Confluence | Lake McDonald

Headwaters

How does fire affect our relationship with the park? In this episode of Headwaters we explore our relationship to fire through different lenses. What is it like to be in a wildfire? How have native people used fire? How does fire affect plants and animals? And finally, what can we learn about our history from fire?

Featuring: Chris Peterson, Tony Incashola Sr., Dawn LaFleur, Teagan Hayes, Mike Sanger, Sarah Peterson, and Brent Rowley.

For more information, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters

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TRANSCRIPT:

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SPRAGUE INTRODUCTION

Michael:

It's Thursday, August 10th, 2017. And I have the day off.

Andrew:

For context, we were both rangers here in the summer of 2017.

Michael:

Yes. And the job of leading guided hikes campground talks and staffing the visitor center is very rewarding, but can also be exhausting. So when the weekend rolled around some friends and I planned a relaxing backcountry, camping trip. We got a permit for the backcountry campground on the West shore of Lake McDonald. One of the few back country campgrounds that you can paddle a canoe to. So we loaded our gear into dry bags, packed our life jackets and set sail for some RNR. The campground itself is known for being sunny, that burned over in a wildland fire in 2003 and the remaining lifeless and limbless trees offer little in the way of shade.

Andrew:

That's an understatement.

Michael:

So we set out in the afternoon thinking we'd arrive after the heat of the day had passed. The first half of the paddle was nice and sunny, but the further we went, the clouds began to roll in. With each stroke the sky seemed to grow darker and we paddled faster and faster and faster to reach the shoreline. We thought we'd beaten the weather as we pulled our canoe ashore, but a clap of thunder echoed off the mountains and signaled the night that was yet to come. As we frantically assembled our tents and shabby burritos, the storm arrived. Rain came in a torrent instantly soaking me through my jacket. We hung our food up so we could retreat to our tents. But then the wind began to pick up. In my memory what came next was a loud, deafening blur. Rain pelted the ground, and began to sound like angry radio static.

Michael:

The wind was strong enough you had to brace yourself against it or be blown over and begin to topple the trees around us. And as they crashed down left and right, we ran to the lakeshore for safety as lightning and thunder reverberated up above. But just like that, it was over. The air was calm. The rain had stopped and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as we returned to the soggy rice and bean burritos we'd put away. As we ate, we tried to make sense of what had just happened, pointing out the trees that had fallen down, comparing how well our jackets had worked. But only then, with mouthfuls of burrito, did we notice a column of smoke across the lake. Smoke that would eventually grow to become the Sprague fire that burned 17,000 acres and the Sperry chalet.

Andrew:

Wow, that's crazy that you sat through the storm that started it all. I was actually just straight across the lake from you. At the same time at the Lake McDonald lodge, I was supposed to give the evening ranger program up at the Lake McDonald lodge auditorium that night. It was super stormy as I drove up from Apgar. And while I was getting ready for my talk, the power went out in the building. It was pitch black in the auditorium. I didn't think people would really be able to safely walk around the room so I just decided to cancel the program. So if you were trying to attend the ranger program at the Lake McDonald Lodge auditorium on August 10, 2017, I'm very sorry. You'll have to catch me another time. When I canceled, I stood outside the building to let people know that the program wouldn't be happening that night. It was at 8:36 PM, a few minutes after the talk was scheduled to start, that lightning struck the hillside above me and ignited the Sprague Creek fire. With no program to give I drove back down to my office in Apgar. There were lots of people just standing around and watching the flames. So in a routine that would become common over the coming months from across the Lake, I watched the fire glow against the dark night sky. I was still wearing my ranger uniform. So I stayed on the beach there for hours answering questions from concerned visitors.

Michael:

The fire became a spectacle. At night people would gather to watch it burn. Slowly at first, then rapidly as one hot and dry week was followed by another.

Andrew:

In all the Sprague fire burned for about three months on the east shore of Lake McDonald, until it was finally extinguished by autumn snow.

Michael:

Here on Lake McDonald, wildfire is a fact of life for plants, animals, and people are like, if you want to exist here, you've got to learn to live with it.

Andrew:

In this episode, we're going to learn about something that's becoming an everyday concern for people around the American West: what happens when people and wildfire come together. Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many native American tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people.

Michael:

We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here.

Andrew:

I’m Andrew.

Michael:

I’m Michael.

Andrew:

And we’re both rangers here. And today we're in the Lake McDonald valley.

Michael:

Near the west entrance of the park, the Lake McDonald area is the most visited region of Glacier. Lake McDonald itself is one of the park's, most cherished attractions, at 10 miles long, and over a mile wide it's also the largest lake in glacier.

Andrew:

This area gets hit with a ton of lightning, and that means that wildfires start with considerable frequency.

Michael:

What happens in a place dense with people and fire. And that's what we're going to explore in this episode.

TRAPPER PART 1

Michael:

To start out. I wanted to talk to someone who knows the park as well as anyone even better than most rangers.

Chris Peterson:

My name is Chris Peterson and I am the editor of the Hungry Horse News.

Andrew:

Oh yeah, Chris!

Michael:

Hardly anything happens in Northwest Montana without Chris writing or at least knowing about it.

Andrew:

It seems like he's been here forever. How long has Chris been around?

Chris Peterson:

Since 1998, which would make it a, this will be my 23rd summer.

Andrew:

I've seen his byline a lot, but he's a photographer too, right?

Michael:

Yeah. You're right. After graduating college, Chris started working for a small town daily newspaper in New York where he started to pick up photography.

Chris Peterson:

Back in New York, uh, at the daily you had to shoot your own photos. So my photos were terrible. I was awful photographer. Didn't know what I was doing. And so I started shooting Buffalo bills, games, you know, at a Buffalo bills game you know, it was like 85,000 people there, but there's also 120 photographers. So you could, you can learn a lot just by watching the other guys.

Michael:

And after he really developed his photography skills.

New Speaker:

Oh boy.

Michael:

He landed a new job.

Chris Peterson:

So that kind of set up my portfolio and then the Hungry Horse News had put out an ad for a photographer and I applied and I got the job and the rest is kind of history, I guess.

