MONTANA MIRACLE

Hiking along the Backbone of the World, as the Blackfeet Indians called this ridgeline, I found it hard to imagine these mountains awash in flames. Or the crisp, rain-scrubbed air choked with smoke and ash.

This year, the trail that hugs the spine of the Rocky Mountains unfurled across fields of yellow avalanche lilies. It traversed showy stalks of white bear grass. A small group of mountain goats munched on bunchgrasses, oblivious to approaching hikers.

Three woolly, white kids, knees tucked underneath them, refused to budge from the narrow, cliff-side trail. Their stubbornness forced the humans to scramble up the steep slope around them, raising the question: Which ones are the goats? The signs of last year’s wildfires can be spotted, to be sure. Stands of lodgepole pines were lost to the biggest wildfire in three centuries; their blackened trunks stand silhouetted against the moody sky.

Yet as I found on a July trip to the national park, the ravages of the fire seem, well, remote. The fire burned about 12% of the 1-million acre park, which sprawls north to the Canadian border. The damage nearly always seemed distant, across a deep valley or on the other, less-frequented side of Lake McDonald. It was difficult to see the charred landscape from the park’s main route, a narrow, twisting ribbon of blacktop with an unusual name: Going-to-the-Sun Road.

All this comes as a relief to park managers. They have come to see wildfires as a good — and even necessary — part of a healthy forest. But they recognize that even after the inferno has passed, the effects can remain unpleasant for the casual visitor who is eagerly anticipating a rich carpet of forest green.

This time, though, the fire’s handiwork seemed tailor-made for tourists, said Fred Vanhorn, who supervises fire ecologists and park rangers. Those curious about the changes forged by fire can seek it out, or they can look at the impact from a distance: a mosaic of burned and unburned areas that appears as a palette of greens, browns, oranges, charcoal grays and black.

Those who want to ignore last year’s devastation should have no trouble. Visitors are not “shocked out of their shoes,” as Vanhorn puts it, by driving through miles of charred forest. “Most people aren’t going to notice.”

I wanted to take notice. I had written about the ecological consequences of last year’s Southern California fires and was curious how this drama played out in America’s most northern section of the Rockies, a place more often known for human interaction with another of nature’s fascinating and ferocious forces: grizzly bears.

So my girlfriend, Nancy Baron, and I spent four days at Glacier National Park during the Fourth of July weekend. We drove the mountain roads, ate and drank at the historic lodges and spent as much time as possible romping around the woods. We took short trails on boardwalks through ancient cedar forests and longer trails to an overnight lodge that cannot be reached by vehicle.

Braced for crowds on this busy holiday, we were pleasantly surprised. The hotels in and around the park were full, but we never had to wait for a table as we dined at various restaurants.

Only once did we see a backed-up line of cars that resembled the kind of congested drive-by tourism that has become all too common in, say, Yosemite or Yellowstone national parks.

That may be because Glacier is far from just about everywhere — or at least every urban center. Visitors do not casually pass through.

The park is their goal, a destination that involves a commitment of time behind the wheel or a flight to Glacier Park International Airport just outside Kalispell, about 25 miles away. (We chose the latter.) All this adds the special feeling of a land’s end kind of place: People aren’t here by chance.

They want to be here. Their enthusiasm is infectious.

A pristine place

The park, founded in 1910 and promoted in its early years by the Great Northern Railway, is surrounded by a wide buffer of open land: U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service property to the south and west, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to the east and Wateron-Glacier International Peace Park to the north.

These national parks, on both sides of the border, are designated as Biosphere Reserves and a World Heritage Site because of their surprisingly intact ecosystem, which includes healthy wildlife populations of predators like mountain lions, wolves and grizzly bears.

During my time here, I learned how the most experienced hikers have a healthy respect for the “griz,” as they call this creature with the fierce Latin name ursus arctos horribilis. The experts wouldn’t be caught dead on the trail without canisters of pepper “bear spray” strapped to their hips.

I balked at paying $40 for a canister but later wished I hadn’t been so cheap, especially after I learned that 10 people have been killed and dozens more mauled by these bears in the park since the 1960s.

I didn’t find anyone who actually had unleashed a canister in a nose-to-nose encounter with a grizzly. But the bottles offered a priceless commodity along the trail: peace of mind.

I learned repeatedly how it pays to be ready for summer showers in the mountains. (I wasn’t ready.) And how the best way to quench a thirst after a day of hiking is to take a long drink of Moose Drool. (For this, I was ready.) For the uninitiated, that’s a particularly smooth brand of amber beer microbrewed in Montana.

I also learned that the locals are huckleberry-happy in this part of the country. Huckleberries are similar to blueberries, one local waitress said, but the flavor is more intense. They grow in the wild inside and outside the park and have stimulated their own economy.

We encountered huckleberry pie, of course, and huckleberry ice cream at all the cafes. The shelves and countertops also spilled over with huckleberry honey, huckleberry syrup, huckleberry pretzels, huckleberry lager, vinaigrette, barbecue sauce, taffy, coffee, cocoa — you name it.

Huckleberry pie was our favorite. Several times at cafes in the park, we fell onto thick wedges of pie like a pair of grizzlies hungry after hibernation.

View from the top

We spent three nights in the Belton Chalet just outside the park in West Glacier. This meticulously clean and lovingly restored stone-and-timber building originally was constructed across from a railroad depot in 1910 and 1911 by the Great Northern Railway.

It also happens to have a fine restaurant, serving buffalo carpaccio; wild salmon; goat cheese tamales; a sampler plate of elk, wild game sausage and duck (with a huckleberry glaze, of course); and a tasteful selection of reasonably priced wines. This is a remarkable accomplishment for a seasonal restaurant, which, like many establishments in this northern region, shuts down for much of the year.

If I had to do it over again, I would have stayed at least one night in one of the several lodges inside the park on its eastern side, to cut down on the time it takes to drive up and over the Continental Divide on Going-to-the-Sun Road. (The lodges with walk-in fireplaces or other features were untouched by last year’s wildfires.)

The best decision we made was to spend a night at Granite Park Chalet, which is perched dramatically atop a mountain along the Continental Divide inside the park, separated from the nearest road by at least four miles of uphill trail.

It’s one of two such hike-in shelters. (The other, Sperry Chalet, didn’t open until mid-July, after our visit.) Both locations inspire the best way to see the park’s splendors: getting out of the car and setting off on foot.

We approached Granite Park Chalet from the longer (7.6 miles) but more gradual Highline Trail, beginning at the Logan Pass Visitor Center, where Going-to-the-Sun Road reaches the Continental Divide. The trail traverses the shoulder of the divide, along a profusion of lilies, Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers called the Garden Wall.

Columbian squirrels scampered almost into our laps, a telltale sign that they are fed by passersby in violation of park rules. Fat hoary marmots sat like plump sentinels on rocky perches along the trail. The air was mountain crisp from rain showers, and the breeze carried the fragrance of lilies and the flute-like songs of hermit thrushes. Mountain goats and sheep browsed on fescue so oblivious to humans snapping pictures that the creatures seemed aware of their protected status.

Across the valley rise snow-capped mountains, rough-hewn arêtes and smooth cirques — all dramatic features sculpted by glaciers during the Pleistocene period. It quickly becomes clear why Audubon Society cofounder George Bird Grinnell sought to protect this Ice Age park he named the “Crown of the Continent.” Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream magazine, coaxed Congress with editorials and influential friends to designate the area as a national park.

If all this sounds too clean and too green compared to last year’s tinder-dry wildfires, well, it came with a price. We were only a few miles into the backcountry when the first ominous clouds swept up the valley. We were high enough that the edge of the first storm barely licked our flank. It gave way to clear, blue skies ever so briefly. The next battery of rain clouds hit us square on, soaking us thoroughly. We were testing new, lightweight rain jackets and found them lacking.

Granite Park Chalet was a welcome sight. The chalet, built in 1914 of argillite, a showy pink sandstone, looked fortified against the elements. We shed our jackets and dried out next to the wood-burning Franklin Stove in the dining room until sunshine turned the last of the showers into rainbows. When we headed outside again, the trees and lilies were bejeweled with sparkling drops in the evening light.

Soon another front swept through, putting an end to our plans to scramble to an overlook to see Grinnell Glacier. That’s one of the park’s namesake glaciers, all of which have been shrinking steadily in the last century. At the current rate, scientists predict the final three-dozen ice sheets will disappear in the next 25 years because of man-caused global warming.

That night, we purchased and cooked a freeze-dried pasta dish in the chalet’s communal kitchen. It was filling, if tasteless, and we soon trundled off for our Army barracks-style room — clean and spare with plastic-encased mattresses on double bunk beds — hoping for better weather in the morning.

It didn’t come. We hiked eight more miles up and over the Continental Divide’s Swiftcurrent Pass and down a steep wall to Many Glacier.

What began as a cold and blustery morning of spitting rain turned into a warmer, steady downpour as we edged below the clouds. We were ready to get off the trail after four hours of sloshing around in soaked clothes and saturated boots and left wondering how these mountains could have been ablaze a year earlier.

To satisfy our curiosity, we spent a day hiking through the burned areas. One morning, we toured with the park’s fire ecologists and fire managers, who described themselves as “pyromantics.” Instead of focusing on trees that look like burned telephone poles, they see the proliferation of shrubs and wildflowers that spring to life after fire infuses nutrients into the soil, providing important food for deer, elk and a variety of other creatures.

They walk proudly among the baby lodgepole pines sprouting from serotinous cones, which release their seeds only with the intense heat of wildfires. The park, which would formerly stamp out all wildfires, now sees fire as natural and allows it to burn — within reason.

Park managers also set planned fires, or prescribed burns, to control the buildup of fuel. It’s not all that different from the longtime tradition of fire setting by the Blackfeet, who were so named for the black ash on their moccasins. The Blackfeet wanted to clear trees crowding out berries and grassland that would attract game such as bison and deer.

Mitch Burgard, a prescribed-fire specialist, notes that last year’s wildfires burned over areas that had been protected by park officials suppressing 264 separate fires since 1910.

“We are not going to stop wildfires, only postpone them,” said Burgard, who grew up near the park. He misses some stands of trees that he knew as a boy but now sees it all quite differently. “We all grew up thinking that fire meant death, but we’ve learned to see it as rebirth.”

As I hiked a park trail that had been severely burned last summer and marveled at the fresh flush of green bursting forth from the charred forest floor, I could see his point.

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A fresh look

GETTING THERE:

From LAX to Kalispell, Mont., connecting service (change of planes) is offered on Delta, Northwest and Alaska. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $291. Shuttle service and car rental are available at the airport.

WHERE TO STAY:

Glacier Park Inc., P.O. Box 2025, Columbia Falls, MT 59912; (406) 892-2525, fax (406) 892-1375, https://www.glacierparkinc.com , operates the 161-room Glacier Park Lodge, 100-room Lake McDonald Lodge and 208-room Many Glacier Hotel. Rates range from $100 to $165.

Belton Chalet, P.O. Box 206, West Glacier, MT 59936; (888) 235-8665 or (406) 888-5000, fax (406) 888-5005, https://www.beltonchalet.com , has 25 rooms, two three-bedroom cottages and a restaurant. Rates begin at $125 for two.

Sperry Chalet, Belton Chalets Inc., P.O. Box 188, West Glacier, MT 59936; (888) 345-2649 or (406) 387-5654, https://www.sperrychalet.com , 6.7 miles east of Lake McDonald, can be reached on foot or horseback. It has 17 guest rooms, shared restrooms (without tubs or showers) and a dining room. Rate for two, $263.05, including tax and three meals a day.

Granite Park Chalet, Glacier Wilderness Guides Inc., P.O. Box 330, West Glacier, MT 59936; (800) 521-7238 or (406) 387-5555, https://www.glacierguides.com , offers hostel-style accommodations. Rate $70.62 per person, plus $10 for linens (unless you bring a sleeping bag). Freeze-dried meals and snacks for sale. The chalet can be reached on foot.

WHERE TO EAT:

Restaurants are in or near the lodges mentioned above. Apart from these, try:

Park Cafe & Grocery, U.S. Highway 89, St. Mary, (406) 732-4482, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s known for pie, especially a blueberry, blackberry and raspberry mix called “razzleberry.” Coffee and a slice cost about $4.50.

Eddies Restaurant and Gifts, Apgar Village, (406) 888-5361, offers sandwiches, salads and Bear Paw Pie: coffee ice cream wrapped in an Oreo cookie crust and smothered in chocolate, $5.25.

Two Sisters Cafe, on U.S. Highway 89 four miles north of St. Mary, (406) 732-5535, Roadhouse featuring such delicious dishes as a burger with Creole sauce, $8.50, and buttermilk chocolate cake, $3.95.

TO LEARN MORE:

Glacier National Park, West Glacier, MT 59936, (406) 888-7800, https://www.nps.gov/glac , is open year-round, but Going-to-the-Sun Road is usually closed from mid-October to late May. — Times staff