Sunday broke with a little later start than normal, and after I had finished my morning pay phone call to my wife, I headed back to the room, and I noted that an EB grain train was starting up the hill. As I arrived back at the room, I realized the aches and pains I was suffering from were from dancing around the ping-pong table like a 20 year old in 44 year old body. I hurt. The sky looked pretty dingy, and as I started packing up, Mike took a peek out the window. Suddenly, he shouted, “We have to get going, there’s a passenger train out there!”. Well, either Mike was delusional after his ping-pong whipping, or he was talking about Amtrak, and a quick glance seemed to confirm that #8 should be in the vicinity. Mike insisted that this was not Amtrak, but some sort of special train. I was confident he was yanking my chain after rubbing it in that I’m an Amtrak foamer, but he did seem serious, and seeing how quickly he was moving led me to believe that maybe we should actually hurry, since morning and quick usually do not co-exist when in reference to Mike.
We quickly dashed out the door, Mike took on the pilot duties, and I navigated and manned the ATCS computer, and off we went. We formulated a brilliant plan that was sure to bring excellent results. The special train got held at Java West for a WB train, and we drove up the access road to check the signal. Sure enough, Diverging Clear was the light, and we turned around to cross the Hwy and shoot the train at the Java Crik trestle, only to see (or so I thought), BNSF police near the bridge. Turns out I was hallucinating, but now we were out of time to set-up, so we took off up the hill. We decided to head to Triple Divide, shoot a telesmash of the grain train the special was following, then broaden our view for a semi-broadside of the varnish. Amtrak was now in the picture at this point as well, so we figured that we’d catch all three here, then let them speed east, as we headed back down the hill, expecting to work our way to the Kalispell Wally-World for a power supply and other shots we wanted.
Well, that’s a spectacular plan if the trains are actually going to where you THINK they are going. A westbounder cleared up at Spotted Robe, and then our EB grain train took off, and we nailed the shot at Triple Divide of the grainer,
but looking at the ATCS display, it appeared that the special was being lined in the siding at East Glacier. AND...the DS was telling this WB that he would be meeting Amtrak at Grizzly. Now wait a minute, the special was second out. INSERT LONG PAUSE, NOW HOLDING BREATH.
Someone on the special was conversing to the DS that it would be better to let Amtrak run around them, as their move would delay #8 for too long a period. It was about this time that I started getting that warm tingly sensation in my stomach, and my cheeks started getting that rosy color and puckering feeling, you know, when you suddenly realize that things are not going the way you had planned?
Seems the special was going to run around his train at Glacier, then head back west. Great plan we had. We actually got bit by this planning bug again later in our trip, while down on the MRL. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, bury me flippin’ head and cry…We decided that the best plan was to head to Spotted Robe to get ourselves a little closer to shoot Amtrak, then catch up with the special when it departed west again. We set-up at Spotted Robe after a little foraging and investigating, as we had never been here before in the 6 years we’ve been to Alta-Mont, at least not to Spotted Robe proper. I had always used Spotted Robe to describe my shots from Triple Divide in years past, but this year was different. Not wanting to, and more importantly, not believing we had time to climb the hill (and the associated fenceline), we settled for a long tele set-up back west for Amtrak. Mike had plopped the 400 f4 DO on his camera with my 2X converter, and with the 1.6 conversion factor of the camera, he was set for some obnoxious super-duper tele-smash of like 1280mm or something stupid like that. Did I tell you the wind was blowing the snot out of my nose here? Mike made some half-ass crack about seeing an ant crawling off of the signals up the hill a ways, while I was squinting my eyes, looking up the tracks trying to find these purported mystery signals that the human eye could not see. Mike made another crack about seeing a CRJ take off from Kalispell, but then abandoned the idea of the mother of all telephoto shots when he discovered that the wind and the associated focal length made the image in the viewfinder look like Glacier Park was having a magnitude 20 earthquake, even with the IS on. We got the shot of Amtrak,
and hightailed it back towards East Glacier, where the special train was already pulling away. Since our secondary plan of shooting him at the Midvale Crik bridge was already dashed, we headed back to Bison and tried to carpetbag with a dozen or so other Alta-Mont foam. Thought we had it nailed, but the sun inked out just as the head end got in the perfect composition of the image. Still looks OK, but it would've been killer had the light stayed for maybe two more seconds.
