
Colour along the road.
While in the Glacier National Park in Montana they drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road which was completed in 1932 and is a spectacular 52 mile paved road that bisects the park east and west - it spans the width of Glacier NP, crossing the Continental Divide at 6,646 foot high Logan Pass. It passes through almost every type of terrain in the Park, from large glacial lakes (as above) and cedar forests in the lower valleys to windswept alpine tundra atop the pass. The views are incredible. In 1983, Going-to-the-Sun Road was included in the National Regiser of Historic places, and in 1985 was made a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark - quite a road indeed.
Okay, so this is mid summer - what's the snowplowing situation in the Spring. Well this road is one of the most difficult roads in North America to snowplow each Spring - up to 80 ft (24 meters) can lie on top of Logan Pass, and more just east of the pass where the deepest snowfield has long been referred to as Big Drift. This road takes about 10 weeks to plow, even with equipment that can move 4000 tons of snow in an hour. The snowplow crew can clear as little as 500 feet of the road per day. On the east side of the Continental Divide, there are very few guardrails due to heavy snows and the resultant late winter avalanches that have repeatedly destroyed every protective barrier ever constructed.******
The Going-to-the-Sun road is generally open from early June to mid October, and apparently because it is narrow and winding in parts, vehicle lengths are restricted to 21 ft (6.4m). Quite a conquest in my books.
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It looks and sounded like a trip that we will have to do, along with Yellowstone - just gorgeous really!


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