Andrew:

That's a big switch to go from photographing Bills games to bald eagles.

Michael:

Yeah. It's a big adjustment, but he took to it. But part of covering news in the West is wildfire something Chris didn't have any experience with from his time in New York.

Chris Peterson:

Oh, well, you know, in, in New York there are, I mean, big fires. Yeah. But they were all houses or, um, you know, tire dumps.

Michael:

But it didn't take him long to get experience. The second summer, he covered the West Flattop fire, two years after that the moose fire, then the Anaconda fire.

Chris Peterson:

So, so I'd cut my teeth.

Michael:

All of which led up to 2003. You had a couple of seasons of experience then covering summer fires. What was the feeling going into the summer of 2003?

Chris Peterson:

You know, in retrospect, um, we probably should have known that we were going to have a big fire year, but I can remember in June, like just people just having fun. Cause it didn't rain. I mean, June typically is one of the wettest months. If not the wettest month in the park. It didn't rain. So everyone was having, you know—everyone's camping and fishing and float. And you know, the park is just full of people...

Radio:

The fire danger rating has been moved up and is now high.

Michael:

But by July fires began to crop up. In fact, on July 17th, after a morning storm, six fires were spotted in the park.

Andrew:

Wow. That's a lot.

Michael:

Yeah. More fires than the park season. Some whole years, just in one morning. The next day, Numa Ridge lookout spotted the Wedge Canyon fire in the North fork, which within two days had grown to 4,000 acres. And due to the number of homes in the area was the number one priority fire in the nation.

Andrew:

Wow. Uh, so what was Chris doing at the time?

Chris Peterson:

We were out running around, taking photos of them. You know, drove up and looked at Wedge Canyon and man, it was ripping across the ridge one day. So we knew unless it rained that things were probably going to get worse, not better. I don't think we thought they'd get as bad as they did.

Michael:

At the same time the Wedge Canyon fire was burning in the North fork, a fire was burning in the heart of the Upper McDonald Creek Valley: the Trapper Fire. The fire at the heart of our story was at the time. So remote that it was seen as a low priority. Park employees like Chris Baker, the lookout stationed on Swiftcurrent mountain, described what it looked like. She wrote an article after the fire all about it. Here, can you read the first part?

Andrew:

Okay. "When I arrived back at Swiftcurrent, flattop mountain was puffing here and there, but the smokes just weren't that impressive. The lightning storm had planted its seeds, but nothing much was showing yet." So for a while, trapper was underwhelming?

Michael:

Yeah, it was.

Andrew:

But that obviously didn't last forever.

Michael:

No, it did not.

Chris Peterson:

July 23rd comes along, changes everything.

Michael:

The forecast for the 23rd called for extreme winds, 30 miles an hour or more.

Chris Peterson:

Right. Right. Exactly. And so that's why, that's why we're at the loop on the 23rd.

Michael:

Now, if you've ever driven the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Logan Pass from Lake MacDonald, you may remember the loop as the single hairpin turn on the whole route. As the road turns back on itself, you've got eight miles left to Logan Pass as you rise above the trees, getting a view of the McDonald Creek Valley—And, Chris hoped, the Trapper fire.

Chris Peterson:

Okay, it's pretty windy day. Let's get up there, see what's going on. And let's take a look at it.

Michael:

His instincts were right. Chris Baker, the lookout at Swiftcurrent watch the trapper fire grow that day. And rather than have you read everything, Andrew, I had a friend read the rest of her quotes for it.

Chris Baker:

There was no mistaking it when Trapper decided to make its move. I was looking right at it when it did. That wimpy white column suddenly grew tall, turned to brown, then black. Then it was wider and moving.

Chris Peterson:

And you could see that fire probably I'm guessing five miles away. And it's just starting to look like a tornado. If you can imagine a huge, a really big tornado in the sense that it's like this big circular cloud black and it just starts spinning and you can see it and it's coming closer and closer and closer.

Andrew:

That's nothing like what I expected.

Michael:

And Chris was far from the only person at the loop watching this unfold.

Chris Peterson:

I mean more and more people showed up and were just watching it. And there were other people there everyone's taking pictures.

Michael:

So there were reporters like Chris there, visitors had stopped to take pictures. There was even a corporate marketing team there.

Chris Peterson:

One of the more memorable things was there was this a couple of women in their twenties, um, with like tank tops on. And they had a red bull pickup truck, you know, red bull, that energy drink, but it had it like a big fake can on the back of a pickup truck.

Michael:

As the fire was coming closer and closer and everyone was taking photos. The red bull staff was running around with free samples.

Andrew:

Okay. I think watching a fire race towards you is a situation where you definitely would not need the extra boost from an energy drink.

Michael:

[laughing] Yeah, I think you're right. But without the Red Bull, Chris described the atmosphere being charged with anticipation and excitement.

Chris Peterson:

So we're taking pictures of her with the smoke and the fire and smoke and stuff in the background and they're taking pictures and it just kind of got into like almost a party type atmosphere in the sense that here it comes. And it came like right to the edge of the, you know, the Canyon.

Chris Peterson:

It was just a, like a, you know, a freight train.

Andrew:

But he must've gotten out safely.

Michael:

He did.

Chris Peterson:

The fire gets to the loop. Everyone he takes off because it didn't burn over the loop. It's obvious it's not going to stop.

Michael:

As it burned over the loop. It claimed anything in its path vehicles that were parked there, trail head signs, heck for years there were stains on the pavement from where port-a-potties melted into the asphalt.

Andrew:

That's kind of gross. Uh, what happened next?

Michael:

Well, the Trapper fire continued to burn uphill straight towards the Granite Park Chalet and... Well you'll have to wait and see. I talked to Mike Sanger, one of the employees that was at granite park chalet that night later in the episode.

Andrew:

I see.

Michael:

But Chris' experience goes to show that even when it's coming towards you, even when it's endangering your own safety, you can't help but watch fire. As powerful and destructive as it is. It has a sort of magnetism.

TRADITIONAL FIRE

Tony Incashola:

My name is Tony Incashola Sr. I'm the director for the Salish Kalispell Culture Committee for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes.

Andrew:

People interacting with wildfire here is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it's been happening for thousands of years. To learn more I decided to talk to Tony Incashola Sr. about the role that fire plays in the traditional Salish way of life. We talked about how, from Tony's perspective, not enough people understand the significance and value of fire. This misunderstanding of our environment makes fire more dangerous. And he talked about how national parks are a place where we can learn to connect with the natural world. So Tony, if we have listeners from other parts of the country or the world who aren't familiar with, the Selis people, what do they need to know about Selis history?

Tony Incashola:

According to the stories from our elders, the Selis-speaking people have been in this area since the last ice age. My, my group, my band of Selis are the most eastern Selis-speaking people here in Montana, and our aboriginal territory consisted of about 22 million acres. And then it came along in 1855 when more settlers and homesteaders moved into our area a treaty was, was negotiated. And it took several days before the leaders of the tribe agreed to, to be put on a reservation. And so that's why we are where we're at today on our 1.3 million acre reservation here. So that's kind of in a nutshell from the past where we started and how we got to where we're at as Selis-speaking people.

Andrew:

So I wanted to have you in today to talk about fire. What role does fire have in the Selis tradition?

Tony Incashola:

The Selis people, they would set fires to their favorite hunting areas, their favorite spots. When the weather was predictable, they would set fires knowning that the fire would be put out as soon as the snow got here. So there was no fear of that being a wild fire. When they did that, they'd go back into spring time and where they had set fire, they could see all the new growth coming up, the green grass, clearing the underbrush for the berries and for all the other foods that were necessary, both food and medicinal plants. It would clear it out. It was like doing work in a garden, you know, as you go in the garden, you clean out all the weeds. That's what they used fire for.

Andrew:

Were there other advantages to setting fires?

Tony Incashola:

The other thing they use it, of course, before they had horses and before they had rifles, you know, getting buffalo, hunting buffalo, sometimes was very difficult on foot. So sometimes they'd look at certain areas and they'd see these areas and they'd use fire to bring the herd to certain places. And then once they get to these certain jumps they'd build these running lanes and they used these cliffs for buffalo jumps, so go over there. So that was another way of using the fire.

Andrew:

That's really interesting, using fire to manage vegetation and to drive buffalo over cliffs, to hunt efficiently. It's a pretty amazing technique. How did traditional people actually manage these fires?

Tony Incashola:

Just like our professionals today, we have professional fisheries, water, people in those areas. Well, back then they had these people that were dedicated and assigned to fires and they were the only ones that would set the fire, because they've studied fire, they've understood fire. And so they're the ones that were allowed to set these fires.

Andrew:

And how did they actually start the fires? Where did the embers come from?

Tony Incashola:

They used buffalo horns or different things to carry these embers of fire because it was so hard, you know, to, to make fire. So they'd make a fire and then take these embers and store them in these buffalo horns or something, then they'd have these firestarters, what they call them, firestarters. They'd gallop to these different places and set fire. And like I said, only those people were allowed to do that.

Andrew:

Why do you think so many people have negative feelings about fire?

Tony Incashola:

One, I think is a misunderstanding exactly what fire is, what it means and what it could do. The other thing is fear. Naturally, it's frightening. I mean, you look at California today and how dry, how brushy some of those go up like matchsticks. And I think that's what people are afraid of, that because they don't understand fire, not knowing how our environment works, how the trees, how the animals, how the rain, how the fire--everything has a role in our ecosystem. And the people today don't understand. They don't understand how our ecosystem works. They need to know that fire is necessary. Fire must happen so that we don't get what we're getting in California today.

Andrew:

What's the reason for this poor understanding of ecosystems?

Tony Incashola:

I think because of the values, value system that we created and the values that we think are more important now today. That our lives are put first, rather than together with other things. You know, everything goes hand in hand. One of the things, when I was growing up, my grandparents and my parents and all of my elders that have always taught me, and always said, every living thing is equal. You treat it as an equal. You don't think you're better. You don't go, you don't dominate, because you dominate you destroy. And that's what we have as human beings. We've dominated certain things. We've changed certain things, and we've destroyed that. And so I think a lot of that is as misunderstanding. And national parks are kind of a stronghold of what used to be. So national parks are places that continue to be very important, especially to me, especially to natives that understand what the park is. You know, because it used to be this whole country. And there's still a need for parks. There's still a need for areas like this for our spirituality, for our wellbeing, for our minds. How many times have we in our lives have got so frustrated with our jobs, with the things that we do every day over and over that we need these areas of solitude to go, touch the ground again, to put your feet back on the ground and kind of soothe everything. All of that weight seems to lift and create something, a peace of mind that lets you move forward again. We need these places.

FIRE ECOLOGY

Andrew:

So, fire has a long history in this place. It can be a creative as well as a destructive force. And whether you like it or not, it's a factor that has to be considered in deciding how to manage this park. To learn more about what role wildland fire plays in the ecosystem here. I decided to talk to Dawn LaFleur.

Dawn LaFleur:

My name is Dawn LaFleur, and I am the vegetation management biologist for the park.

Andrew:

What does a vegetation management biologists do?

Dawn LaFleur:

What does that entail? It basically manages the vegetation for the park. So that's anything from forest management, basically making sure we have healthy forest ecosystems, as well as maintaining native plant communities. So whenever we have disturbance, human-caused disturbance, we go in behind the disturbance and utilize native plant materials that we've collected and grown at our native plant nursery. So basically trying to manage the native vegetation as well as the invasive vegetation to maintain healthy ecosystems.

Andrew:

I met Dawn on the site of the Howe Ridge fire, which in 2018 burned about 14,000 acres on the west shore of Lake McDonald. It was one year after the Sprague fire, which we talked about at the top of the show, and on the opposite side of the lake. At times, it can be a bit noisy here now that there's not much of a forest to shelter you from the wind. I asked Don what this area had looked like before the fire.

Dawn LaFleur:

It was cedar-hemlock, big old growth trees. Usually anywhere between a 100 to 200, 300 year old trees were here. And then we had the Howe Ridge fire that came through and actually burned it very, very hot, where this hadn't burned at least for 400 years.