Not satisfied, we decided to try a shot at the Goat Lick Trestle.
Now Mike has made himself a legendary name, coined by the late Brian Gould, a close friend of ours, as on nearly every trip, he decides he’s going to go off and try to pull off some scenery shot where if he falls down, no one will ever find him. Ansel Peters once disappeared for an extended time somewhere near Shawmut, AZ only to find out after we had returned home, the shutter on his medium format camera failed to fire. Ansel’s adventures are not relegated to long hike’s either, like the time near Guernsey, WY State Park where the 4x5 snow maker was born. While driving over a high bluff not far from where the second tunnel used to be in the park, Mike stopped at a breath-taking view over the lake below and the bluffs on the far-side. I offered to be his gaffer, only because I didn’t have to hike a thousand yards through here-to-for undiscovered scrub-brush, or up a mountainside. I got a 4x5 film holder loaded up with film and we went from sunny skies as I handed him the holder, to instant blizzard, just as Mike started to frame-up the shot. Couldn’t see the ground in front of us, let alone the lake and bluff on the other side. Disgusted, Mike packed it in, and as soon as he did, the blizzard was instant off, returning to bright sunny conditions. Never saw anything like that… Anyway, at Alta-Monts previous, he’s more like Mountain Goat Mike, crawling all over the local mountains, including a particularly nasty climb in 2001 near Marias, when the railroad went on red alert when the bombing of Afghanistan began. Mike had a pakset with him, and I’m not sure if Mike thought he was about to get bombed or not, but the expletives deleted rolling down the mountainside were a sure sign that MGM was ready to go the battle with the Commies. Ah, but I digress...(copyright Grumpy). While I was setting up for the shot at the road bridge, Mike was clambering up the hill behind me, with the really loose slag type rock impeding his progress. Good thing there’s no cell signal down here, as Mike probably would’ve killed himself while texting that girl-he-claims-is-not-really-his-girlfriend. My brain hurts. He managed to get settled however, and I took a shot of Mountain Goat Mike.
After a rather bleary shot of the special,
we decided to forgo any further chase, only to discover later that night at the IWI, that he sat at Belton for 2 hours while the passengers got bussed around in Glacier Park. We stopped back by the IWI, where I downloaded an update to the ATCS decodes that filled in the holes I was missing. Ansel Peters was off making pictures of the Inn and cabooses on the hillside while I was being computer geek. After confirming that the Canadian Turkey Day dinner was going to happen on Sunday night, we slowly made our way back up the hill. An eastbound had passed while we were still at Goat Lick, and we managed to pass him as we were climbing by the old Marias crossovers. With the ATCS kicking in here near Summit, a Westbound appeared coming out of East Glacier, so we raced to a spot near the center of the Bison siding. Not liking my shot here, especially since we’ve done it before, I took off in a mad dash across US2, hopping those new extruded aluminum guardrails on both sides of the highway, and hoofing it along the side of the highway for about 200 feet, all this with the 400 F4 DO and camera attached to the tripod. I tried my best to imitate Carl Lewis doing to 100m high hurdles, I’m sure much to the humor of several other foamers who had stopped and stayed close to Mike’s location. I managed to get a nice long nosy shot of the train plying its way by the Bison East siding switch.
