Dodging the smoke at Glacier National Park

During the year+ that we spent planning our trip to Glacier National Park, the venture was threatened by several disasters, tragedies and inconveniences: trails being closed due to a deadly bear attack, then remaining closed due to snow not melting; severe flooding and evacuation of the main area we planned to stay; the most convenient airport being closed for renovation — but all of that ended up being fine for us. Most luckily of all, we went just in time to avoid heavy wildfire smoke that began descending in the final days of our trip and continued getting worse in the weeks to follow.

We arrived there on July 18 eager to get some relief from Michigan’s own bout of smoke, mainly resulting from wildfires in Canada, which made the air there smell like a campground full of freshly lit bonfires and pushed Detroit to the point of having the worst air quality of any city in the world. So I was a bit dismayed when we got to Montana and I detected the thinnest, barely perceptible haze in the air. I seemed to be the only one noticing it. Then, when we went a bit up north into Canada to spend a night at Waterton Lakes National Park, there was no longer any doubt — there was smoke up here. People were commenting on it.

Haze — *Smoke-tinged mountains on a boat tour of Upper Waterton Lake.*

It thickened the next day, and our friends back down at Glacier started noticing it there, too. By the time I was back at home blogging about the trip, posting photos of some of the best views I’ve ever seen while hiking, those vistas were obscured by smoke. It seemed like half the comments I got, mostly on Reddit, were from people wondering how I’d gotten such clear photos, lamenting they hadn’t been there at the same time as us, asking if I thought they should cancel their upcoming trip.

As is our custom, we watched the smoke’s progress on webcams provided by the National Park Service.

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