Ludwig Crests the Crown of the Continent

Going-to-the-Sun Road is the road through the park and is probably the only way most visitors experience it (the park). The two things that struck me, first when I saw pictures of it (the road), and then even moreso when I drove it, were: (1) someone thought, "we should build a road here", and (2) they built a road there. The road itself is a work of art in a way, a work in progress, as the environment does its damnedest every year to reclaim big parts of it.

On our previous visit we took the road East-to-West and hugged the mountains, but this time we went the other, more vertigo-inducing way, West-to-East. That's Esther, Melissa, and Ludwig (l to r). Turnouts along the way give you a chance to take pictures.

This isn't the best picture, but the Triple Arches here help to show why the existence of the road is remarkable. It was built by hand, incidentally, and that cliff keeps going down.

That stripe is the road.

 















Proof that Ludwig made it to the top: Logan Pass, elevation 6646'. I listened to a ranger tell a group that last Winter, the weather station on top of the visitors center atop the pass recorded two weeks of 155 mph winds. It's closed during Winter because it's under several feet of snow from early-October until mid-June. (Parts of the pass get 70+ feet of snow.) I thought Ludwig was going to be the oldest vehicle up there until a 1955 Dodge pulled in next to us.

Esther and I got a closer look at this waterfall next to the road on the Hudson Bay side of the pass.

The next day we headed out around the Eastern and Southern edges of the park. Along the way we crossed another of North America's important divides, the Hudson Bay Divide (6015'). The lack of a sign bespeaks of geographic illiteracy and of a general Atlantic/Pacific bigotry, I think.

Driver Found.

About one of every seven photos like this turned out, taken while sticking my arm out the rear side window.

I'll admit that I'm confused. This sign clearly states the elevation of Marias Pass (US 2) as 5216'. But most maps declare it to be right at one mile, and close inspection of the USGS quad tells me it's around 5240'. I gave it the lowest value on the list of passes so I couldn't be accused of aggrandizement.

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