Andrew:

So that was a pretty intense fire?

Dawn LaFleur:

It was very intense. It was very unusual. We had the extreme fire behavior happened at night and came down here very fast, very quickly and burned very intensely.

Andrew:

About two weeks after this spot burned, Dawn was one of the first people to come back here and start to assess the impact.

Dawn LaFleur:

So what we were looking for were signs of vegetation, any potential signs of vegetation recovery already, as well as the impacts to our soil.

Andrew:

The type of soil impacts Dawn is looking for are things like, how burnt is this soil? Will things be able to grow in it? And she'll look at hillsides to see if any of them have potential for erosion now that root systems that were holding them together might be burnt out. Do you remember what your initial impressions were at the time?

Dawn LaFleur:

Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. All we have left are toothpicks, were my initial impressions.

Andrew:

For a fire to burn up essentially every tree was unusual. Typically when Dawn visits a recently burned area, the fire

Dawn LaFleur:

doesn't wipe everything out. It'll find a section of vegetation or trees, a pocket of trees to burn in and move around and kind of skip and create a mosaic or little islands of vegetation, which actually helps for rehabilitating the landscape afterwards.

Michael:

So why was this fire so intense?

Andrew:

It was a combination of factors. For one, the summer of 2018 was extremely hot and dry, but fire suppression efforts in the early 1900s had also disrupted some of the natural cycles here.

Dawn LaFleur:

Has a huge role in this natural ecosystem. We have plants and tree species like lodgepole pine that are fired dependent.

Andrew:

These are species that have evolved to rely on fire to succeed. Lodgepole pines, which need a lot of sunlight, have special cones that are tightly bound shut by resin. The seeds are trapped inside the cone until there's a wildfire, the type of event that would clear out the canopy and make it sunny enough for them to grow. When fire passes through

Dawn LaFleur:

the coons get heated up and release their seeds and they establish a forest. And then after about 20, 30 years, you have mountain pine beetle, which is also a native.

Andrew:

The mountain pine beetle will kill a few of the pines, but not all of them. Since these two species evolved together, the pines have a natural defense against the beetles. Then a low or medium intensity fire would burn out the killed trees, thinning the forest.

Dawn LaFleur:

So it's been a natural cycle between 20 and 30 years of fire to be on the landscape. We've been suppressing it since the 1920s. And so that's why we're starting to see more intense fire on the landscape.

Andrew:

In Dawn's career she's witnessed summers get warmer and drier, and the snowpack disappearing earlier in the spring, allowing soil and vegetation to dry out. These effects are changing the role that fire plays in the ecosystem.

Dawn LaFleur:

What it is is climate change. We're getting drier and hotter sooner. And then the other thing we're seeing is with extreme fire and not enough moisture in the spring, what takes advantage of those open niches after a fire are non-native plants. The opportunists, we're seeing a lot more non-native invasive plants coming in into our burned areas than we have had in the past.

Andrew:

But Dawn hasn't lost hope. She still has a clear and optimistic vision of how this area can recover.

Dawn LaFleur:

My hope would be in five years, we should have conifers that are three to four foot tall, a good diversity of conifers. I would hope a lot of larch in here, cause they tend to be fire resistant. And it would be wonderful to see pockets. I don't expect it all across the landscape up here, but little pockets of moisture where we could see cedar-hemlock coming back, and this would be completely green and you've got woodpeckers utilizing the snags and everything. We would be standing here and we would be, we would have vegetation over our heads.

Andrew:

Sounds lovely.

Dawn LaFleur:

And as we get more vegetation established, that will out-compete, as we get an overstory, it'll out-compete these, newly established invasives. And so much more native plant diversity.

Michael:

Protecting plant diversity in Glacier National Park is a collective endeavor. Dawn can't do it alone.

Andrew:

She asks that when people visit here, they take a moment to think about how their actions will affect the plant life around them.

Dawn LaFleur:

Stay on the trail, definitely stay on the trail, walk in the mud, don't go around mud holes and don't pick the flowers. Please don't pick the flowers.

Andrew:

The reason to walk through the mud is that if you go around, you'll widen the trail and disturb the vegetation around it. And we leave flowers where they are so everyone can enjoy them. And because they're part of the ecosystem here.

Dawn LaFleur:

Yeah, minimize your impact by just being respectful of the vegetation.

Andrew:

The plant life in Glacier National Park evolved in the presence of fire, and is adapted to frequent burning. Fire can be a source of renewal and even catalyze the processes of growth and change that make Glacier home to an incredible diversity of plant life, over 1100 species.

Michael:

As climate change affects the behavior of wildfire and fire ceases to behave in the way plants are adapted to, its destructive tendencies can start to outweigh its constructive ones.

Andrew:

It's something that scientists in Glacier like Dawn will continue to monitor.

Michael:

When a wildfire changes the makeup of a forest and what kind of species grow there, the effects aren't limited to just plant life.

Andrew:

These changes to the vegetation are going to have consequences that ripple down the whole food chain, affecting everything from the bushy tail wood rat up to the moose and grizzly bear.

Teagan Hayes:

Mule deer in particular are browsers. And so they rely really heavily on shrubs and other kind of nutrient dense species. So...

Andrew:

That's Teagan Hayes. She's a wildlife biologist. Her master's thesis was about ungulate forage in wildfire, dominated landscapes. In other words, how deer food is affected by fire. One of the study areas was not far from where we're standing right now. Teagan explained to me that wildfire...

Teagan Hayes:

...allows for species to get the nutrients they need in their home range or in their population range. And so for my research, when I was looking at mule deer, mule deer don't really change their home ranges very much geographically. And so change is especially important for a species like that, where if you never allowed disturbances to happen, then they will not be able to find the food they need. So, and that's the same for a lot of species in the park.

Andrew:

In other words, mule deer need fire. It promotes the growth of shrubs that are the bulk of their diet and they aren't keen to move around to find these plants. They need the fire to happen right within their home range. A deer population, in turn, is necessary to support grizzlies, mountain lions and wolves, a whole thriving ecosystem dependent on regular wildfire. I took Teagan to the Forest and Fire Nature Trail near the Camas Creek entrance to the park, this trail is a great spot to get an introduction to the fire ecology of glacier national park. Burnt in the 2001 moose fire, it's now home to a thriving lodgepole pine and aspen forest.