With a meet here between our EB we first saw at Goat Lick and this WB earthworm, we made a quick stop at the snack shop (Now you know why I’m a bit on the rolly-polly side), and after much begging, I convinced Mike to stop at the Two Medicine Bridge shot. For whatever reason, Mike had convinced me to avoid this spot for several years now, last shot I had from here was in 2002. We hopped out, and proceeded to carpetbag on the Canon boys shot, (which actually looks kind of nice),
whence I came to realize that they had managed to nab the same Chevy Suburban we had last year. What a ride that thing was. Poor saps though, shame they had to get it after Mike and I were done with it…
The ole ATCS showed that another EB was waiting for a WB to clear at Spotted Robe, and Mike suggested that we head to the west bridge at Browning, and retry that shot that I had flubbed the day before, and seeing that we had a couple of trains, if I flubbed it, I would have a back-up plan. He said he wanted to try something a little different there anyway, so off we went. Did I mention that it gets a bit windy up here? I slapped on the borrowed 400 f4 DO, and I liked the frame-up much better than I did the day before. I nabbed the first EB and I tried to get a vertical telesmash after shooting the horizontal one, with marginal success. However, the horizontal image framed up nicely, and this time I managed not to put the snow fenceline in my image so that it looked like a 50 foot horizontal antenna off the front of the locomotive.
Mike had made a similar comment about his shot previously as well. However, I winced in pain while cursing under my breath, when it suddenly dawned on me that my shots at East Bison, Two Medicine and here were all overexposed by a whole stop, since I had put my ISO setting at 400 and shutter priority for the special at Goat Lick trestle. I had switched back to my manual settings per my usual configuration, but forgot to change the ISO. What a putz. Thank God I shoot everything in RAW, since the snow on the mountain was all blown out. As I pitter-puttered around, I realized the second EB was approaching rapidly. It suddenly got very breezy (its all relative, you know), but the IS on the 400 made the image in the viewfinder nice and settled, although it seemed to sway a little, leaving a slightly nauseated feeling. I nailed the shot, this time with the right exposure, then tried the vertical again without much success.
It doesn’t look like they would, but the trains whip around the corner coming under the bridge pretty quickly, and there is little time for re-composing, which made my secondary shot from the day before amaze me even more, since I actually had to change lenses.
We piled back in the car, and looking at the ATCS, and it looked like we had a couple of WBs meeting the two east guys at Browning and Blackfoot respectively. Trying to think of a shot, we decided to try the road shot with the big hump, about halfway between Spotted Robe and Grizzly. I decided it was time to try the Super-Duper telesmash here, but I missed very slightly on the focus, and misjudged the angle that the train was approaching on, and I misjudged the height of the rails blocking the tracks and snowplow on the locomotive, since he was on the far track. I also misjudged the effect of heat distortion and the wind (heat distortion when there’s snow on the ground?) Do you like blurry, poorly composed, windblown, over telesmashed, but well-exposed shots? Pretty good, eh? El-flubbo the shot-o. We had been joined by some carpetbaggers, who hopped in the vehicle and spun- off after the first WB went by. I’m terrible with names, and I know these guys, but criminy, I’m 44 years old, so I apologize for not being able to give credit to our fellow Alta-Montees. So, while waiting for the second WB, who was struggling beyond belief against the wind (remember the wind?), we (or I guess I) decided to take some foamer shots, which are kind of a tradition on trips of this sort, and Mike begrudgingly obliged to take a foamer shot of me.
As the other train finally started grinding up the hill, I set up a 400mm shot with the borrowed DO lens. This one worked out much better, although I missed on the focus again, but this time just a tad.
Almost looks kind of like Grumpy’s back focus issues, although I would probably tend to believe it was more operator error. After this shot, we did the prudent thing, and headed back into East Glacier for gas. Couldn’t we have gotten gas when we got all snacked up earlier? Well these kind of things happen to me all the time. At this point, not sure what to do, we took a look at our ATCS, and lo and behold, an EB had just met the second WB at Bison and was coming our way. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you, that when it comes to backlit shots, if their not all Orangy and glinty, I tend not to take them. But I hadn’t gotten a shot of Grizzly with the big mountains in the background yet, and as we were headed east, I managed to plead with Mike to actually turn the vehicle in the other direction, and get a shot of this guy there. Mike refused to shoot this, since he was disgusted that he actually went the other direction, but I fired off a few that were really nose dark. But, the effect was actually quite pleasing, and I’m glad I took them.
