Glaciers and the Red Bus in Montana, USA

In 2009 I took my first-ever trip to the USA, courtesy of the Montana Office of Tourism and Virgin Australia. My resulting newspaper article about a visit to Glacier National Park never went online, so here it is for your enjoyment...

Everything about Montana is big, from the towering Rocky Mountains in its west to the sprawling plains of the east.

And up the top of its “big” list are the glaciers and peaks of Glacier National Park, a spectacular spread of craggy mountains, glacial lakes and huge chunks of ancient ice nestled between them.

“It’s incredible to first timers,” says our driver and tour guide Jana Grindheim. “People don’t know about Glacier, it’s not as famous as Yellowstone. But it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen, and they’re just amazed at the mountains.”

As we progress into the park past the waters of Lake McDonald I begin to see what Jana means, via glimpses of enormous sharp-edged peaks to the northeast. The evocatively-named Going-to-the-Sun Road may be flat and spacious now, but soon it’ll be transporting us upward, past rugged mountains on one side and a sheer drop on the other.

Though its namesake glaciers are shrinking as the climate changes, those that remain are diverse and magnificent, especially within the Many Glacier Valley in the park’s east.

However, the mountain scenery alone is sensational enough to prompt a visit, and we’ll be getting a full dose of it as we traverse the entire Going-to-the-Sun Road from Apgar to St Mary.

The road is a story in itself, an epic construction project completed in 1933.

It borrows its name from a mountain along its route, named from a Native American Blackfeet legend about a deity who came from the sun and taught them how to hunt, then returned home after leaving his image on the slopes.

We’ll be hugging the narrow road in a vehicle that’s a tourist attraction in its own right, one of the park’s fleet of Red Buses. These bright red open-topped vehicles, resembling an extended car with a fold-back roof, each hold 17 people and have been used for tours of the park since the mid-1930s.

With its sleek lines and a radiator grille that looks like it was swiped from an art deco limousine, our Red Bus is a very stylish way to explore Glacier. On top of all that, Glacier is the only national park to still be operating these classic vehicles, as other parks retired their fleets decades ago (take that, Yellowstone).

The Red Bus drivers are a special breed are known as “jammers”, a name inherited from the days when the gears of the vehicles would grind and jam as they hauled their passengers up the slopes.

Our jammer for the day, Jana, is fond of her daily grind. “I get to drive on the beautiful red buses that everybody loves,” she says, “And I get to see Glacier National Park, the most beautiful place in the world, every day.”

Sounds like a recipe for job satisfaction to me. And as we pass beyond Avalanche Creek and its picturesque boardwalk through the cedars, the landscape opens up, we begin to climb, and I see what she loves about the place.

For it is grand - there’s no other word for it. Beyond the cedar forest the mountain slopes stretch high above us, bare and craggy as they reach sharply defined peaks, tinged purple in the midday heat.

The most startling formation is the Garden Wall, a long narrow ridge of sharp, rocky projections streaked with horizontal bands of colour. It’s so narrow that in places it would be possible to sit astride it, with legs dangling along each slope.

There are also signs of how powerful Dame Nature can be when she rubs her hands and gets down to work. Pausing the bus, Jana points out a massive trail of damage down the slope above us, where dozens of trees lie fallen.

This was the work of a mighty avalanche that plummeted through some time during winter, blocking the road; because it’s closed during the icy months, no-one saw it happen.

To the west is the beautiful Heavens Peak, at 2739 metres one of the higher mountains in the park, with a dusting of snow despite the Indian Summer warmth.

We’re reminded again of the park’s lofty snow and ice as we pass the Weeping Wall, a section of rock constantly flowing with run-off from the glaciers above.

Finally, having passed a profusion of impressive peaks and peered down into distant tree-lined valleys, trying to not think too hard about the tiny stone wall stopping errant vehicles from plunging to their doom, we arrive at Logan Pass.