Teagan Hayes:

So we are now in a young aspen stand. Of course you have the nice rustle of the leaves, which aspen are named after the quaking aspen, the vegetation, the shrubs and the understory are a bit taller. So we have, there's a little more diversity here.

Andrew:

Aspen is one of the habitat types that responds best after a fire. Aspens that burned down are able to re-sprout from underground roots. In no time or recently burned stand of aspen will be a lush and suitable deer habitat.

Teagan Hayes:

They tend to love aspen. Aspens provide a different kind of cover and they provide a different suite of forage species and they tend to stay kind of cooler and wetter for longer. So I think they offer that, kind of that multitude of things, where you have higher diversity of plants, you have longer blooming period often, or period where things are fresh and nutritious. They tend to provide pretty good security as well.

Andrew:

As we moved down the trail, Teagan pointed out a flower, which I was surprised to hear was a good food source.

Teagan Hayes:

Oh, we've been seeing rose, which despite its prickles is also actually usually pretty sought after by ungulates too. So they'll nip just the ends off and avoid the worst of the prickles.

Andrew:

Wildfire is kind of a contradictory thing here. On one hand, it's natural and totally necessary for many of the plants and animals. But on the other hand, climate change is making it much more common and severe. And regardless of whether it's good or bad, it's always tough to live with.

Teagan Hayes:

Yeah. I mean, some of the most interesting and kind of disheartening research is when there's abnormally hot fires or more frequent fires than would normally be occurring in a forest. And they'll actually burn so hot that the seedlings can't establish anymore. And so you can end up having what was once a forest become a grassland or you can, you'll see that the tree species that used to grow in an area are no longer suited to the climate or the climate that a disturbance has created.

Andrew:

Still, she recognizes the importance of having natural fire on the landscape.

Teagan Hayes:

Fire, because it's a hot and dry climate during some of the year, it's one of those natural disturbances that Glacier and other mountainous places are adapted to and so it's, it's a necessity.

Andrew:

Of course, what applies in a national park where there are no subdivisions full of houses will be different from a policy that makes sense in a more densely inhabited area.

Teagan Hayes:

We can't always let fires burn due to all kinds of challenges, whether that's with human structures or infrastructure. So we're really right now just trying to find the balance between what we, what the ideal situation is for fire and what the ideal situation is for living in this area.

Andrew:

In places like Glacier National Park, where natural processes still dominate, and where we try to minimize our intrusion into the web of life, fire will continue to play a part, and scientists like Dawn and Teagan will continue to try to understand it. In the Lake McDonald Valley, where humans and wildfire are both common. We need to learn to live with fire, to let it play its natural role, creating the rich, diverse and thriving ecosystem that we come here to enjoy.

Page Break

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY AD

Andrew:

Each episode, we seem to cover at least one thing that like this podcast wouldn't be possible without the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Michael:

With the help of some friends over there, we got the number of executive director, Doug Mitchell, and decided to call him up out of the blue to ask about these projects.

Andrew:

For this episode, we wanted to ask about Sperry chalet.

Doug Mitchell:

Glacier Conservancy, Doug Mitchell speaking.

Andrew:

Hey Doug, it's Andrew and Michael, how are you doing?

Doug Mitchell:

Hey, good. How are my favorite podcasters today?

Andrew:

We're doing well, just enjoying the beauty out here. Got to go up and check out the new Sperry chalet. And it was phenomenal. It, it looked just like before, even down to the stonework.

Doug Mitchell:

Yeah. It's really incredible what they were able to accomplish. I'm glad you brought up the stonework. I was talking to Zach Anderson of Anderson Masonry and his family were the original stonemason family. So if it looks the same, there's a reason and the care they took to make sure that it looked the same way it did when it was originally built in 1913 is really rather remarkable.

Andrew:

Yeah, and it's a great thing for people to check out while they're visiting and go see all the attention to detail and craft that went into it.

Doug Mitchell:

It really is a remarkable discovery. I was able to hike there this year with some people who had never been there and we hiked through Gunsight and to come over the top and see Sperry, it's almost like you just have to stop in your tracks as they did to see how is this possible. I've hiked 13.1 miles into the wilderness and look at what is there. It really is. It really is something. Yeah.

Michael:

We wanted to talk to you about it because we know the Glacier National Park Conservancy as the park's official non-profit partner played a huge role in helping restore the chalet.

Doug Mitchell:

We were in the superintendents office the very next morning at 10:00 AM after the fire burned Sperry. And by later that week, we had taken our lone credit card down to the hardware store here and bought the pieces of wood that held Sperry up over the winter. And it really was a remarkable public-private partnership that really made the improbable happen.

Andrew:

Thanks for taking some time to talk to us. It's always great to hear from you

Doug Mitchell:

Always great to talk to you guys and thanks again for all you're doing.

Michael:

Absolutely. Thanks for funding it. We'll talk to you soon.

Doug Mitchell:

Alright, cheers.

Michael:

Bye.

TRAPPER PART 2

Michael:

So we just heard from Dawn and Tegan about how plants -

Andrew:

Like Lodgepole pine,

Michael:

- and animals,

Andrew:

Like mule deer,

Michael:

- can benefit from the presence of fire in the ecosystem.

Andrew:

And from talking to Tony, we know that the Salish and other Indigenous communities have a deep understanding of fire's role on the landscape, and would use, it as he put it, almost like a gardening tool, to invite new and healthy plant growth.

Michael:

Working here, a big part of our job has been sharing that knowledge with visitors, talking about the plants and animals that thrive in fire’s aftermath. Yet knowing and understanding these things won't change how you respond to fire when you're faced with it - when the flames themselves are bearing down on you. So, we met Chris Peterson earlier, who watched and photographed the 2003 Trapper fire as it made a run over the Loop...

Andrew:

Yeah...

Michael:

But after it burned over the Loop, it kept going, racing upwards towards the Granite Park Chalet, a historic compound of stone cabins high in the mountains that still provide rustic lodging and dining accommodations.

Andrew:

To get there, you can either hike the Highline trail from Logan Pass, or start up from the Loop on the Loop trail.

Michael:

I hiked up to Granite Park this summer to talk with someone who's worked there since 2002 and was there on July 23rd, 2006.

Mike Sanger:

My name is Mike Sanger. I'm from Great Falls, Montana originally. I live in Belt, Montana now. I've worked for the Park Service, this will be my 19th year here at Granite Park.

Michael:

Mike keeps Granite running, managing the waste disposal system, addressing bear encounters, medical emergencies...When I caught up to him, he was fixing the sink in the chalet kitchen. And having grown up in Montana, Mike had been familiar with wildfire from afar.

Mike Sanger:

Seeing them in the distance, not quite as close as I did here [chuckles].

Michael:

But, in the unprecedented fire year of 2003, he came face to face with the Trapper fire.

Michael:

Well, I understand you were hiking up here on July 23rd. Is that right?

Mike Sanger:

I was. My boss, Walter Tab, had dropped me off at the Loop trailhead. The trail was already closed at that time and it was smoky there at the parking lot. And I asked him, I said, well, the trail’s closed. And he goes, well, you better get moving. You need to get up there. And on the way up, I passed a female ranger, and what they were doing at that time was sweeping the trails for people and trying to get them up here. And she asked me if I knew where the fire was. And I said, I have no idea, but once we get to Granite, we'll probably be able to see better and know exactly what's going on.

Andrew:

As I understand it, Mike's up there for a week or so at a time, then rotates out with a partner.

Michael:

Exactly. He was originally scheduled to hike back in to tap out his partner on the 23rd, but was sent up that day with a different goal: to help protect the chalet itself.

Mike Sanger:

And we made really good time getting up here to Granite Park.

Michael:

Yeah, goodness. When did it sink in that it was going to be a problem?

Mike Sanger:

When I got up here and I saw fire hoses strung out all over the place and Chris Burke, my partner was here and I asked, I said, where's the fire? And he pointed towards Flattop. And it was immediately apparent that we had a problem on our hands.

Michael:

So, they had to fortify the compound. With limited time and supplies, that meant converting their finicky drinking water pump into a sprinkler system to keep the buildings wet- an approach that they weren't confident would work.

Mike Sanger:

We went down to start the pump and it took two or three times. And you had to talk nice to this thing. And Chris pulled it, and the first time, it went off, and we're all high-fiving...

Michael:

But celebrations could wait. As the fire grew closer and closer, conditions only worsened.

Mike Sanger:

It was really horrific for quite a while because we had no idea where the fire was. The winds were horrific. I mean, they were blowing probably 70 plus miles an hour. And, um, and we were having embers starting to come down. And what we did is we pulled all the railings from the chalet. We were trying to reduce fuel in case the fire did get here.

Michael:

What did it sound like?

Mike Sanger:

You know, a lot of people paraphrase this with tornadoes and everything else, but it sounded like a freight train. And it was just unbelievably hot. I've always had a mustache. And after this was all over, it had curled and burnt and I just ended up whacking it off. That's the first time I've not had a mustache in many, many years because it was just glowing orange.

Michael:

Around the same time. Chris Baker from Swiftcurrent Lookout was choked with smoke.

Chris Baker:

I can remember using the word surreal a lot in my journal that afternoon. It didn't take too long before my vista towards the West was nothing but amber billows of smoke and embers. Visibility deteriorated to nothing. And I began coughing from the intense smoke. So I soaked a bandana in water and took to breathing through it, to filter some of the soot.

Andrew:

Oh my gosh.

Michael:

Yeah.

Andrew:

That's a scary situation.

Michael:

It is. In the face of it all, Mike and Chris were doing everything they could to protect the chalet and everyone in it.

Mike Sanger:

And, uh, we charged our hoses. We had everybody inside the chalet, sitting on the floor. We had the tables up against the windows because the wind was horrific and it was blowing ash and embers all through the area. And we charged the hoses and started wetting the roof.

Andrew:

How many people were in it?

Michael:

Well, between the guests that had planned to stay there that night, and hikers that were seeking refuge, there were quite a few.

Mike Sanger:

We had 39 people trapped up here. We thought the fire was actually going to come up and go over the top of this and down the other side. Why it went up Swiftcurrent Pass, I have no idea. You know, every bearing that we had, and the wind was blowing directly at us, and fires like to run uphill...so I was quite sure the fire was going to come up and over us, and instead it made a turn, and went up over to Swiftcurrent.

Andrew:

It missed them?

Michael:

Somehow, they were saved. The fire avoided the chalet and falling embers were effectively combated by the hoses and sprinklers they'd set up.

Mike Sanger:

Because could have really gone south for us and it really could have been a horrific thing. And you know, through God's graces, or whatever, the fire didn't come over. Chris, we each made one phone call, brief phone call to our wives and said, we don't know what's going to happen. We just wanted to call and tell you right now, we're all right. And we're doing the best we can.

Michael:

And while they didn't know what the next day would hold, they allowed themselves to breathe a small sigh of relief.

Mike Sanger:

Chris and I came in here, it had been a long day for both of us. He was due to go out that day and I'd hiked up, or ran up, here that day. And his wife had brought him a little bottle of Black Velvet whiskey. So we each had a drag off that and it actually felt a little better and he goes, let's get on with it. And I said, all right,

Michael:

After feeding and finding beds for everyone at Granite, the two of them stayed up all night watching the flames.

Mike Sanger:

We'd take turns. There was a chair between this building and the chalet, and one in front of the chalet, and about every hour we'd switch.

Mike Sanger:

Also up all night was Chris Baker, watching the flames from her vantage point at Swiftcurrent lookout, a thousand feet above the chalet.

Chris Baker:

Night fell. And finally, I could see the fire up here through the smoke as a thousand points of flame and torching trees. I remember just staring a lot in unbelief. Sleep wasn't even an option. This was history and I was privileged to have a front row seat.