At this point, we decided that we were going to head off to the east in search of westbounds, because the light was spectacular. Even with the beautiful light, there are no shots of WBs with the mountains in the background (save for a couple of areas were the Sweetgrass Buttes show themselves). We paced the EB I shot at Grizzly, all the way past Pardue, when a WB popped onto the ATCS just as we saw him climbing the hill out of Cut Bank. We turned around and set-up at Pardue, thinking we would get the grain elevator in the shot, but it sets off too far to the south, leaving us with the shot from Anywhere USA. We took it though, and it actually isn’t bad.
Mike put another U-turn on (Wow, two U-turns in one day!), and we raced back to Merriwether, were we shot a long tele, from slightly up the hill and around the curve, this time with a grain elevator actually in the picture.
Knowing that there was a fleet of WBs coming, but that they were still quite a ways off, we bounced around the hill and set-up at Camp Disappointment, another place we hadn’t shot since 2002. The wait was over an hour, since the next westbound had power problems and had to wait on helpers all the way from Essex, but it was quite interesting to watch the parade of trains on the ATCS. At this location, I was picking up indications from everything that had been decoded up here, from Summit to Cut Bank East. Pretty damn neat. It’s a real shame though, the signals are being put on fiber from Summit to Browning by years end, and all the way to Havre within a couple of years, so ATCS won’t help from the ‘Fish east anymore. At least those unsightly towers will come down at Bison, and Cut Bank in particular. Two bad I didn’t have my set-up on previous trips, that would’ve been amazing.
Just before the first train arrived, a large group of carpetbaggers, showed up, with Bob Gallagher and Chad Jolley in tow. Chad had mentioned that he was just back from a Minnesota adventure with Dave Busse and Mark Lynn, who were notably absent from this years festivities. Another foamer who met us there was from Calgary, and was riding a motorcycle, much to our bewilderment, all played out in a skin-tight, red leather biker’s outfit, and toting around a camera. We questioned the guy about the ability to ride a motorbike in these gale-force winds, but he assured us that he was used to riding in the wind, saying since just going in one direction at track speed is essentially like riding in a 70+mph wind. Yeah, but that doesn’t explain the other 50 mph wind that ain’t cause you’re riding…
Anyway, the group informed us about the WB’s that were coming, but I was already a step ahead with the ATCS, although they were able to ID the trains and the power consists, which I can’t do from the ATCS. I took two pretty similar shots that look damn good through the s-curves with the Camp D monument in the background, but the sun was moving fast enough that the second shot has a lot of dark on the near side on the locomotive. Not entirely unpleasing, though. The last of the bunch was Amtrak, but he was still a bit out.
We figured we would drive up to the Camp Disappointment monument, and see if there was any previously unseen angle from up there that might give a good view for my varnish fetish.
As we were doing this, there was some open range horseys roaming around, eating their fill of free veggies, and I thought it might be cute to shoot a couple of pictures of these things at close range. I had my camera body in the passenger seat with me, but no lenses on it (don’t ask). So, if I was going to GTS, I would have to exit the car and retreat to the rear access hatch of our Trailblazer to retrieve a lens. After assembling my camera, and making sure I had my memory card in with plenty of images left, I sauntered slowly towards the front of the car, as the horses had turned their backsides towards us. I walked further down the dirt road towards US Hwy 2 to try and get a tele-nose-smash shot, or at least a broadside of the horsepower. I got a nice broadside from about 30 feet away from one of them,
then I continued on until I was about 150-200 feet from the car, and finally was in reasonable position to shoot the nosy telephoto. After firing off the shot, one of the horses suddenly took a keen interest in me and started a slow trot in my direction. Now I’m not sure why I suddenly became of interest, except I figured Mike probably plugged the poor sap with a rock or something, and seeing that I was an easier target than a Trailblazer, began to assimilate an attack position. However, it suddenly dawned on me horses out here know that humans have food to give, or as my suddenly wind-blown mind realized, perhaps humans ARE food. In any case, his initial approach was slow, and just about time he pulled even with the Trailblazer, 30 feet to the eastward side of it, his gait seemed to slowly increase. Up until now, although twitching slightly, I thought it would be nice to get a more detailed tele-nose-smash shot, and I fired one off,
but I began to rethink my plan of any further shooting at this point. I started waving frantically at Mike to come get me, or at least head the thing off at the pass, but through the glare of the windshield, it was hard to determine where Mike was looking, or what he was doing, and the vehicle was not moving (I could only assume that he was texting his not-really-girlfriend). Still waving frantically and beginning a low retreat to who knows where, the horse continued to approach, probably now about 90 feet away, close enough that he had closed off my escape pass if I had chosen to run to the truck, and the seemingly clueless Mike, who I could now see fiddling with his camera, most likely viewing his shot of the equestrians. At this point, despite my better part of valor, I hollered at the top of my lungs, hoping that I might be heard over the non-stop wind. Well, two things happened. The horse, apparently startled by my yelling, briefly stopped in his tracks, and Mike actually did hear me, glancing at the horse slightly in front and to the east of him, whence he commenced to start laughing at my expense, but still failing to move the vehicle so my huge butt could be saved. The horse’s stop was brief, but his approach was much more subtle at this point, and when Mike finally started moving the car, the horse took off in the other direction, back to one of his mates, probably realizing a tangle with the Trailblazer would be an ill-fated adventure. After Mike picked me up and I got settled back in the car, I just gave him an evil look and told him “humans have food”. A giggle later and we were off, trying to set ourselves up for Amtrak at Merriwhether, which would be our last shot of the day. It was a race, as the ATCS showed him OS-ing Piegan.
Hustling around the corner, we made it, which actually turned out to be a really cool shot, except upon later examination, a big power line crosses through the top of the shot. So Photoshop Ricky had to plunder and purge the offending obstruction, something I typically don’t like to do.
We worked our way slowly back down to the Inn, and settled in for a nice cozy, Canadian Thanksgiving dinner. Its really cool when you get to celebrate Thanskgiving twice each year. After dinner, I begrudgingly returned the 400 F4 to Brian and Dave, and thanked them for their hospitality, the dinner Canon provided, the borrowing of the lens, and cleaning my camera. Paul Birkholz came down announcing that the slide show was getting ready to begin, but seeing that I had yet to make contact with my wife and child via webcam this entire trip, and the fact that my little girl kept asking to see Daddy while he was at work with Mike in the mountains, was enough to keep me in the Flagstop bar for a well-needed chat and viewing with the beloved family. The conversation went well, until I “introduced” her to several other attendees via the webcam, to which she was not amused, and my kid got more of a kick out of seeing Mike play peek-a-boo on the camera than talking to Daddy…
I waited downstairs for a while hopefully to hook up with FBE so that we could get a read on the next portion of our trip down to the MRL, challenging Mike to another round of the NB-NF World Ping-Pong Championship, but he feigned a serious knee injury from the night before. I was really starting to get sleepy, so I headed back up to the room, and hopefully look at a few of the images from today, which was pretty successful, actually. However, I noted the computer battery power was about gone, so I headed out to the car to charge it up. My second wind hit me again, and I decided to head up the hill for to try and fire off a couple of night shots of the signals at Summit, with a train approaching. I pulled into one of the pull-offs just east of Summit, and turned my headlights off, and was completely startled by the inky blackness. I cannot remember ever being in a place so black. With the clouds and lack of starlight or moonlight, it was blacker than black. I opened the window of the car, and was met by a frigid blast of wind, and realized that my hope of shooting a night shot was rather ill-advised, due to the utterly complete darkness, the artic-like cold air and wind, and the potential for animal encounter in conditions where I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Begrudgingly, I headed back down the hill, and after another game of NHL 07 on the PSP, I drifted off to sleep, with dreams of ES44DCs and SD40-2s dancing in my head.