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Glacier National Park · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Chris, how's it going, man?
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Doing alright.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, Jesse?
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm uh I'm doing well.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, we uh always tend to have a maybe an alcohol or two while we're recording these things because I know you get kind of nervous, you're a little bit more scared of this kind of stuff than I am.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: But today I I have to have a drink as well.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, but there's a special reason for why we're having a drink right now, right?
0:37
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: This is mappy hour.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: This is mappy hour.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's right.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: We're excited.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: We're very excited.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: So Mappy Hour, this is a community, you all are a community of outdoor enthusiasts who are urban dwelling, and we're doing a live podcast recording here, right?
0:53
SPEAKER_00: So this is Planet Geo, our podcast about the Earth.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Right on.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Cheers to Mappy Hour.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Cheers to Mappy Hour.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Let's let's get into it.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, but before we do that, Jesse, let's do some introductions.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: So you are Dr.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Jesse Rymink, one of my former students, um, back way back in the day in high school.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: And can you say it again?
1:13
SPEAKER_01: You didn't quite come through.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Is it is there's a so there's something in front of Jesse there, right?
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I don't like to say doctor too often.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: All right, there we go.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Doctor.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Good enough.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: One of my former students and now a professor of geoscience at Penn State University.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: And you, as you said, are my former teacher, my former mentor, well, still, I guess, mentor-ish, I suppose.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I took several of your classes in high school.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: You are a nationally recognized earth science teacher from the great state of Michigan, from Hudsonville, Michigan, where I grew up.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And I had you three classes, I think.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Four in high school.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Four, maybe, something like that.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: And we kind of became close friends after college, near the end when I was in college.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And since then we've stayed in touch.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: We've worked together on a lot of stuff.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And we've been doing this podcast called Planet Geo for about a year now, or we've been thinking about it for about a year now, at least.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: So today we get to talk about Glacier National Park.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: And we are gonna do this really in kind of three major parts.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna first begin by talking about why Glacier is so special and worth visiting.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about the geoscience of Glacier, obviously.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: That's what we do on Planet Geo.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then maybe get into because we've spent a fair amount of time in this park, whether hiking, backpacking, and teaching.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, so a lot of time spent in Glacier.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about maybe trip planning and suggestions and just some like some beta on the park in general.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, this podcast, we're really Earth scientists, geoscientists.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we think the Earth is extremely interesting.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: We also think it's very, very important, and we think everybody should know a little bit about the world around them.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the main thing we're trying to get at here with Planet Geo is communicate the importance and the interest of of the planet.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Chris.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready, let's do it.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we've both been to Glacier.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: You've been there more than I have, but we've never been there together, and that's pretty rare for most places in the U.S.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: We've been to a lot of cool places together.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: You lead this summer science, basically a geology field trip for high schoolers that I went on.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: We did not go to Glacier when I was in high school.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: You started going there afterwards.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: So why did you choose to go to Glacier?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: What why did that why that transition after?
3:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've been teaching this class.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: We take 26 high school seniors out west for three weeks.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: It's a field course.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: We camp along the way at you know, primitive camping and hiking, and we learn the geoscience of the western US.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: So 20 years doing this, I need to keep things fresh for me.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: I need that enthusiasm, I need that challenge of new stuff.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: So I could have sworn it was 50 years.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not not quite that old, not quite.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, so anyway, I my mind kept going back to you know, new things, new places to go.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: My mind kept coming to Glacier.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Now, I've been there ever since I was a young kid.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: My grandparents, they were from Oregon, and I remember meeting them there with my parents as a family trip.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: We've met in Glacier, and I remember three things about Glacier.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: It was absolutely beautiful.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: We saw a lot of bears, and it rained a ton.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can get any right, you can get any kind of weather in Glacier, especially during the summer, but it wasn't until a lot later that I realized that there is a wet side to glacier and a dry side to glacier, and I think that's kind of important.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: So, what's the deal with that?
