Lake McDonald Lodge closes early due to smoke

Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park closed for the season on Wednesday due to air-quality concerns from the Sprague Fire and other regional fires.

The Sprague Fire is located approximately 2 miles from the Lake McDonald Lodge area. The fire has not been a threat to the Lake McDonald developed area. However, heavy smoke from the fire has been settling in a highly localized area around the Lake McDonald Lodge, lodge operator Xanterra Parks and Resorts said in a press release.

The decision to close the lodge came from concessionaire Glacier National Park Lodges out of concern for its employees, who have been exposed to the smoke for several days now. When the weather cools at night, smoke from the fire settles like smog over the north end of Lake McDonald. Several employees on Wednesday were wearing masks.

Most of the park had been fairly smoke-free, but stagnant air the past few days has made air conditions worse.

The lodge was scheduled to close Sept. 27 for the season. This is not the first time the lodge has been closed due to wildfire. In 2003 it closed as the Robert Fire burned along the north shore of Lake McDonald.

Dennis Rich of Illinois got a note slipped under his door at Lake McDonald Lodge Tuesday night, informing him of the lodge closure that cut short his stay.

Rich had kudos for the staff at the lodge.

“They were pleasant and handled it very well,” he said, adding the staff found him and his wife a room at hotel at the south end of Glacier.

“It turned out to be less expensive,” he said.

Rich said he definitely could smell the smoke from the blaze, which has been growling around below Sperry Chalet for nearly a month now. They took a boat ride on the DeSmet on Lake McDonald, which gave them a good view of the fire.

“We could see the trees flame up,” he said.

The tour boat remains open.

Visitors with reservations for Lake McDonald Lodge should contact Glacier National Park Lodges at: http://www.glaciernationalparklodges.com or 1-855-733-4522.

Lodge manager Marc Ducharme said that reservations have been canceled and people were given a list of hotels as possible alternatives. He said there are still openings in other areas of the Flathead, including Whitefish and Kalispell.

He noted that logistically it would have been tough to close the hotel for just a week or so, to wait for the smoke to clear. The hotel has a lot of perishable food items and employees couldn’t be expected to wait around for it to reopen. He said it was booked solid through September.

The lodge employs about 150 people. There were other openings in other Xanterra Parks and Resort properties, including Many Glacier, Swiftcurrent and even as far as Yellowstone, Ducharme said, and employees were offered jobs at those other properties.

No other visitor services in the Lake McDonald area are being adjusted at this time. Red bus tours that typically stop at Lake McDonald Lodge will have their routes adjusted slightly.

At the request of the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service installed an air-quality monitoring station at Lake McDonald Lodge on Aug. 27. Two days of data indicate air-quality levels have fluctuated between “good” and beyond the uppermost limit of “hazardous.” The hazardous readings have occurred in the evening and early morning hours.

The park maintains an air-quality monitoring station in Apgar. Those readings have fluctuated between “good” and “moderate” for the same period, further supporting the observation that poor air quality appears to be concentrated in a very small geographic area of the park near the Lake McDonald Lodge area.

The Sprague Fire was taken over by a Type II team last week, headed up by incident commander Diane Hutton. They’ve set up camp outside the KOA campground in West Glacier.

About 135 people are on the fire. Sprinklers have been set up at Crystal Ford with the hope of keeping the fire from traveling down the drainage to Lake McDonald.

To the east, the fire has yet to reach Sperry Chalet. Firefighters are staged at the chalet should the blaze get there.

The chalet is in rocky terrain and the fire crew is confident they can suppress a blaze, should it reach the historic structure.

They’ve also done tree thinning near Lake McDonald Lodge in the event the fire does reach the valley floor.

A helicopter has been dropping water to cool the fire line near Snyder Creek. Fire crews don’t want the fire to spot onto Mount Brown, where it could threaten the Sun Road and structures below.

The blaze has crossed the Gunsight Pass trail and is still burning on the flanks of Lincoln Peak, though it hasn’t reached the summit or Lincoln Pass.

About a 2-mile swath of the Gunsight Pass Trail has burned in the fire. It’s a mosaic burn, fire managers say, but it still promises to be a hot hike in coming years without shade trees.

Trails, the chalet and backcountry campgrounds near the fire are closed.

The weather isn’t going to make things any better. Temperatures are expected to be 10 degrees above normal by the weekend with no rain in sight well into next week. Fire officials expect the Sprague Fire will continue to burn until the area receives significant precipitation later this fall.

The smoke impacts from the Sprague Fire and other regional fires affect only a small portion of the park. All other frontcountry park facilities are open.

The public can access the air-quality monitoring station at Lake McDonald Lodge and state air quality information at the following sites. For an air quality index: http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi. For Lake McDonald Lodge air monitor: https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/rawMAIN4.pl?ids215+29+08+17+M. For Montana smoke readings: https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/smoke.pl.

Visitors can also view the park’s webcams to get a visual sense of air quality at many locations across the park. Fire officials expect the Sprague Fire will continue to burn until the area receives significant precipitation later this fall.

Fire Information Line: 406-888-7077

Inciweb: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5510/ (fire updates, maps and photos, air quality info, and park webcams)

Facebook: https://facebook.com/GlacierNPS

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlacierNPS

Hungry Horse News Editor Chris Peterson contributed to this story.