Google Maps recommends long way to Polebridge

As it turns out, the North Fork Road isn’t the only scenic route to Polebridge.

The remote outpost, just outside the western border of Glacier National Park and 20 miles below the Canadian border, lies about an hour’s drive north of Columbia Falls along the popular road following the Flathead River’s North Fork.

But in recent weeks, several visitors to the Polebridge Mercantile have instead described their journey as a more than three-hour odyssey, meandering over bumpy gravel roads after they relied on directions from Google’s online mapping service.

“We had several guests say it took them a while to get there, that they had to go over a road that they were glad they had a rental vehicle,” said Jayson O’Neill, the Mercantile’s operations manager. “While you can go that way, it’s really probably not the safest route for most people to go.”

For about three weeks, Google Maps users headed to Polebridge have been directed first to Olney, then over more than 36 miles of dirt and gravel, where Red Meadow Road winds through the Whitefish Range’s forested mountains and over Red Meadow Pass before dropping down onto the North Fork Road above Polebridge.

“Harrowing” is a word O’Neill has heard multiple times to describe the route.

“If it was three weeks ago, they would have come up Red Meadow and not been able to get through. It just became passable,” he said. “Thankfully, everybody’s made it through. We haven’t had any reports of tires popped or vehicles unable to make it, so that’s a positive.”

Brian Manning, the unit manager for the Stillwater State Forest, said he hasn’t been up the road recently, but said the snow still clinging to the higher elevations made it impassable as recently as last week.

“It’s not a quick way [to Polebridge] from Whitefish or anything like that. It’s a lot of dirt road, and it’s a rough dirt road,” he said. “But it’s a nice trip if you’ve got the time.”

Since learning of the problem, O’Neill and other Mercantile staffers have made multiple attempts to contact Google and correct the problem, but to no avail.

He said the online confusion started shortly after heavy rains drenched the area at the end of May, causing localized flooding and the temporary closure of the North Fork Road.

Depending on how Google Maps identifies road closures, the service’s algorithm could have automatically picked up news stories of the closure, O’Neill theorized, or it could have misidentified the long-standing closure of the park’s Inside North Fork Road on the other side of the river.

“But for that to be the case, I’d be really surprised,” he said. “But I don’t know, it’s hard to tell how Google tracks stuff.”

Media representatives from Google did not respond to phone calls or emailed questions for this story, and O’Neill said the Merc’s efforts to elicit a response have likewise failed in the past three weeks.

The internet company’s support page lists steps for users to alert it to errors with Google Maps directions, but provides few hints as to why it would have stopped recognizing the North Fork Road. Google uses location data from mobile users to track average travel times and calculate traffic jams, but cellphone coverage in the North Fork can be spotty at best.

Users are directed up the road as far as Blankenship Road, but farther north, Google’s mapping service fails to recognize the existence of a drivable route.

Even when Google Maps’ options for bicyclists and pedestrians are selected, the only other option heads into Glacier Park through the West Glacier entrance, then up the Inside North Fork Road.

Other mapping services such as Mapquest and Apple Maps still recommend the North Fork Road.

For those headed to Polebridge for one of the bakery’s famous huckleberry bear claws, O’Neill said the more direct route — the North Fork Road — is in fact open, recently graded and in the best shape he has ever seen it.

And while it’s probably not for everyone, the Red Meadow “scenic route” recommended by Google has its own charm.

“I spoke to a couple of nice, older gals and they said, ‘Well, at least we saw some areas we would have never hiked to in our lives,’” he said. “Red Meadow is an option, and it’s kind of an adventure in itself. But I think a lot of people that went that way had an adventure they hadn’t signed up for.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.