Reynolds Fire mostly calm

Despite a red flag warning for the east side of Glacier National Park, firefighting crews were able to make gains on the ground Wednesday along the eastern portion of the Reynolds Creek Fire.

It was 63 percent contained by Wednesday night, with the total fire area holding steady at 3,170 acres. Along with 23 engines and seven helicopters, a total of 670 personnel are working on the fire.

The fire started July 21 and is believed to be started by people.

Fire information officer Mike Cole said Wednesday evening that relatively little fire activity had been reported, although the rocky slopes north of the Rising Sun Campground and Rising Sun Motor Inn were posing some problems.

“They’re having a problem with that, it keeps rolling burning debris down and it’s too steep to put anyone up there,” Cole said. “They’re trying to come up with a plan to bring that fire down to the hill and get that thing corralled.”

He said strategies to tackle the harsh terrain would be discussed at Wednesday night’s briefing, but expected they would either work on stripping the fire with water down the hill or setting a back burn to ignite inaccessible material and limit the fire’s growth to an area they can access.

Fire line now connects the inn and campground, and ground crews are working to get water pumped onto the edge of the fire to create a 100-foot buffer on the east side, where the majority of spot fires and new activity has been.

West-side crews continued to mop up and reinforce containment lines. Heavy helicopters dumped water on both flanks of the fire throughout Wednesday.

The helicopters have dropped more than a million gallons of water onto the blaze since it began, and Cole said that expense has been abnormally cheap, given the proximity of the fire to St. Mary Lake.

The aerial attack cost has averaged about $1.34 per gallon of water delivered on the fire.

“The advantage is we have large-capacity helicopters and a short turnaround,” Cole noted. “It takes anywhere from three to seven minutes, depending on how close to the lake it is and the speed of the helicopter.”

The overall cost of the firefighting effort was $5.1 million as of Wednesday morning.

Another structure was discovered to have burned in the Reynolds Creek Fire, this time an abandoned cabin thought to have existed since before the 1910 creation of Glacier National Park.

The park did not have any documentation or know the origin of the cabin. It was located on the north shore of St. Mary Lake opposite Wild Goose Island.

“It was a log cabin that was partially intact before the fire,” park spokeswoman Denise Germann said. “It could be an old squatter’s cabin, an old trapper’s cabin or it might be related to a homesteader’s claim, but it’s believed to predate the park.”

The first structure destroyed by the blaze was the historic Baring Creek Fireguard Cabin. Built in 1935, it had been the only surviving building from the Sun Camp Ranger Station.

Although Going-to-the-Sun Road remains closed from Logan Pass to St. Mary due to the fire, several areas have reopened.

Logan Pass is now accessible from the west side of Glacier Park and the visitor center at the pass has reopened.

The campground and visitor center at St. Mary have reopened and the Red Eagle Drainage is open for hiking access to Red Eagle Lake, Triple Divide and the beaver ponds.

Other trails in the fire area, including St. Mary Lake, St. Mary Falls, Siyeh Pass and Gunsight Pass, remain closed.

However, the majority of Glacier Park remains open to visitors.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 768-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.