open?” In the springtime, road crews go in with massive snow equipment to plow the road open for use. The pass sits at an elevation of 6,646 feet and is the highest point on the road.Įach winter, the park gets as much as 15 feet of snow at high elevations, making Going to the Sun Road impossible to travel. It crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. First opened in July of 1933, Going to the Sun Road is the only road that runs through the park. Mary area.Going-to-the-Sun Road: it’s a feat of modern engineering. Apparently the couple had come together to mate and there were multiple visitor sightings of the same bears in the St. We’d heard a ranger talking about this duo on a hike earlier that day. We were thrilled to have four bighorn sheep cross the road in front of our car one evening, pose for photos and then clamber up the cliff next to us.Īnother time, when all I had handy to take photos was my phone, we saw two black bears (one blonde, one brunette) frolicking by the side of the road. On our trips up and down Going to the Sun, we saw tunnels, glaciers, beautiful mountains and valleys and countless waterfalls crossing the road. The source of that legend is in dispute…is it a Blackfeet legend, or did a European settler make the whole thing up? Legend has it that a Native American god came down from the sun to teach the Blackfeet how to hunt and left his image in the mountain upon his return to the Sun. The road is named for the mountain it cuts through on the East side of the pass. The design of the road changed over the course of the construction from multiple switchbacks carving up the mountain to Logan Pass to only one long switchback called The Loop, reducing the visual impact, but increasing the cost and time needed for the project. When the road opened in the 1930s, it was an engineering marvel and was a three-year project that actually took 11 years to build. Late on the night of our arrival, the Park Service tweeted out the happy news that Going to the Sun was open for the summer season! The plow crews started work at the end of April this year and when we got on a plane bound for Kalispell at the end of June, the road still was not completely open. Going to the Sun Road is partially closed during the colder months and very difficult to plow due to the twists & turns, sheer cliffs and the fact that they get snow drifts of up to 80 feet in the higher elevations. We toured the road in our rental car a few more times that week and saw something different each time. Mary (scroll down to the end for the video clip) and took a Red Bus tour of the Eastern side. The 50 mile Going to the Sun Road first opened to traffic in Glacier National Park in 1933 and remains a key attraction in the park today. On our first trip down Going to the Sun Road, we began at the East entrance in St. Welcome back to National Parks & other public lands with T! If you are seeing this on Twitter or Facebook, please visit the blog to see all of the photos and read the story by clicking the link.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |