I woke up bright and early, if you consider that the outside was still dark, in part by the cloud cover, and decided to make an early phone call to my wife, and with no cell service within miles of the IWI, I had to use the pay phone. The only times I’ve used a pay phone in the last 10 years are on my trips to Alta-Mont. Before I headed out of the room, I threw several objects at Mike to wake him up, something that has always been a frequent occurrence on our railfan trips, dating back to when we were friends in high school, and it took an act of God to get him out of bed…Despite these inconveniences, and much protest from Mike, we’re usually up in enough time so that the crack of dawn we’re ready if that first EB pops into good light somewhere east of Summit, but we seemed to be running in slow motion on this morning. This morning, Mike reminded me of his lack of sleep over the last 36 hours or so, compounded by ½ hour intervals of the chime of the fireplace clock at the IWI, situated immediately behind Mike’s bed (on the other side of the wall, of course).
Finally after getting ourselves out the door, we had initially decided to head west in search of trains, especially after watching two westbounds clunk by us at Essex. And also, so we could make a run at a Radio Shack or Wally World in Kalispell or the ‘Fish to find a power supply for the laptop. We got as far as Paola when Amtrak made an appearance, so we did the Batman power slide and whipped ourselves the other direction. Mike made the comment that I get my jollies with Amtrak, especially since there are two red marker lights that bring up the rear…We made it back to the spot between the two tunnels near Paola, but the train was moving fast enough in the overly dark conditions that I ended up with basically a blob, although surrounded by fantastic fall colors. We made a beeline to the Goat Lick trestle where we managed an OK shot, but I managed to get a chunk of sky in the image, with the sky being completely washed out, not even fixable in Photoshop, so I’ve “Photocropped” it.
So the chase was on, trying to figure out where the next shot would be, and after much speculation, we decided on a slightly different variation of the False Summit shot from a year ago, the one with the pristine water and the snowy Glacier mountains in the background. This one had no water in the shot, however. As we were driving around with our heads cut-off, Mike blurbed something about not remembering a fence line in the area, or something, which for the moment, I blew off. As we waited for #8, I was playing around with the ATCS stuff, and trying to decode more, and watch the progress of our passenger train. My decoding the night before was far from perfect, but it was dangerous enough to get an idea of what was going on. The shot turned out well,
and knowing that are chances were slim to catch it east of here, we devised a plan to catch the eastbound train following it up the hill, which was graced with 5 SD40-2s on the point, with three weanies, a bonnet, and a pumpkin buried in the middle. The 5-pack met a WB earthworm at Bison, and we shot the head end and the helpers going away of the worm, which I did at 17mm with interesting results, especially with the swirling, looping clouds around the Glacier Park mountains.
As we bounded down the hill towards our first planned shot at Triple Divide, Mike again made notice of a fence line, then quickly blurted our that a new barb wire fence was going up on both sides of Hwy 2, and that the fence line ran right across a couple of the access roads leading up to the tracks, with no gates on them. Just ran ‘em across the damn roads. It also became apparent, that there was a lot of new extruded aluminum guardrail all over the place, severely limiting the locations that you could now pull off the road. Well this certainly sucks.
We raced towards Triple Divide half expecting that someone else would be down there. The 4x4 of the Trailblazer definitely came in handy here as we slipped and slid through the snow, up and over the hill. What I failed to mention was how flippin’ windy it had become, although at Triple Divide it wasn’t too bad. We got some nice shots there, and proceeded an eastward race to Browning.
The ATCS display showed a meet at Browning with a WB, so we made a mad scramble through the ridiculously slug-like traffic through town. We arrived at the east bridge just in time, with the wind blowing pretty strongly. We noted that we were carpetbagging here pretty bad, as a number of foamers had already set-up. After getting a pretty darn nice sunny, snowy shot here,
ATCS showed us that a WB had just left Blackfoot, so we hightailed it there for the third shot, while our 5-pack waited for the aforementioned WB, and this shot also came out very well, too.
Now mind you, up until this point, I had been doing all the driving, and Mike as good natured as he is (or more appropriately was), was begrudgingly holding the computer all this time, and when we stopped, I’d snatch it out of his hands to decode or whatever. At some point in the next few miles, we decided to switch positions, Mike and I taking our more typical positions over the years of Mikey being driver and Ricky the navigator. This set-up originally came into play for a couple of reasons, as Mike usually drove his car on our expeditions, and the fear of me falling asleep (see Narcolepsy in Day 1). This has been somewhat resolved with my meds, but the set-up always seems awkward when I drive. The only problem with this configuration, is I lose control of our destiny, er…direction. When I drive, Mike doesn’t really care where we go or what we do, but when Mike drives, there is an end-point destination in sight and he drives to get there. Turning around is seldom an option, and stopping when seeing something of photographic value beyond our intended course is even harder to achieve, unless he is equally awestruck, and our tastes differ on many occasions. So, relinquishing controls to One-Way Peters was hard to do, but an evil necessity.
So we head back to the west bridge at Browning, knowing that our WB grain train that met our 5-pack at Browning, was meeting another EB earthworm at Spotted Robe. The sun had well passed the point of the early glint shot from east of the tracks, so I was wanting to try a tele-smash shot through the inside of the curve. Art Jacobsen and the Fur Bearing Engineer were already hanging out here, so we were ‘baggin’ again. I ran off to talk with Alan, taking my 70-200 with me, realizing after I got to Alan that I didn’t have enough lens. Mike graciously loaned me his 300 f4 IS, which still wasn’t quite enough lens, but worked much better, but only after having a scream-fest back and forth with the howling wind at 50 paces, telling me that I needed to unlock the car. After setting up, and precariously perching a couple of lenses on the concrete bridge railing with the wind blowing like the Santa Anas, I managed to snap of a couple of foamer photos of Mike and Art.
I reset my shot, but briefly glanced away, at which the exact time, our EB came roaring around the corner. I flubbed the shot in my surprise (or at least so I thought, but after further examination, I actually did OK), but managed to get the 28-70 mounted on the camera in enough time to take a couple of Save-My-A$$ shots, which I thought I needed, but atually didn't.
Thoroughly disgusted, lamenting the shot I thought I screwed up, instead of celebrating the one I managed to get, I cursed all the way back to the car. We then headed back to East Glacier for a snack and fill-up, taking a couple of those cry-until-he-stops-the-car scenic shots of the snowy landscape.
Now not to embarrass Mike, but he actually managed to fire off a few as well, with a hilarious, but secret, photo-prop of bovine heritage, that he brought along to write a story-line to some girl-he-claims-is-not-really-his-girlfriend, but whom he is continuously text messaging (if there is some inkling of cell service), even as we’re driving into a 60 mph wind with one hand on the wheel and while looking at his phone. Did I mention it was rather blustery on this day? And its always especially bad between Browning and East Glacier, precisely where we were. Scared to my wits end, I tried to beat him with my cellphone, only to realize that my wife was trying to call me at the same time…
After the fill-up, I retook the wheel so Mike could text away, and the somewhat dangerous, but fairly trusty ATCS indicated we had a couple of westbounds approaching us, so we decided to head to Bison, and drive up the cut on the east side of the tracks. Now with the wind howling, and the snow melting in the sunshine, the path up was rather precarious to say the least. Gravity had fun with us, as the tires liked to follow the ruts, which on occasion made it seem like we were ready to slide over the edge of the cut, ala Grumpy from 2002 (although in reality, we really weren’t as close as I was imagining at the time). To hell with gravity, although since I’m not small in stature, gravity plays a larger role in my life than I would care to admit, and so it was here as well. After reaching the top, we noted that the wind seemed to be of Category 1 hurricane force, and after looking at the treacherously muddy and snowy hill we just climbed, we realized were simply mad, seeing that no one else had seemingly tried this feat in recent recorded history. Trying to stand was difficult enough, but made much worse while perching close to the edge of the cut and holding a camera with a wide angle lens, so my shadow wouldn’t show in the picture. Mike was shooting some sort of enormous telesmash shot of the train leaving Browning, and he had his gear packed up by the time I shot the frame, all the while complaining about the carpetbaggers on the small hill below (how could they even be in the picture?).
I reminded Mike that we had another WB coming, and he dug his gear back out. I shot a nice 200 mm shot of an intermodal train running the length of the siding, at least the part that was in view.
We proceeded to depart, slip-sliding our way back to the bottom with that gravity thing rearing its ugly head again, and proceeded to have a looksee at all of the new fencing and guardrail that was up before tearing off again, noting that there were a couple of guys actually out stringing more of the barbed wire fence. We could only assume that these were guys from the Blackfeet Indian reservation, but why they where stringing fence on both sides of the highway remains a mystery. Sine these guys were actually out fencing now, it obviously indicated that this was a relatively new development. Why on earth were they fencing right across the road accesses without gates was even stranger…
Mike took over the wheel again, and the ATCS showed we had two more WBs, so an aborted attempt at the wrong side of the sun shot at False Summit led us on a mad dash to East Glacier, where a set of helpers was dragging a WB manifest past the depot where we nabbed one shot.
We headed back towards Grizzly and while waiting for one more WB, I took a shot that displays the crazy wind flowing of the Glacier Park wind machine.
The last shot of the day for us was a relatively tame one at the crest of the hill near Grizzly.
We rushed back to the Inn, in part because I had a presentation to create, but more importantly the freebie Prime Rib dinner awaiting us at the IWI, courtesy of the Canon entourage. After dinner, I rushed back to the car to get my computer, pulled some of the days shots, and made a rather lame presentation, missing the first ½ hour of the show, and for all that effort, I only had 15 pictures in it. The overall slide show had some pretty good efforts, too, and I enjoyed the pictures quite a lot. In the meantime, I managed by default of three others, to win a Wheeling & Lake Erie mini Etch-a-Sketch, which I brought home and promptly gave to my daughter. As the evening wore, on, my narcolepsy medicine started to wear off, so I headed down to see what the Canon boys were up to before I crashed and burned. I noted that the 400 f4.0L DO IS lens was still available, and I put my dibs in on it. However, both Brian and Dave were quite busy with others, and although they knew I wanted to borrow it, they never wrote my name down. Finally, I managed to secure the lens, much to the chagrin of another Alta-Montee, who thought he had nabbed it for himself, and was ready to brawl. He looked a little harried at my overwhelming size, but Brian and Dave noted that I had requested it earlier, so the ensuing fisticuffs were averted. This got me pumped up again, and just about this time the ever sleepy Mike wandered down to the Flagstop Bar and had himself a couple of drinks. Now Mike and I, since our first trip to Essex in 2000, have made it a tradition to have the no-blood, no-foul World Ping-Pong championships down in the rec area of the bar every year. Problem is, Mike cannot beat me if his life depended on it. With a couple of drinks in him, he was talking some serious smack, and I knew I had to put him in his place. After Brian M cleaned my camera sensor, which had became a disaster with the Glacier Park hurricane season, I informed Brian that I was ready to clean Mike’s clock. Now to make a long story short, Mike put up a good fight, and he nearly had me in one game, but a miraculous comeback cemented Mike’s record at “Oh for the decade”. After Mike took one slam off the noggin, and I a welt forming, knock me down blow off my inner thigh that was precariously close to the family jewels (don’t ever let anyone convince you that a Ping-Pong ball at 100+ don’t hurt), we retired to the room, as I celebrated another in a long line of championships, and Mike grumbled about the red knot on his head.