It’s the highest point on the road and a natural spot for a break, with its visitor centre and sign marking the location of the Continental Divide, which runs right through the park. A geographical curiosity, this line divides North America into two sections from which all water flows downhill toward either the Pacific or the Atlantic, depending on which side it falls.

Logan Pass is also a rest stop along the park’s numerous hiking trails. While the rest of our group troops off to have a look at the neighbourhood, I linger by the bus to ask Jana about hiking. Being Australian, however, I’d be a little nervous about the idea of encountering bears along the way. Has she ever seen any?

“Oh yeah,” she says casually. “In the Many Glacier Valley, just over these mountains, there are a lot of grizzly bears. By the Many Glacier Hotel you can see them, not ten feet away.”

I’d rather be viewing them from a bit further away than three metres, but Jana is reassuring. “I’ve never had any dangerous situations with bears. Usually when you see them they don’t care about you, unless you scare them.”

Making a mental note not to scare any bears, I return to the topic of hiking. Does she have a favourite walk?

“I have several,” she nods. “There’s one, Gunsight Path, which is a 20 mile hike with a backpack. It’s incredible. You hike up past lakes, snowfields, waterfalls, and camp at Lake Ellen Wilson. It looks like an infinity pool, dropping off the edge of the earth.

"You also have an option to continue to a glacier. The other one you can do from here is the Floral Park hike, and you walk across Sperry Glacier on the way. There are rivers and crevasses and it’s amazing.”

It’s almost an anticlimax to get back into our old Red Bus and drive east for the descent to St Mary, sighting the Jackson Glacier as we go.

But I do get a small adrenaline rush when we briefly leave the bus to walk through the trees to look at the tiny Wild Goose Island in the middle of St Mary Lake.

We might see a bear, I imagine. But we don’t, not even a small one.

As we head out of Glacier, I discover that Jana is on her way out as well.

“My husband and I fell in love with the park the first time we came here but now we’re joining the Peace Corps, and we’ve got one last hurrah with the mountains.”

Will she miss being a jammer?

“Yeah,” she says firmly. “Best job in the park. Best job in the world.”

For details of the Red Bus Tours in Glacier National Park, click here.

Hadrian's Wall by Bus

On this trip I was hosted by Visit Britain.

Last year Narrelle Harris and I visited Hadrian's Wall, constructed in AD 122 by the Roman Empire in order to mark and guard its northernmost border.

You can hike the entire length of the wall, but that's a long way to walk - the trail runs 135 kilometres from eastern Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. And the best section is in the middle, where the hilly country with its lower population has left much of the structure intact.

The solution for us was to catch the seasonal AD122 bus. The bus runs between the railway stations of Haltwhistle (in the west) and Hexham (in the east), with easy connections to Carlisle and Newcastle.

As it stops at key sites along the wall, including museums and former forts, it makes the historic structure accessible to everyone, though there's still some walking to do from the bus stops to the wall itself.

Not everyone's up for a long walk, especially in such hilly country, so it's a good option for travellers who are less mobile.

In the end we did walk a section of the wall, taking a leisurely two hours to stroll up and down the sloping trail west from the fort site now known as Housesteads.

Once we'd had enough of that, we used a farm access road to get back to the main road, where we were happy to flag down the next bus. A day ticket allows multiple rides, and the bus will pick up anywhere that's safe along its route.

The walk was great, but we were happy to get back on the bus and use it to reach the ruins of the former Roman military town south of the wall, Vindolanda [pictured above].

We used it the next day as well, to see some of the wall-related sites closer to Haltwhistle. It was a great way to explore Hadrian's Wall, and allow some walking without exhausting ourselves.

For more details about the AD122 bus, click here.

Passage to Poland: Baltic Ferry

After my visit to Copenhagen in May, my next stop was Warsaw.

I could've flown between the two cities in a small plane, with the flight taking just over an hour. Instead, I decided to take a surface route - aboard a Baltic ferry.