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the wet side and the dry side, I mean, this is very common in many places where there are mountain ranges.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even here in Pennsylvania where I live right now, we have a wet side of the mountains and the dry side of the mountains.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but especially in the Pacific Northwest, um, this is kind of a Pacific uh Northwest themed episode here, but you get a lot of rain and snow because as the come in, as the weather comes in and the clouds hit the mountain, they get pushed up, they condense, they drop a bunch of precipitation.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: That means when the when the weather comes on the other side of the mountain, comes down from the elevation, you know, it's it's doing the opposite.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: It's evaporating, if you will.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And basically you get blue, clear skies, very little precipitation.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: So you are experiencing the rain shadow effect, as we call it, of a mountain range just in one little area, one relatively little national park.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: So, needless to say, I do prefer the east side just because it has better weather.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: That's just something I learned the hard way.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: But so yeah, why glacier?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, why go to glacier?
5:22
SPEAKER_01: It's the geology.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: When you think about glacier geology, or when I think about glacier geology, there are three things really to take in.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: One is the color.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: The color is it's amazing.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: The colors of the rocks is just absolutely unbeatable.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Two, the mountains, and three, the landscape features that formed due to the glaciers of the last ice age.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna take it really in those three parts, right?
5:47
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about the colors, the geology, and then the last thing to happen, the sculpting of the mountains.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're gonna take those three, kind of kind of work our way right in order through those things.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Let's interrupt with a question here quick, though.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the answer to this one, but George asks, with the Canadian border closed, how do Waterton and Glacier continue to interact?
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Chris, maybe you know this because you're planning the summer science trip right now, in you know, in a time of COVID.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any sense of of this?
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I really don't have a sense of this right now.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't go there last year because Glacier was basically closed off.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: I do know that you know the border is patrolled.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, when I went backpacking there with my family, we always take a three-week backpacking trip in the summertime.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And um, we were um we were actually on the northwest side of the park and we were we're coming real close to the border, and we actually ran into backcountry border patrol agents, and that was a really cool conversation.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, they stopped us and asked us questions.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Had we seen anybody suspicious and all that kind of stuff, you know, and then we just kind of small talk with them for a while, but I don't know how they're interacting currently.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know either, but this is a good uh a good way to give a shout out to all my Canadian friends because you know, Glacier National Park, that's the American side, and Waterton is the basically the same national park, same geology, you know, exceptionally stunning as well uh on the Canadian side of the border.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: So let's get into the colors, Jesse.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Let's go to the colors, let's do it.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: The rocks in Glacier have stunning, stunning colors.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: You can see them almost anywhere in the park.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go anywhere special.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: The main colors that we see are various shades of red, green, brown, and gray.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: So, Jesse, let's get it going.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Start us off with the colors.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we're gonna start with the red, and they're just stunning.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: The colors, they just like slap you in the face when you go to Glacier National Park.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: I remember coming in, you know, Lake McDonald, the valley driving in.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: If you're driving in from the west, that's the way I've seen it before.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: And it's just stunning.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you see these pictures all over the internet of the rocks in the water.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: So let's start off with the reds.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: The reds, the marines, the purples.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Many of the colors are really intimately related to iron or the way iron is locked up in minerals in the rocks.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And the red ones are basically rust.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: That's effectively what's going on.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: So when you have iron, when you have mountains that are eroding and the sediment is going into the ocean and being deposited, if there is enough oxygen around and water, that iron will bond with oxygen and form a mineral called hematite.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: This is Fe2O3, is the mineral formula, and it is the oxidized form of iron, so Fe3.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And in Michigan, we and in Pennsylvania, we have uh a lot of our concrete in the sidewalks, has some iron-bearing minerals in the concrete mix.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Those things, when they're in the concrete, they're exposed to the air and the rain, uh, they start to rust.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And you can get these red streaks in your sidewalks of your neighborhood.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's basically the process that's going on here, except this is occurring when the sediments are being deposited in a stream or in a shallow ocean basin.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just a symptom of oxygen in the atmosphere, water, and iron in solution.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And so when that precipitates out, forms hematite, which dyes the rocks red.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And so we know that this occurs in a relatively shallow water environment.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking like a beach kind of sediment or uh a stream coming flowing into a river delta system, something like that.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: So how do we know for sure that that happened in a shallow water environment, Jesse?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so there are keys in the rocks, there are other keys apart from the color that tell us this.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: And we can look at the sedimentological features.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: So we can look at sedimentary structures in the rocks that tell us what the water environment was that formed that rock.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: So things like ripple marks.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: And Chris, you and I freaking love ripple marks.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm a big fan of ripple marks.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: We've driven many miles looking for great ripple marks, and we've had some interactions with different law enforcement officers whilst looking for ripple marks.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: But we were right.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna bring some from my office to show here, but I forgot them.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: But anyways, ripple marks, this is water going back and forth, back and forth.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And you only really get this in shallow water environments.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: The deep ocean does not have this wave action that creates the ripple mark troughs on it.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: So that's one feature that tells us shallow water environments.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: And we also get mud cracks where the muddy sediment gets wet and it dries out and it shrinks and it cracks and so on.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: And then there's another really cool rock and glacier that I want to talk about.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: It's called a mud chip breccia.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: And it's really, it's all over the place.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: If you'd know what to look for for this, it's all over really common trails like Grinnell Glacier and Iceberg Lake, this mud chip breccia.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: And what you're looking at is this when mud dries, the edges of the cracks kind of peel up a little bit like a potato chip.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: And then when a storm ripped through, it would rip up those chips of mud.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: But the storm was cared because of the higher energy.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: It had uh quartz and other minerals in it, which don't tend to react with oxygen and rust and so on.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: So you get this white deposit of quartz sandstone with these chips of red mud in them.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's called the mud chip breccia, which is just a super cool rock and a very specific environment.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: It just tells a very cool story that's uh pretty clear.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's extremely clear.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So these are all in this red uh sequence of rocks.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: So we know that they're shallow water environment.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: We see the red color helps, you know, oxygenated environment.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: But what about the green colors, Chris?
11:05
SPEAKER_00: What about those green rocks that make it so stunning, that contrast?
11:07
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: So you get these, you know, the reds and the greens that are all stacked up on top of each other.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: The greens formed in deeper water.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: And you know, many of you in the audience will probably know from chemistry class way back when redox reactions, oxidation reduction reactions.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: And the green was a reducing environment.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: Because there was a lack of oxygen, the iron that was brought to this water couldn't combine with oxygen.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: So it was looking for other things to bond with.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: And the only thing that was there were silicate minerals, and so it would bond to this SiO4 silicate, you know, that's not important, but the silicate structure and form common minerals which are like black in color.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: But these minerals are not as stable as hematite is, and so as these rocks got buried and subjected to higher temperatures and pressures, they turned into a very common mineral called chlorite.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And chloride is this really pretty green-colored mineral, and it just kind of smeared and stained the whole rock green.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, the reds and the greens is really this interaction between rising and falling seas, where the reds were sea level was shallower and it was exposed to free oxygen from the atmosphere, as indicated by the ripples and the mud cracks, and the greens were these deeper waters when sea level would rise and it wasn't exposed to as much oxygen, and so other chemical reactions took place and it reduced the rocks into chloride.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: The sea here, the former ocean that we're talking about, you know, it's in the middle of a continent, right?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a different environment in some ways than what it is today, obviously, because it was underwater.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: But it's what's called these epiuric seas, which are seas that flood the interior of the continents, which we don't really have great modern analogs for at the moment.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: There are a few, but not many.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: They're not very common.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: That's because the ocean level is relatively low today compared to back in time.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: So oceans were a little bit higher back in this time period, flooded the continents.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: We have these very interesting, kind of unique settings on the earth.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: But so, Chris, what about the tan and brown rocks?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: We talked about these.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple more colors.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: We get we hit red, we hit green.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: What about the tan and brown ones?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the tan and brown rocks are a little bit deeper yet.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: And this is where we get this like warm, shallow marine sedimentary rocks deposited that were limestones and dolostones.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: And these are dark gray rocks on a fresh surface.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: So if you took a hammer and broke one open, it would be like gray, dark gray color, but at the outside of it is stained brown.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, carrying a hammer.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, most of you don't pipe with a hammer.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: As geologists were loath to go out without a hammer, I would say.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Tess really doesn't like me carrying my hammer around while we're out there and banging chips off rocks, but we have to do it because sometimes we have to see the inside of the dang rock, right?
13:59
SPEAKER_00: That's a really good point because I just rolled right through that and I never skipped over it like it's totally normal.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: But no, as a geologist, you gotta have your hammer with you, dude.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You do.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: All right.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, so but the outer part of these rocks, these limestones and dole stones, these rocks have some iron in it too, and it just rusts into this kind of this beige or tan colored looking rock.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And that's what you see until you get a fresh break on it with a hammer or a broken surface that just fell off the wall or something like that.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: But the cool thing about these two is that these rocks in glacier contain some of the oldest fossils on the planet.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: And these are called stromatolites, which are they're just single-celled blue-green algae.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: So these are photosynthetic organisms that lived in really warm water that require sunlight, and they are super easy to spot in the park because these organisms they had colonies and they formed these intricate designs, like they resemble like cabbage heads or stacked construction cones, things like this.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And so as you're just walking along the trail, you'll trip over these things, and they're just it's all over the place.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Intricately designed tan and brown, and then sometimes gray, fresh-looking rock that has these stromatolite designs in it from these colonies.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And it's a lot like uh modern-day analgae would be like coral.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Very similar.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Blue-green algae, they had a big role to play in putting oxygen into our atmosphere at various points in Earth history.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: They're very important organisms for uh the evolution of our planet, basically.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have a couple questions I'm noticing in the chat, but we'll get to these kind of questions at the end.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: So we'll we'll hold off on answering those.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: But Chris, we've got one other color here.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's kind of an obvious one, and it's this really dark, nearly black igneous rock that intrudes these thick tan layers that you're talking about.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: You're talking about the Helena Formation, which is a rock unit formation that is the tan and the browns dominantly.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: There's this really diagnostic or obvious black rock in there.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: And you can you can see this rock along the common trails on the west side of the park from the mini glacier side, iceberg lake trail and grinnel glacier trail.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: But you can really see this from almost anywhere in the park.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: But those are two really common trails where you can actually see this rock that is weathered out from the cliff walls.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: You'll see this like rock that doesn't belong.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: It's igneous, and everything else that you're looking at is like this sedimentary that got slightly metamorphosed.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, if you like going outside, you gotta find a geologist to be friends with because we add so much knowledge when you're hiking along the trail.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at this black rock, it doesn't belong.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't it belong?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, listen to us rant about it for an hour and a half, right?
16:34
SPEAKER_00: It's great.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: But no, it does not belong, right?
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And the reason it weathers out and it is more prevalent on the trail than it is in the cliff face is because it's much harder rock.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: It does not weather nearly as much, and that's because it's an igneous rock.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a former magma.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: It's called a SIL, S-I-L-L, which is a horizontal intrusion.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: So it's a magma that injected itself along the bedding planes of those sedimentary rocks.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: So it injected itself into a weakness horizontally, and this is a former magma chamber that has cooled and crystallized, and it has this really salt and pepper appearance.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: It has these white phenocris or glomerocris, which are mineral aggregates.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm ranting.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: All right, I'll shut up.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: You are ranting.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: So it has a salt and pepper appearance of white and black.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, it intruded the limestone.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And the reason we know it intruded the limestone, it came, meaning it came afterwards in time, is that it metamorphosed it.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: This was a hot rock.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: It came in at like 1200 degrees centigrade, and it heated up the rock right on top and right below it, and it metamorphosed that into this beautiful marble.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: It kind of bleached it.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: And it turned changed the mineral composition of this.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: It's gorgeous.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you see right above this really prominent seal, you can't miss it.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Right above it is this bright white marble, and right below it is this bright white marble rock.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: And and you can also see the marble that is weathered out onto the trail, too, from the cliff walls.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: And so you can pick it up and hold it in your hand.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: You're like, wow, that's marble.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Because limestone and dolostone, if you contact metamorphose those with this, you know, magma or lava intrusion, then it bleaches it and it turns it into limestone, turns into marble.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: And so this contact metamorphism, this is just hot rock next to a cold rock.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: It heats it up, it transforms the minerals, changes the chemistry a little bit, makes it much more resistant.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: So this is a sill, it's a crystallized magma chamber.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: It's around about 750 million years old.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: It is actually kind of related to the big black dyke in Mount Moran, the vertical igneous intrusion in Mount Moran and the Grand Tetons that we talked about, around about the same time, potentially related to the same environment.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And there's this whole really interesting field of study that looks at the angle of these igneous intrusions, whether they're vertical or horizontal or what angle they occur at.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: And it tells us something about the stress environment of the crust at that time and the tectonic environment that it occurred at that time.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: So those are the colors.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: We hit red, green, tans, and browns, black.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: What about the mountains?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Now we're into part two.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let's go to part two.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: The the mountains.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the colors are super important because that's the first thing that you see.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: The mountains themselves, they're pretty spectacular.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: So, how did the mountains form?
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, we have to start in geology, we start from the beginning.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: The story really starts with the sedimentary rocks that were formed.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: Most of the rocks that you see in the park are sedimentary, or at least were sedimentary.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: And so a shallow sea was depositing these rocks over a very long time.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And there's 18,000 feet of vertically accumulated sedimentary rocks.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: So this sea was actually a result of early continental rifting and higher sea level.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: And I guess for a modern-day analogy, maybe think of early continental rifting like the Red Sea.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: So that part of like Northeast Africa broke off from the main continent and is it's a relatively young spreading center.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what was going on here, depositing just massive amounts of sedimentary rocks.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Chris, that's a shocking amount.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: 18,000 feet of sediment.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: So give me help me envision this.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: How the heck can you deposit 18,000 feet of sediment on top of each other?
20:02
SPEAKER_00: This is sediment being deposited from water in a water column, drop down.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: How does that happen?
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is actually a really cool thing in geology, and it's it's called isostasy or isostic adjustment, but who cares about that?
20:14
SPEAKER_01: It's basically that when you get a bunch of sedimentary rocks accumulated, the weight of that sediment causes the crust to sink or subside, allowing then for more deposition, and that subsides and then more weight and more weight and more weight.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like um one of these big container ships, you know, that that goes back and forth across the ocean.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: The you know, the heavier the cargo is on them, the deeper they sink and the taller they stand, too.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: But that's kind of how it allowed to continue this massive amount of deposition, because you think, well, you're running out of room, but not when the crust sinks and subsides down into the softer rocks below.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, long after this deposition, then plate tectonics began.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, where we're at in the story right now, tectonics hasn't even begun yet.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Now tectonics begins to influence the area.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: And we know this because sedimentary rocks are laid down flat, and the rocks in glacier are not flat.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: So let me interrupt here.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Tectonics, we're meaning plate tectonics, which is plates moving around.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: If you're new to Planet Geo, we have an old one of our first episodes, which, yeah, you know, could be edited a little bit better.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: We could have done it better, but it's covers plate tectonics.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: So you can go back and listen to that.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I interrupted.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, no, so I'm just saying that these rocks in glacier are not flat, and so plate tectonics, convergence of other plates, kind of took them and folded them.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: That's what we call it in geology, but it's it's like rumpled carpeting or an accordion, if you will, of just squeezing that and how the layers just kind of mash and and get contorted.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: And so this tectonic event is the same event.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: So the vent that formed glaciers, the same event that formed the Rockies that extended from Canada down into northern Mexico.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: And we're simplifying things here, but that's okay.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: It's an ocean plate that's subducting beneath the northern Mexico.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: North American continental plate.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: That's how this all began.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: And so the representation of plate tectonics here or this tectonic event is a little bit different in glacier than in other parts of the American Rockies.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: In Glacier, there is one massive what's called a thrust sheet or a fault.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: This is think of one package of rocks getting shoved up on top of another package of rocks.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And in glacier, this is old rocks getting shoved up on top of younger rocks.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: So basically you're breaking this package of rocks, and the old stuff is getting pushed up on top of the younger stuff.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And this is called the Lewis thrust sheet.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: And this is where about 50 kilometers of lateral movement.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: That's one piece of rocks was moved 50 kilometers to the east and is now sitting on top of a much younger package of rocks.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: That's about a half an inch every year for about 60 or 70 million years.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a significant amount of movement here.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Most of the faults in the Rockies in Canada, in up in Banff National Park or Jasper National Park up in northern Canada, where I did my PhD, most of these have smaller faults.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: They have more of these faults, but they're smaller.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: And so this is just one huge fault that accommodated loads of these tectonic stresses all in one point.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: So But Jesse, where you're at right now in the story with the tectonics and all these faults and so on, these mountains don't look like they do now.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: So what happened?
23:23
SPEAKER_00: So we had the name of the national park, the glaciers, right?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: So we had they they used to be these really sort of more rounded mountains.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: They looked like many, much of the mountain ranges in the in the American Rockies, but we had the glaciers.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And we began this sort of ice age, as we call it, uh about two million years ago.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: So let's get into that, Chris.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: This is part three now.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: This is number three.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: So two million years ago, hit us with it, Chris.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, mountains that have not been glaciated really are not all that spectacular.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: They're not sharp, they're not jagged, they're not carved and cut up.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Glaciated mountains, that's what happens.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And that's what makes glacier just so, so spectacular.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: It is one of the most amazing places that I've ever been to.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: And so beginning about two million years ago and ending about 20,000-ish years ago, glaciers filled these valleys.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: When you sit back on one of these edges of a valley, you know, you're sitting in this hanging valley and looking at this, and you imagine that this whole valley was full of ice.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: It's a stunning sight.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, this powerful, slow, relentless glacier movement, carved glacier into the rugged beauty that we see today.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: There are active glaciers in the park today, but to me, glaciers named more for the glaciers that existed during the ice age rather than the remnants that we have today, because they're they're really uh kind of sad remnants.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: That's named after the former features, really.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: But there are all these landscape features that are left behind, that the glaciers left behind, right?
24:56
SPEAKER_00: All these geologic features that we know to be formed by past glaciers, things like arets and cirques and U-shaped valleys.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Many of them have French names because they were named in the Alps, so we can forgive them of that.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: But you know, they're U-shaped valleys where the lakes have filled in these U-shaped valleys.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, on a map, if you look at the map, this is Mapy Hour, let's look at the map.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: They look very similar to the Finger Lakes region in uh New York, in western New York, and they're formed basically the exact same way.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Different style of glaciation, certainly, but they're glaciers nonetheless that extended out and now lakes fill in these valleys that glaciers carved out.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And so they're glit what are called glacially scoured valleys that now have lakes in them.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: And you can see this in Glacier National Park at a somewhat smaller scale than the Finger Lakes in New York.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's just a textbook for alpine glacial features.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And we don't really have a ton of time to get into all these, and it's probably a little bit boring to just list through all these glacial features, but they're spectacular.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: They make great climbing, they make great hiking, great, beautiful pictures.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: So awesome.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: One thing, Jesse, what about the lack of foothills?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: You don't have them.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's really interesting.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: There's one that glacier is a bit specific when you talk about the the rest of the Rockies, both Canadian and American, in the fact that they don't have foothills to the east.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: If you think of Glacier compared to places like Denver or Calgary, for instance, from the east, if you head west into these areas, you hit the foothills.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: In glacier, you don't really have foothills to the east.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: You go from prairies to mountains very, very quickly.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: And this is because the glaciers did a ton of erosion.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And all that erosion that happened, all the mountains being knocked down by the glaciers, all that sediment was much of it was deposited to the east.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: So it basically just covered up the foothills.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: The foothills are still there, they're just buried under all this glacial sediment.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: So when you drive in, you you'll miss foothills compared to Denver driving into the Rockies or Calgary driving into the Rockies.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: You get some foothill action.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Here you don't really get that.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: And that the lack of foothills really makes the mountains stand out.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: When I think of mountains that have no foothills and no introduction, because that's what foothills are.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: That's the Tetons.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's it's flat and then it just rises 7,000 feet above the valley floor.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And in glaciers, a lot like that.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: A very different process, though.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Very different geologic process.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Same feature, yeah.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: So, all right, Chris, this is the part three now.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Last part trip planning.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: People who are thinking about going there, what you maybe you're on the fence about maybe going to visit Glacier.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Chris has been there a ton.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: He's got some good recommendations.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: So, what do you think, Chris?
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, if we're planning on going there, and maybe we'll let's lead this in with a question here.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: We had a question, I don't know who it came from, but is the west side less crowded than the east side of the park?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the answer to this, Chris?
27:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it is.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: I really don't.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: You get people coming from Whitefish and Calispell and these busier areas, and and you also have Lake McDonald on that side, which is just famous.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are just some famous landmarks on that west side that are spectacular.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Um so I don't think it is actually.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: All right.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: So, recommendations.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: If we're planning on going there, what should we be aware of?
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Where should we go?
28:03
SPEAKER_01: First of all, I like go.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Glacier is amazing.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: If you're on the fence about it, don't.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: It's just it will not disappoint.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: June is a little sketchy because the you know, going to the sun road isn't usually open in June.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I would say: I would say be flexible.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: Glacier and Bears, uh, they have a very interesting policy there.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: They have their bear management policies are very different.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: You mean Glacier National Park?
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Glacier National Park, their management policies are very like they'll shut down trails in a heartbeat because there's bear activity on that trail.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: And I don't get that at other places that are the parks, so you don't get it in Yellowstone or the Tetons, or you know, you have to just be aware and and they just let it happen.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: But in Glacier, they don't do that.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And so when I take my students there, um, we're always checking trail updates and so on because they'll close them down.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: And if there's a bear sighting on a trail, they may shut that trail down for two weeks.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's uh it's a very aggressive bear management policy for sure.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: So flexibility is a must.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Many Glacier is an amazing place.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: It's busy.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Parking is really hard, camping is is hard.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: But Iceberg Lake and Grinnell Glacier, those trails are they're amazing.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: And they're both from Mini Glacier that that side of the park.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: And you could actually like I think you could camp at Mini Glacier for 10 days easily and hike every single day and not repeat a trail.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's amazing! So, what about places to kind of get away from people?
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
29:33
SPEAKER_01: My favorite, one of my favorite places is the two medicine part of the park.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: It's on the east side and it's on the south side, and it is not busy, and it's absolutely gorgeous.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why it's not busy, but but it's definitely not the busy part of the park and gorgeous.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what about we we love ripple marks, you and I.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: We've chased a lot of them.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: I've seen some in glacier, but I've only been to like the really popular parts of glacier, uh, you know, up the the going to the sun road and stuff.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: What about some like off-piece places to look at some good ripple marks?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: You got a good hike there or uh anything like that?
30:08
SPEAKER_01: This would be from the mini glacier side again, or mini glacier area of the park, the northeast part, a swift current pass or swift current peak.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: It's a long, grueling day.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: It's a 16 to 17 mile hike that's out and back.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: It's now it's not a loop or anything like that.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: And you go up to this, but it is amazing.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: It's a 360-degree panoramic of the whole northern Rockies, and you have you're up at 8,400 feet above sea level, and you have ripples and mud cracks that high up above sea level.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: There's a a look, a forest fire lookout tower up there, and it's hard to beat, swift current peak.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, as far as like seeing the features that we're talking about, I mean, they're freaking everywhere.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: So, like the colors, the mountains, the glacier features, they're everywhere.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: And so, any really hike you take, any drive you pick, it's gonna be there.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see these three geologic features, and they're gonna be obvious, and you're gonna be able to appreciate them in most places.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: So, with that, I think let's get to a couple questions.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all right, Chris, this is a question for you for sure.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: The best five-ish day backpacking route.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go with uh Brown Lake to Bowman Lake.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm going with this one for uh a reason, actually, uh, that's maybe not what one would expect.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: But we hired a driver who actually was one of my former students who was working in the park.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we dropped our car off at where we wanted to come out, and then she drove us to the drop-in point, which was Brown Lake.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: And so the first day is super easy, and then the second day is not so easy because you go up over Brown Pass.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: And when we did this, it was maybe the coldest day that I've ever had in my entire life.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: It was so cold, so miserable, and it was raining and snow, and it was crazy and really high elevation.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we come down and we're supposed to go past this place called Hole in the Wall, which is like the this kind of this circle like thing, this glacial feature where you have springs just coming out of the wall all over the place, and we couldn't see five feet, you know.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: The the fog was just socked in that bad.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: And but the next day, then when the sun came up and could finally see, it was gorgeous.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: And we finished the the whole day.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I think we took six days on the whole thing.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: This is where we ran into the backcountry border patrol, you know, talking to those guys, you know, talking to them about their experience with the bears.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: And it was just it's beautiful, it was awesome.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: I did it with my wife and two kids, and I guess maybe I'm nostalgic about it, but it's uh I love it.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's awesome.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Brown Lake to Bowman Lake, and then there's Pole Bridge, uh Mercantile.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Like they have the best pastries on the planet.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: That's a good tip, it really is, and they have uh blueberry beer, and so you know you can't go wrong.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: No, no, uh a blueberry beer, you're gonna have to talk me into that one.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: So it's right near uh where you come out at Brown Lake or Bowman Lake, I'm sorry, where you come out at Bowman Lake, Pulbridge Mercantile.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: You can hire a driver out of there too.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: I had a contact out of there as well.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: You can just call the mercantile and they'll set that up for you.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: But amazing pastries, amazing food, they have great beer.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and when you come out five, six days in, that's what you want, you know.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: I like the pastries at the end.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, I ran into this guy at the parking lot, right?
33:27
SPEAKER_01: We came out, we were looking dirty, just nasty, more dirty and more nasty.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: He was going in for a day, going in for one day.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: And he had this big flask around like this Daniel Boone flask, you know, and it was full of whiskey.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, What you guys been doing?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Well, we just came from uh Brown Lake, and he's like, What?
33:46
SPEAKER_01: You do you need whiskey?
33:48
SPEAKER_01: And I said, You are my savior right now.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: And I took a big pull.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, it was there you go.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was good.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a good day.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's uh let's let's hit another question here.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: What's your favorite non-geology aspect of the park?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: I know mine.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Do you have one, Chris?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go?
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Let me think.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll go.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Mine is the fact that it's uh this international peace park.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, I did my PhD in Canada.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh I was born and raised in Michigan, so I'm an American, but uh did my PhD in Canada, got a lot of close Canadian friends, visited Waterton, and and I think it's a really cool, it's a really cool idea.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Take this beautiful you know stretch of land that is divided by an international border and make it into this sort of dual international park.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And there's some interesting aspects of that.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: It also is a uh international dark sky park, it's a world heritage site, it's a biosphere reserve, it has all these interesting things about it.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: The the camaraderie between the Americans and Canadians, we're very similar to one another, and I think it's represented here in the park.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: So that's nice.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: That's a tough answer to top, by the way.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good answer.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, I just I guess I would say the beauty.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't have to be a geologist to appreciate the beauty of the park, and it is absolutely stunning.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: That's probably why I went into geology, because I've just always been drawn, my soul, it's in my bones to to get out and to to climb and to backpack and to hike and to just like feel the planet, you know.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: I love this place.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: Everybody can appreciate the beauty, but being a geologist takes it to a whole nother level because you get to think about other things.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you know, the question a little bit is flawed.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: It like why think about things that are non-geology aspects?
35:21
SPEAKER_00: That's my that's my counter to the question, I suppose.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: No, all right, Chris, I'm gonna you know, spin this question to you as well.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: What would be your ideal week in Glacier and what are the top planning considerations that you would take into?
35:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you lead 26 high school students every year to Glacier National Park on a big old school bus.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: What do you what are you thinking about when you do that?
35:44
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a hard, very hard question because I don't know whether my ideal week would be backpacking in Glacier again and doing something I haven't done before, or whether it would be just doing, you know, six or seven day hikes that I haven't done before.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a hard question, but whether doesn't matter what you choose, whether it's a backpacking trip or just day hiking and spending a week in glacier, you have to be flexible because you know, getting backpacking permits, those wilderness permits, are difficult to get, they're competitive.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, you have to be on top of it.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Like if it opens at eight, you got to be on at eight.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: So you may have your plans and then all of a sudden they close parts of the trail down because of bears.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: And so then you're out of luck.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you a question.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: How do you be flexible?
36:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it just having different plans?
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Is it booking two things simultaneously that are overlapping?
36:34
SPEAKER_00: How do you be flexible in this way?
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't I don't book things like that, two things at the same time.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: I if something happens where you can't make your itinerary that you booked, then like I said, they do keep walk-ups open and you have to just be willing to go there at the in the we are hours of the morning, you know, bring your backpacking stove and make some coffee and bring a sleeping bag and sit in your chair and wait.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: Be first in line.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: That's my best advice for that.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Part of my ideal week would be fly fishing.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: There is the the the Flathead National Forest that's nearby to Glacier National Park, and I've been on a backpacking trip up into the uh West Fork of the Flathead River, and there it's just stunning fly fishing up there.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's amazing.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: I've never fly fished in Glacier National Park because it requires special licensing and things like that.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: But you know, if you just get outside of the park a little bit as well, I mean, go to the park.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely go to the park.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: But there's tons of stuff outside of the park as well.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Big Fork is a super cool little town on Flathead Lake.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: That whole area is just full of beautiful stuff, lots of really cool little towns around to visit.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: So if you're not into the whole backpacking thing for many days, you know, go do hikes and go back and stay in a beautiful Airbnb with a nice brewery within walking distance.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's great.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you're right.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: You're right.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be a big time hiker.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: My ideal day in Glacier could just as well be driving to an Outlook and sitting in a chair with my favorite people on the planet and drinking a beer.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm all booked up for the summer, Chris, so I won't be able to go with you this summer, but you know, maybe next summer.
38:06
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38:12
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38:16
SPEAKER_00: That's at Planet Geocast.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And our email is planetgeocast at gmail.com.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: Send us emails with any questions, any episode suggestions, uh trip planning considerations, anything we've covered before, hit us up.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: We love that stuff.