Michael:

It was a long night and a close call. Thankfully, no one was hurt. And the chalet was saved. Mike and his partner, Chris Burke were even honored by the Department of the Interior with Valor awards, for their heroism and bravery. But Mike's a humble guy. If you have the chance to meet him, you might hear him tell stories of that night. Sometimes the chalet even asks him to give a program about it to their guests, but you won't hear him bragging. He's seen firsthand the power of fire and worked in its aftermath every year since, but even that, that night standing guard, after hours of fear and uncertainty, he could see a beauty in the flames.

Mike Sanger:

The one thing that struck me is once it got dark and you could see the fire, you know, despite what was going on, it was actually kind of pretty to look at. And, you know, I don't mean to sound morbid or anything, but it was, it had its own kind of natural beauty to it.

Michael:

A month later, the Trapper fire had died down, and Chris Baker reflected on the fire. She hiked down from Swiftcurrent lookout for the last time of the year.

Chris Baker:

I regaled in the switchbacks down to the tree line, gazing out over the pristine beauty of the divide. But then I came to the trees, those beautiful firs I have come to love. My friends and companions on my ascents and descents of Swiftcurrent mountain, the ones that frame Heaven's Peak in all my photos. And that my kids have learned to take for granted. They weren't there. Instead, I saw blackened ghosts and charred ground cover. I hiked through a lunar landscape that I knew was both natural order and devastation. I thrilled and mourned all at once. I don't think I will ever feel that again.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Andrew:

So were you up there on the night that Sperry Chalet burned down?

Brent Rowley:

No, I was actually on this trail when it burned down and I actually heard it all go down on the radio...

Andrew:

That's Glacier Park Archeologist Brent Rowley.

Brent Rowley:

...which was kind of a crazy experience. I was actually just back there probably a few hundred yards, and I heard this radio transmission that was like calling the incident management team on the radio. I'd be like, you know, I need to give you a satellite phone call cause we need to have like a conversation right now. And it turns out that was the chalet catching on fire, like the dormitory building.

Andrew:

Fire teaches us about the natural world, but it also teaches us about ourselves, and sometimes in unexpected ways. When the Sprague fire burned down the main building of Sperry Chalet on August 31st, 2017, it felt like we had forever lost a piece of our history. But the fire had another effect as well, by clearing out the vegetation around the building, it unearthed a wealth of archeological sites from lots of different eras. Out of the ashes Brent found a whole world of history.

Michael:

In a place like glacier, the vegetation is so thick that you can't see the surface of the ground to find artifacts. A fire that comes in and clears out the vegetation will often reveal major archeological sites.

Andrew:

After the Sprague fire, Brent and his team found a series of dumps where all types of people like construction, crews, cooks, and chalet visitors had thrown their garbage for decades, starting in the early 19 teens. Brent was intrigued. He told me that these types of sites hold a lot of information that you can't just read about.

Brent Rowley:

In the history books about a site, like say Sperry Chalet you only hear about the experiences of the people that are actually staying in the chalet. You don't hear the story of the people that worked at that chalet, and that may have worked at a trail camp or a CCC camp that built a lot of the infrastructure in the park. And a lot of those dumps preserved the information of like, what was daily life like for them? What were they eating? We might find game pieces or, you know, what were they doing in their spare time at their backcountry camp?

Andrew:

As we hiked the six miles up to those archeological sites, Brent told me all about his experiences that year.

Brent Rowley:

And I got assigned to the fire as a resource advisor for cultural resources. So during that summer, I probably hiked this section of the Sperry Trail forty times. And you know, so I got to watch the fire come down this ridge and sort of change the forest gradually, cause in the cedar forest, the fire just kind of creeps along. It rarely ever like really gets up into the tree tops. It kind of travels along the deadfall and through the root systems.

Andrew:

When the fire in the chalet was finally extinguished, the stone exterior walls were still standing. The fire had only burned the interior and the roof of the building. A few days later, Brent was flown to the site in a helicopter to help the park determine if the still standing walls would survive the winter.

Brent Rowley:

It was really surreal, like all the bed frames had melted kind of look a little like a little bit of a wasteland inside.

Andrew:

The stone walls were able to be salvaged. And over the next two summers, the chalet was reconstructed within them. Brent and I arrived just days before the grand reopening, when the chalet would welcome guests for the first time since the fire, it was also the first time that Brent had been in the new building, and he was a bit taken aback by the difference.

Brent Rowley:

The last time I was standing in this very spot, I was like four feet lower. And then, you know, there was debris everywhere and you know, it's pretty crazy to be standing in the same spot, but now in a constructed building.

Andrew:

After the fire, Brent and his team were tasked with surveying the burned area and noting any archeological sites that had been revealed. What they found was a vast assemblage of objects that painted a vivid portrait of early 1900s park life. What kind of objects are we talking about? Well, actually one of the most common things they found were chamber pots. What do they look like?

Brent Rowley:

They're just bowl shaped, but a little, oh, right there is one. A really good one.

Andrew:

Yeah, it looks like a, just a small bowl but with kind of a big rim around it.

Brent Rowley:

Yeah, just big enough to do your business in, you know. But those things were all over the place like down this hillside, it's kind of interesting. I just like to imagine someone walking out in the morning and getting ready to toss the contents of it over the hill and accidentally loses their grip, and there it lies. Cause that one definitely is not broken.

Michael:

Okay. That did paint a vivid portrait. What else did you find?

Andrew:

One thing that really caught my eye were these tubes of clear blue glass. Brent explained to me that those were insulators for a historic phone line.

Brent Rowley:

So in a phone line, you've got the wire that the message travels through through vibrations, the insulators allow you to attach that wire to a telephone pole or a tree or whatnot, a solid object, without interfering with the signal. And so I'm guessing, considering there's a scatter of them here that you know, once they pulled down the phone line here, sometime probably in the 1940s, they just chucked it over the hill.

Michael:

So until the 1940s, there was phone service at Sperry chalet?

Andrew:

Yeah. I think maybe a lot of people imagine the early days of the park as a much wilder time, but in many ways the visitor experience was much more managed than it is today, at least for some types of people.