The Polish company Polferries operates a number of routes between ports in Poland and Sweden. From Copenhagen, a bus takes its passengers to the Swedish port of Ystad, from where an overnight ferry heads to Świnoujście, right at the northwest corner of Poland.

I decided to give this a go. I'd never taken a ferry across the Baltic Sea before, and it would have the added benefit of saving me a night's accommodation in the expensive Danish capital.

This is how it worked. I walked from my hotel near Copenhagen's main railway station, to a dedicated stop next to the Hotel Plaza on the other side of the rail terminus. I could hear some Polish voices in the crowd milling around outside the hotel, so I suspected I was in the right location.

In due course, bus 866 showed up and we were on our way over the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. This elegant structure has an ominous air in my mind at least, courtesy of the crime thriller series The Bridge:

I was surprised to have my passport checked, along with the rest of the passengers, on the Swedish side of the strait. It seems the recent refugee crisis has forced some temporary tightening of the free-movement Schengen Zone.

Past passport control, we passed through beautiful rolling countryside on our way to Ystad, the setting of another Scandi-noir crime series, Wallander:

There was less romance at the port at Ystad. Most of the bus passengers were taking a different ferry to Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic, and the bus pulled up outside that ferry terminal. The terminal for ferries to Poland was a long walk around the port in the open air. Lucky it wasn't raining.

Facilities were fairly basic in the Polish terminal, shared by two Polish ferry companies, and there was a long wait to get aboard. It was about 6pm when I arrived, and foot passengers couldn't check in until 7pm. 

We then had to wait till 9pm to go aboard, amused only by a small snack bar in the terminal's waiting area. I had some sandwiches I'd bought in Denmark for dinner, but no drink. 

Not having any Swedish currency, I managed to talk the snack bar owner into selling me a soft drink for 10 Polish złoty. He wanted more than that in krona, but grudgingly agreed (the drink would be a fraction of that price in Poland, but that's beside the point).

Finally the handful of foot passengers was led aboard by a Polish guy in a safety vest. We realised on approach that he had to insert us through the massive loading bay between huge trucks, so we could reach a lift to the upper decks. This was a bit thrilling, with just a hint of danger.

For all the industrial grit of the lower decks, the upper decks were quite pleasant - although with a touch of 1980s decor in the onboard restaurant and bar:

I headed to the uppermost deck to find my cabin. Having paid for sole use of a two-berth cabin, I was expecting something compact with bunk beds. So I was surprised to find it was three times the size of my Copenhagen hotel room, with two beds and an en suite bathroom:

When I stepped out onto the rear deck directly behind the cabin, I had this view of the fading light as we pulled out of Ystad into the Baltic:

Fortunately this was not one of those occasions on which a storm blows up in the Baltic Sea. It was a very smooth crossing, with a touch of gentle rocking, and I had a decent sleep.

When I awoke about 5.30am it was light outside, with the Polish shore already visible alongside as we navigated into the port within the mouth of the Świna River. I joined the truckers for a buffet breakfast (basic but filling), then mustered with my fellow foot passengers to be led through the deck of massed vehicles to the outside world.

I was pleased to see we had berthed right next to Świnoujście's main train station. I had a ticket for the express train from there to Warsaw at 6.37am, and it looked like I wouldn't have any trouble catching it.

Except... for foot passengers to leave the ferry terminal, we had to traverse an enormously long enclosed walkway that stretched west for what seemed a couple of kilometres. When I finally exited the main building, I had a long walk back down the railway line to the station, passing my ferry on the way (you can see the open 'nose' of the ferry's loading bay here):

I still had time to spare, however. I reached the station and found my reserved seat in the refurbished first class carriage of the 6.37 to Warsaw. I would have it more or less to myself until we reached the next big city, Szczecin.

As I was travelling first class, an attendant soon popped up to present me with a complimentary coffee, a tiny biscuit and the world's smallest tortilla. Seven hours to Warsaw? I was set.