Leslie and David's Wanderings: 20 July 2019 Red Bus

We took a tour ($56 per person) on the famous Glacier Red Bus today. Buses in Glacier have been running since 1914. The famous Red Buses were built in 1935-36. The government ordered 300 buses from the White Bus company for $500 a piece. Glacier received 35 of these buses (Yellowstone had 100 Yellow Buses but sold them all off over the years and are trying to buy them back now) of which 33 are still in service. One is a museum piece and one crashed. By 1999, the buses were getting to be a safety hazard and were taken out of service. Ford Motor Company offered to refurbish the buses and took the 34 that had been used in service, removed all the coach work from the frames and rebuilt the coach work onto a Ford F-450E commercial truck frame. The cost to Ford of refurbishing the buses was $250,000 a piece. They were then donated to the National Park Service. The buses are run by a concessioner for the NPS. The drivers are known as Jammers for when they had to “jam” the manual transmission gears. Our driver, Amy, had been driving the buses over the Going-to-the-Sun Road for 4 years. The morning was a bit cool (45 degrees), so we started out with the fabric top on, but before we started the climb up the Garden Wall, we pulled over and David helped fold the top back. It was a bit breezy and the blankets were quickly pulled out to cover our knees. When you were in the sun, it was pretty comfortable. Amy kept up a constant monologue all the way up to Logan’s Pass. But we learned some things from her speech. One thing that caught David’s attention was the reason why the guard rail in some locations was the original rock walls from the CCC and in other places there was steel reinforced log rails instead. They have been rebuilding the Going-to-the-Sun Road for the last three years as part of a multimillion dollar project. There are places where avalanches had wiped out the original CCC built walls repeatedly over the decades. So in those places, they have installed removable steel reinforced log rails. Every year the park service unbolts the log rails and moves them against the cliff face for the winter so the avalanches can roll through and not damage them. Every spring, they spend two months clearing the snow and avalanche debris from the road and bolt the log rails in place. This year the road opened on 22 June, a bit late, due to a late season avalanche that spread over the road and had to be cleared. This year they will close the road on 15 September so they can finish the rebuilding project. They normally keep it open until the first snow, which is typically in early October.

The views of the mountain from the Red Bus were incredible. Much better than when we drove it since we did not have to worry about driving (Amy had a few choice words about the people driving) and could enjoy the views from the open top bus. We even got to see some Big Horn Mountain goats! This is definitely the way to see the Going-to-the-Sun Road!

After being dropped off at Lake McDonald Lodge, we went back to our favorite lounge and enjoyed a late lunch. So far we are disappointed in the limited number of critters we have seen in Glacier. But maybe we were spoiled by Yellowstone.