Two infestations?

Shockingly, it has been nearly a quarter of a century since we’ve visited Glacier National Park and Banff.

I do notice changes, though.  And they’re worrisome.  The sheer number of people and the crowding are much higher than I recall.  Where, on that previous visit, we could always find parking at places like the Avalanche Lake trailhead and Logan Pass, doing so this time was difficult to the point  of impossible unless we came in the late afternoon or early evening.  (I suppose that early, early in the morning might work, as well.  But we didn’t try that.)  We had driven several miles down the road to Many Glacier when we met a Park Service ranger directing us to turn back unless we had reservations at the lodge there.  The parking lots were all full.  The same has been true here in Banff.  Finding parking at Lake Louise is essentially impossible after the very early morning until mid-afternoon or beyond.  More and more, inevitably, these parks will be moving toward timed tickets, reservations, and shuttles.

As I write, I’m looking across a valley near Johnston Canyon in Banff, contemplating a densely forested ridge that stands before a looming granite peak still bearing traces of winter snow.  The forests here are much more uniformly green than those around Lake Macdonald in Glacier.  There, successive forest fires and perhaps also some diseases have left many of the trees dead and bare.

Just after crossing the border into Canada (where we encountered a very surly and unsmiling Canadian border officer, an older lady who seemed clearly bored with her job and determined make us pay the price for her boredom), I noticed a sign announcing that wood bark was not permitted to enter Canada.  I assume that they’re trying to avoid admitting the bark beetle.  I certainly hope so.  That noxious little pest has done enormous damage to the forests of southern Utah.  (I’ve especially noticed it along the road from Cedar City to Cedar Breaks National Monument.)

Here’s an article on the topic from clear back in 2008:

“Bark beetles are feasting on Utah forests”

I’m told – how accurately I cannot say – that the Forest Service has simply stood by and permitted the bark beetle infestation to do its work in Utah, on the grounds that such is the natural cycle of life in the woods.  Perhaps so.  And I get it.  The forest will, yes, eventually regenerate itself, in some form or other.  But not in my lifetime.  And not in my children’s lifetime.  And perhaps not within the lifetimes of my grandchildren.  That saddens me deeply.

Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada