Comment by shagie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shagie | Hacker News Reader

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> for example the Empire Builder stops at East Glacier in Montana from spring to fall - extremely small town with wonderful hiking, etc.

The southern border of Glacier NP is the railroad.

https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/education/railway.htm

So, in 1891, the continental divide finally was crossed and the rail barrons were trying to get people to use the railroad. They saw people taking steamships out from NYC to Europe to go see the Alps, and, well, they knew a thing or two about mountains, now too.

So the Great Northern Railroad petitioned Congress to make a park in the area that the trains would service.

In addition to the park proper, a number Swiss style chalets were built through the park that were approximately 1 day horse ride apart from each other. With this setup, you could take the train to East Glacier or West Glacier, go hose back riding through the mountains, and then get back on the train on the other side and go home.

While many of these chalets have been lost to time, some still exist and are maintained - https://www.nplas.org/sperry.html https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2018-06-06/funding-secured...

> you could take the train to East Glacier or West Glacier

Be careful with this idea; East Glacier train station is not actually in the park, and services at that station are limited (West Glacier even more so). It's possible to rent a car at East Glacier, but I expect it would be expensive. You can walk from the train station to a hotel, then be based out of there, but you will be dependent on the shuttle and bus services to explore the park. Some good details about the current situation in this thread; note that services have changed a lot around COVID, and any information from pre-2019 should be considered as out of date, and not reliable:

https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/need-advice-for-short-e...

If you like hiking, you can technically hike from town into the park - I've done it even with snow still on the ground.

But depending on what you want to do in the area, you will want to plan ahead.

> While many of these chalets have been lost to time

How can you loose something, less than 200 years old, to time ?!

Weather in the area isn’t a walk in the park, and I would assume the cabins are wood.

So does 'original' swiss chalets, yet, many of them are much older than that.

Many of those weren't abandoned for half a decade in the 40s.

My family has property in western Montana. There are cabins there that were built in the 1920s that are almost completely disintegrated. And that is just 100 years. This is an area that typically gets an enormous amount of snow in the winter (like 6-7 meters deep) that will completely crush a building if someone is not maintaining it all winter.

I think if something is from a recent as 1920 it’s just been poorly maintained, not ‘lost to time’.

I don't understand the distinction. If anything is now gone and wasn't destroyed in an unpreventable disaster or purposefully, it was "poorly maintained." Doesn't matter if it is 100 years old or 10,000 years old.

…because if it’s only a 100 years old then there’s hardly any time involved, so not lost to time, just lost.

If you bought an ice cream and drop it it’s not ‘lost to time’ because you can grab another any time. If you drop a Ming vase then you can’t replace that.

This is a ridiculous distinction. Both examples are highly idiomatic language, with no fixed definition that's even remotely close to what you claim. The original statement was perfectly understandable, and it's obnoxious behavior for you to try to pass your preference off as a "correction".

It's incredibly easy for an all-wood structure built in 1920 to be completely gone in a hundred years, especially in a harsh climate.

Sure there may be wreckage of it, but it's lost to time.

The 2015 fire in GNP destroyed some buildings and uncovered some historical artifacts too - https://www.nps.gov/gis/storymaps/cascade/v1/index.html?appi...

Well, there is no reason to maintain most of these structures. They were mining cabins, but the gold mines were closed up long ago. The “time” when these structures were needed has passed, so they are not maintained and are rapidly returning to nature. Soon all that will be left to mark them will be some square iron nails.

Weather does wonders on buildings - see the list of Missions in Baja California - many are just barely a foundation, some are absolutely nothing at all left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_Baja_Calif...

And that's even without major winter snow storms. I'm sure you could find ruins of the chalets (many of which might have been very rustic by our standards), but not much more.

Three years of no maintenance in the 40s.

> The hotels and chalets were closed for three seasons during World War II. The hotels recovered from the lack of use and upkeep, but most of the chalets suffered irreparable damage. The only two remaining chalets, Sperry and Granite Park, continued to operate, offering overnight accommodations.

As to the weather... I'm going to point out that we're in June now and https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/roadstatus/roadstatus.... is the current road status.

> Spring plowing has begun. On the west side, the hiker/biker closure is at Logan Creek comfort station, approximately 3 miles past the vehicle closure when road crew is working and at The Loop when the road crew is not working.

Last year, the road was plowed and opened June 27th. https://www.ktvq.com/glacier-national-parks-iconic-road-now-...

Here's video of them plowing it from '08: https://youtu.be/M-9l1PojA6Q

Buildings in the area need constant maintenance.

https://www.nplas.org/goingtothesun.html

> Going-to-the-Sun Chalets stock had dropped considerably among Great Northern executives by the start of World War II. The structures had taken a beating from 30 years of harsh Montana winters. They required endless maintenance and repairs, and weren't considered even remotely historic or significant at the time. Unfortunately the designs were viewed as tired and obsolete in 1940. It was comparable to the way we would view an aging motel built during the 1970s: Very few people would clamor for preservation.

> As troublesome as the chalet complex was in the early 1940s, there were still a few in management who pointed to growth and profit in the recent past, but all that did was stave off demolition for a couple years. The Going-to-the-Sun Chalets stood empty after the war, and were ultimately razed in 1948. Sun Point has been returned to a (sort of) natural state; it takes an archaeologist's eye to recognize the traces of the Chalets.

How do you take a cross country train and stop at Montana to do hiking ? Won’t your train and all your stuff on the train have left by the time you finished your hike ?

I imagine the train only stops for half an hour or so for long breaks…

1. Disembark with your stuff

2. Hike (leave extra stuff in storage)

3. Take the next train

No different from flying: you disembark and then catch a later train, likely a few days later.

> Won’t your train and all your stuff on the train

…well you take your luggage off the train. Is that really what you were asking?

This is a "I've thought about this"...

Take the Empire Builder to Essex. https://www.amtrak.com/stations/esm.html

At Essex (7:41 pm), disembark, get a room at the Izaak Walton Inn - https://www.google.com/maps/@48.2787345,-113.6113756,3a,75y,...

Spend the following day hiking ( https://www.google.com/maps/dir/48.2784604,-113.6118791/48.3... )

Return to the town, have dinner, get on the train (at 7:41 pm) and continue on.

This becomes much easier with a rail pass: https://media.amtrak.com/2022/03/for-a-limited-time-amtrak-o... / https://www.amtrak.com/USARailPass

Yeah, some of the most scenic landscape can be found crossing the Rockies.

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