DAY FIVE: Granite Park Chalet
Hike stats: 8-mile roundtrip to chalet from Loop Highline Trail outlet. Elevation gain approx 2,500 feet over first 4-miles.
Justin and I hiked this loop in 2002 with our friend Murray, before the Trapper Creek fire complex swept up the ridge last year and stopped just short of the chalet itself. There were fire jumpers on the roof; forty-four people were evacuated.
When we came to the park last September, it was after nearly three weeks of closure due to catasrophic fire damage and threats to the highline and Apgar Village. When we arrived, the fires were still smoldering. Trapper Creek had just burned up the ridge to the Loop, melting all the porta-potties to the ground, and was still burning softly down at the other end of the valley. A mile across Lake McDonand on Howe Ridge, the Roberts Megaplex (yes, they actually called it that), sent trees up like matchsticks in the night.
Because the fires were still burning, the Loop Trail was closed and there was a "no stopping" edict on Going-to-the-Sun road. We could only stare in mournful awe at the dead pillars that had been live trees a year before, as we circled past the Loop.
This year the trail had been re-opened, so we hiked both to see the damage and to get an idea of how much new growth there could be in the little less than 4-month span that the park is not under snow. It was rather amazing. All the trees were dead; not a single one had escaped the fire until the very clear line where the complex stopped. The landscape was barren. There were no birds, no animals, and no rusle of foliage. The view to the valley floor that had previously been blocked by thick vegitation was clearly visible between the thin stalks of deadwood. But what I had expected to be a sadenning hike was anything but: underneath the bald pine poles was a thick, green carpet of ferns, bushes and other undergrowth.
The lightning fire of 1976, which Justin remembers from his childhood as a mass of dead trees bordering the road, is now a lush new forest of aspen and small pines. Like the fire of '76, this burn will become our "checkpoint" as we return to the park year after year.
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