Head-on wrecks and thunderstorms
What a neat week. Sunny and warm until Thursday with only mosquitoes and fast drivers with rafts to cuss at. Things started to change on Wednesday with a horrible head-on crash late in the afternoon.
The accident was lucky in that no one was seriously hurt. Only a bloody nose and probably stiffness all over the next day. Both vehicles were no doubt totaled. Neither could be towed, but had to be carried out on a truck. All of this on a long straight stretch of road on a sunny day. I don’t know if booze was a factor, dust could have been, but I have no doubt speed was involved.
Speed on the North Fork Road is becoming more and more of an issue. Every week I am hearing about folks being forced off the road by a speeding vehicle. Only the fact that one of the two drivers was driving defensively prevented an accident. Sooner or later, two speeders meet or one is taking up so much of the road that the other cannot escape a collision.
The North Fork Road is, without a doubt, very dusty in parts and rough in places. The speed limit is 35 miles per hour where it is unpaved and 45 miles per hour where it is paved from Home Ranch Bottoms to Hay Creek. There is risk at any time but increased traffic is creating more and more liklihood of a fatal crash. And it is all avoidable.
Obviously, the stupidity and lack of regard for others by a minority has created a danger for all of us. Stupidity is not likely to be eliminated. To me, that means we really need a Highway Patrol presence. Currently MHP is only on the North Fork in response to an accident. If we can handle 100,000 people going into Glacier Park at Polebridge and uncounted thousands floating the river and camping and hiking in the Flathead Forest, then there should be government responsibility to provide all of us with some degree of safety.
On Thursday the weather changed, and we had violent thunderstorms and heavy rain. I’m sure anyone on the river ended up drenched and cold, sometimes with well over an hour before they could find a place to get warm and dry. As for me, I was on my screened-in porch enjoying the thunder and lightning and watching the rain fall so hard my driveway became a stream. I can’t wait to talk to folks who were on the river or just caught out in the open when the storm hit.
If I had been on the river, I wonder if I would have sensed the severity of the storm before it hit. If so, would I have landed and made a shelter out of the boat? Probably not and anyone in a kayak would have less chance of creating a shelter.
In short, the North Fork is a special place but we need to consider other people and realize that Mother Nature can be a mean old bag. That means thinking of others and plan for mishaps—both human caused or created by Mother Nature.
What do you think?
Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.