'A refugee camp' in Hungry Horse
<p>Jake Clement sets a tent stake as Alex Mouch and Robert Raw look on at Glacier Lodges in Coram on Wednesday. The three were part of the near 60 xanterra employings that have set up temporary camp at the site because of the fire. (Aaric Bryan/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p><strong>John Schwabe</strong>, left, checks with volunteer Bob Guon to see if his name is on the list of people with cars stuck on Going-to-the-Sun-Road. On Wednesday, Schwabe was able to get a ride to his car parked at Siyeh Bend. (Aaric Bryan/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
The Rising Sun Motor Inn on the east side of Glacier National Park is empty. Plates of food are sitting out on restaurant tables, half-eaten and cold.
The surrounding campgrounds look the same as evacuation orders forced park visitors to flee ahead of the Reynolds Creek Wildland Fire, a fast-growing blaze that’s moving through the forest at an alarming pace. St. Mary and Rising Sun Campgrounds were evacuated early Wednesday.
Among the displaced park patrons are the seasonal employees of the Rising Sun. Many of them were in St. Mary when the fire broke out and weren’t able to return for their belongings.
“Some people just have what they have on their back,” said Jacob Clement, a sous chef at the Rising Sun Motor Inn.
Clement and a handful of others were relocated to the former Canyon RV Park and Campground near Hungry Horse, which is now owned by the Glacier Park Lodges company. On Wednesday, around 30 of the workers had assembled a community of tents that they jokingly called the “refugee camp.”
People in the camp said that nearly all of their possessions were left up in the park, threatened by fire. In St. Mary, they weren’t allowed to go back for their cars, computers, clothes and other things.
Bethany Barnett, another Rising Sun employee, said that the workers had gone into a store in St. Mary about the time the fire started on Tuesday afternoon. When they came back out, the fire had grown substantially, and smoke filled the air.
“We go back outside and it’s like, ‘Oh damn,’” Barnett said.
ON THE WEST side of the park, for the most part it looked like a normal Glacier Park Wednesday. Winds kept the smoke away and visitors traversed the Going-to-the-Sun Road trails beneath a blue sky.
The transit department was working overtime, however, trying to reunite hikers with vehicles they had left high up on the road.
With Tuesday’s sudden closure of the road east of Logan Pass, many had to be shuttled to the park perimeter.
Maryland resident John Schwabe was one of them. He hitch-hiked from a campground in the Swiftcurrent Lake area to the other side of the park at Apgar.
There, a park employee had a two-page list of people who had reported abandoned vehicles up on the road. Schwabe found his name on that list. He wasn’t able to make it back to his car after the fire broke out.
Schwabe and his wife left their car at Siyeh Bend on Tuesday and hiked to the east side of Logan Pass. At the end of the hike, they hopped aboard a shuttle to pick up the car.
But the fire had already started, and a half-mile from Siyeh they were turned back.
“You could smell the smoke,” Schwabe said.
They were taken back to the campsite at Swiftcurrent for the night. Schwabe said they heard stories from other campers about loved ones still up in the backcountry somewhere. The smell of smoke persisted all night.
The next day, he made his way back to his car alone, figuring he could hitchhike more easily by himself.
Many others took the same route. A bus took groups up to Avalanche Lake trailhead, and then a shuttle went as far as The Loop. Most people couldn’t be taken any further than that, though transit workers took people up individually to retrieve their vehicles on the west side of Logan Pass.
On the east side the pass, where the road has been closed since Tuesday, some weren’t as lucky. At least one car was consumed by the fire Tuesday afternoon.
ECONOMIC IMPACT of the fire cannot be estimated yet. But late Wednesday afternoon, a woman at the desk of the North American RV Park and Yurt Village in Coram wondered how many people would pack up and leave as more parts of Glacier Park were evacuated.
At around the same time, officials ordered evacuations in the St. Mary area, at the eastern border of the park.
The Rising Sun employees recalled being there just hours earlier, when the fire still seemed miles away. But the effects were felt in the resort community right away.
“Ash was falling in St. Mary,” Clement said.
Reporter Matt Hudson may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mhudson@dailyinterlake.com.