Plow crews reach Logan Pass in Glacier National Park

Yahoo

20-05-2025

A plow sits in a frozen Logan Pass parking lot in Glacier National park on May 19, 2025. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan)
Midway through May, the top of Glacier National Park's Logan Pass was shrouded in white.
Monday morning, thin clouds obscured the prominent peaks that guard the Continental Divide, rime ice coated the treetops visible above the snowpack, and snow drifts piled up to the roof of the visitor's center. On top of a winter's worth of compacted snow sat a fresh inch or so of powder from the weekend's storm.
These are the current conditions at the top of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the iconic alpine highway that bisects the park and during the summer will see hundreds of thousands of visitors a month.
But on Monday, the only people at the pass were a gaggle of media members, four avalanche forecasters, heavy equipment operators and Glacier's communications team.
'People are just waiting breathlessly for this road to open,' Glacier spokesperson Gina Icenoggle told the Daily Montanan. 'Once the road is plowed, the side rails are installed, the visitor center is ready and potable water is available up here, we'll open it up.'
But that day could be a ways off.
Park officials always refrain from giving an estimated opening date for the Sun Road, due to the variability of late spring conditions at higher elevations.
But data from the previous 92 years since the road opened tells a story of opening dates trending slightly later in the summer.
The average opening date for vehicles to traverse the length of the 50-mile scenic corridor is June 11, but that has trended later in recent decades. The average opening date since 2000 has been June 21, while since 2010 it has been closer to June 26 — due to three mid-July openings, one of which occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Going-to-the-Sun Road hasn't opened to vehicles in May since 2005.
The monumental task of preparing the serpentine highway for visitors usually begins in March, when snow in the lower valleys begins to melt. On the west side of the Park, a crew of around a dozen, including avalanche forecasters and heavy equipment operators, plow, scoop and dump thousands of tons of snow each day.
Typically, the process begins with a dozer to cut down on the snowpack until it's only a few feet from the road bed. Rotary snow plows do the bulk of the work at that point, but at certain parts of the road it becomes an all-hands-on-deck operation.
The Big Drift, a one-mile stretch just east of Logan Pass, is known for accumulating up to 80 feet of snow throughout the winter and requires a fleet of excavators and bobcats to punch through.
Because of the steep cliffside nature of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, avalanches are common throughout the spring and early summer, occasionally requiring road crews to double back to stretches of road they've previously cleared.
The work can be incredibly dangerous. In 1953, a massive avalanche tumbled down the mountainside into one of the road crews, killing two members, including the foreman, George Beaton.
'It's a lot safer than it used to be,' said Brian Paul, the park's road supervisor, due to a team of avalanche forecasters that are part of the crew.
Four avalanche forecasters work in shifts to provide the most accurate data for the road crews, checking overnight temperatures and weather patterns, digging snow pits, and monitoring snowpack along the mountain ridges above the highway. Two forecasters work for the National Park Service, and two are employed by the U. S. Geological Survey.
Every morning, the forecasters on duty will start working around 4:30 to look at what the weather did overnight. They'll gather data from nearby weather stations and models for the day and put out an internal forecast for park personnel. At 6 a.m., the forecasters will brief the road crew on the day's conditions, including what parts of the road might be avalanche prone.
'It's been more of a typical avalanche season year on the Sun Road,' said Erich Peitzch, a USGS snow scientist who manages the park service's avalanche program and has been forecasting in Glacier since 2007. 'We usually get, at some point, a late season snow storm where, you know, it'll put more avalanche debris on the road.'
During the weekend, new snow triggered a slide on the west side of the Park, shoving 12 feet of debris across the road — a 'pretty small avalanche' by Glacier standards, Peitzch said.
'For now, things are relatively stable, but we're still in the mountains, and the road still passes through dozens of avalanche chutes. And the road is what we call a terrain trap — snow will just pile up when an avalanche comes down and it can get pretty deep.'
After road crews finish clearing snow, and debris, off the road, a series of guardrails are installed along the outer edge of the highway. Eventually, water will flow back to the visitor's center, the bathrooms will be cleaned and ready and the Park will accept cars along the full length of Going-to-the-Sun Road.
Until then, hikers and bikers are allowed on both the east and west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road past the marked vehicle closures. Hiker/Biker closures are in place on weekdays until 4 p.m., after which visitors can continue up the road until reaching the avalanche hazard closure. Going past the avalanche closures is punishable by a $5,000 fine and as long as six months in jail. The latest conditions for the road can be viewed online.
And while no one can say for certain when visitors will be able to drive up to Logan Pass this summer, park officials assure the public it will be as soon as safely possible.
'So many surrounding businesses and the local economy counts on this road being open,' Icenoggle said. 'When it's go time, it's go time.'