Brent Rowley:

So I think out here on this point, there was some sort of tent camp set up and I don't know exactly the dates of the tent camp, but I think it was certainly early on in Sperry chalet's history. So probably 19 teens, maybe even into the 1920s. And so there's a lot of the really diagnostic artifacts that have actual Great Northern Railway logos. And you know, that differentiates it from like say a worker camp for the workers that built the chalet or maintain the chalet because those higher end ceramics would be what you would serve the very wealthy guest, oftentimes, that were coming to the chalet. Whereas, in a little bit, we'll go to a worker camp and they were eating out of cans.

Andrew:

I pointed out a ceramic shard. It was about the size of my hand, to see how Brent could interpret it.

Brent Rowley:

So this is probably like a large serving platter dish that would have been about that big. So like a communal, indicating like a communal dinner setting where sort of family style dining, I guess you would call it today.

Michael:

Oh, that's, that's interesting from just that small piece, he was able to figure out about how they dined.

Andrew:

Yeah. What was most interesting about spending the day with Brent was seeing how these little pieces of what seemed like just garbage, gave him really deep insights into how people thought and behaved a long time ago.

Brent Rowley:

I don't know how this dump got here, but it's one of the most interesting assemblages of stuff. This is it all spread out because it's all jammed in that crevice and there's everything from an assortment of condiment bottles, like this is probably ketchup, there's a medicine bottle. Here's one of those coffee ration containers. There's poison bottles like multiple of them. So it's like a really strange thing. Like, I don't know if this was like kind of where maybe some workers at some point were camped out, like the poison bottle in particular I mean kind of throws me. Like that tells me, I feel like that it's gotta be related to workers

Michael:

Wait, okay. What was the poison for?

Andrew:

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Brent told me it was probably to poison rodents of some sort, maybe mice, pack rats, or a particularly aggressive marmot.

Michael:

How did they find all this stuff?

Andrew:

There's a couple different ways these sites get discovered.

Brent Rowley:

This one a firefighter showed it to me. But usually, yeah, when we survey areas, we do transects.

Andrew:

One of the main things that Brent has found here is the class distinctions between the different people who used this area and how this manifests, even in their trash.

Brent Rowley:

Up at that tent camp, everyone was always eating off of, you know, fine ceramics and being very proper, I guess you would say. And here it's like, you just open up the can and eat out of the can sort of thing, which is more indicative of I guess, lower class status, you know, like a worker, rather than someone that's on a very expensive vacation. Do you know what would have been in these cans? Some of them. See like, a can like this where you can tell by the openings. So see this had to be liquid. And in fact, I think this was probably a milk can. So, so they slit that one open. So when we record these cans sites, we always record what type of openings they have. Cause it can tell you a lot about what was in them.

Michael:

Wow. So we can learn something from even just the way I can was opened.

Andrew:

Exactly. There's so many levels to it. Brent even says it, the way that trash is hidden can tell us what era it's from.

Brent Rowley:

In the 19 teens, the way everybody all over America treated their waste was to throw it over the cliff or over the hillside or into your pit toilet. Later on though, people started, the ethic started changing of like, you need to hide your garbage, you put it in a centralized, garbage dump. And here, obviously, they've tried to hide it. So probably after that ethic changed, which really started, you know, in the 1920s and 30s.

Andrew:

A desire to learn about people whose stories aren't always told as motivated Brent's career from the very beginning. The first excavation, he was a part of, on a plantation in West Virginia, showed Brent the significant differences in artifacts from enslaved people versus slave owners. This technique of using historic artifacts to understand how people were treated in the past is an idea that still drives his work today.

Brent Rowley:

In Glacier, you can learn a lot about indigenous people's history prior to European settlement. And we can learn a lot about what people were doing in this landscape by what artifacts they leave behind. And those people were often, you know, are often not included in the history books. And in fact, I hate the term prehistoric or pre-history because it implies that indigenous people don't have history. It's just, their history is documented in different ways--by oral history and also by the archeological evidence that their ancestors left behind.

Andrew:

There are countless stories covering thousands of years of history, buried in archeological sites, all around glacier.

Michael:

Some of these stories will be lost forever. If these sites are disturbed.

Andrew:

So please leave historic objects where you find them. Brent says that objects are best to telling their story when they stay in their original location.

Brent Rowley:

Once they're removed from the site, they are kind of just meaningless objects. But when they're in the context of the site, they tell the story of like what sort of products people were using as they visited Sperry Chalet.

Andrew:

Our discussion was interrupted by a mountain goat grazing on the forbs that had sprouted up where fire had cleared the canopy and finally allowed sunlight back onto the forest floor. We had to step off the trail to let the goat pass....

Brent Rowley:

Then I went to work for... Oh crap.

Andrew:

There's a goat coming.

Brent Rowley:

Hey, move aside, don't eat my poles either.

Andrew:

As we sat there talking about the history of the area, a new chapter was already being written. As Brent and I moved out of the goat's path. It was hard not to think that we needed to do the same as the goats and flowers here--to learn from what we couldn't control and to flourish in the sunshine that followed.

That’s our show for today—If you’re interested in learning more about the role and history of wildfire in Glacier, or about the Selis Kalispell Culture Committee, check out the links in our show notes.

Michael:

Thanks for listening!

CREDITS

Renata: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park with support from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The show was written and recorded on traditional native lands. Andrew Smith and Michael Faist produced, edited and hosted the show. Ben Cosgrove wrote and performed our music. Alex Stillson provided tech support Quinn Feller designed our art Renata Harrison researched the show, Lacy Kowalski was always there for us, and Daniel Lombardi and Bill Hayden were the executive directors. Support for the show comes from the Glacier National Park Conservancy. The Conservancy works to preserve and protect the park for future generations. We couldn't do it without them, and they couldn't do it without support from thousands of generous donors. If you want to learn more about how to support this podcast, or other awesome Conservancy projects, please go to their website at glacier.org. Of course you can always help support the show by sharing it with everyone you know— your friends, your family, your dog... And also leave us a review online. Special thanks this episode to Chris Peterson, Tony Incashola Sr., Dawn LeFleur, Teagan Hayes, Mike Sanger, Sarah Peterson, and Brent Rowley.