Visiting
Paradise in peril - Montana's crown jewel faces funding needs, stressed infastructure and possible loss of iconic glaciers
Disappearing namesake may make pristine wilderness symbol of climate change
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
Watch an aerial tour of Glacier National Park
WEST GLACIER - The tourists huddled in a shivering pack amid what should have been the heat of July, crowding around Laura Kloeck while she explained a bit about climate change.
“There is definitely a frightening side to global warming,” Kloeck told them, “but there is hope, too.”
Visits, and bills, rise - Funding cuts, more tourists strain infrastructure
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
WEST GLACIER - The trend lines look like graph-paper mountain ranges, high peaks crashing against deep valleys, all charting a rugged and difficult future.
Climbing Glacier National Park’s steep statistical slopes offers panoramic views of what’s going up - visitation, what’s going down - structural maintenance, and what’s leveled off on a wide and endless plateau - annual funding.
It is a fiscal landscape park managers hike into with considerable trepidation, here on the eve of Glacier’s second century.
Threats from all sides - Future of park's wildlife in jeopardy as landscape changes
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
WEST GLACIER - One hundred years ago, when Glacier National Park first became a park, grizzly bears roamed along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, north into Canada, south into Sun River country, west to the Cabinets and east onto lowland plains.
Wolves wandered, too, and wolverines and big bull elk.
They had no idea someone had drawn a new political boundary onto their landscape.
They still don't.
Spring with spectrum - Grand Prismatic waters display all the colors of the rainbow
Free etude on the river - Symphony performs annual show in Caras
By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian
Take a gorgeous summer evening, add in your favorite people, bring delicious picnic food, unfold the smorgasbord on the banks of the Clark Fork River at Caras Park and top it off with a free concert of classical music.
The result? Thousands of the happiest people you will ever find on a Sunday night in Missoula.
Almost 4,000 people - maybe more - turned out Sunday to enjoy the Missoula Symphony Orchestra's annual Symphony in the Park.
Conductor Darko Butorac scored a bit hit with the concert's Wild West theme.
It’s all downhill at Snowbowl - In summer, mountain bikers take lift up for fast ride back to resort’s base
By TIMOTHY ALEX AKIMOFF of the Missoulian
The alarm comes ripping through my dreams like a chain saw through pudding.
Bleary and confused, I reach for the source of such irritation and pound my clanging cell phone against the nightstand to no avail.
Normally, were it a school day, I’d roll out for my morning routine of showering, waking the kids, making breakfast and carting everybody off to school and work.
It sounds like a lot, but my wife works nights, so letting her sleep in has its advantages.
Lasting effect: Site has touched lives of many young campers over its 84 years
By BRIENNA BOYDSTUN for the Missoulian
In the shelter of the Anaconda Range, along Georgetown Lake, lies Camp Watanopa, steeped in 84 years of tradition and maintained by the loyal following of its campers.
The camp, owned by Camp Fire USA, was originally called Camp L.O. Evans after the woman who donated the land. It started in the summer of 1924 and was the first nonsecular camp for girls in Montana.
Big top rises with pachyderm power at Western Montana Fair
RV park revival: Two Montana sites win top ranking from international pool
By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian
There's no glitzy banquet or star-studded gala that comes with the 100 Top-Rated Good Sam RV Parks 2008 Award of Excellence, but for the western Montana businesses that receive the honor, it's a bit like winning an Oscar.
The award is a certificate that arrives in the mail with little fanfare - but the recognition is worth more than gold.
For Jellystone Park in Missoula and Eagle Nest RV Park in Polson, the award means they are ranked best-of-the-best out of more than 1,650 such parks in the United States and Canada.
