Twenty years ago, wildfires raged across the region

The summer of 2003 was a lot like 2023 in Northwest Montana. A dry spring followed by a drier June and July.

In 2003 the region saw dry thunderstorms in mid-July with plenty of lightning and by July 16 the Trapper Fire was burning in the McDonald Creek Valley in Glacier National Park a few miles north of the Going-to-the-Sun Road and the the Wedge Canyon Fire was cooking up the North Fork, burning through a couple thousand acres of dry timber near Teepee Lake in just a few hours.

On July 23, 2003 things really took a turn. It was a hot, miserable, day and I was sitting at the Loop on the Going-to-the-Sun Road late in the afternoon. This was back before the huge crowds in Glacier Park and finding a parking spot was relatively easy.

I had three cameras — back then digital cameras weren’t very good, so if you wanted really good images you still shot film — slide film to be exact.

The Trapper fire was now looking more ominous just north of the Loop and slowly, but surely coming toward us. The smoke began to swirl in the skies like a slow-moving tornado — round and round it went burning through stands of lodegpole pine.

I kept shooting photos along with fellow photographer Karen Nichols of the Daily Inter Lake. The fire kept getting closer and closer. Girls in bikinis posed for photos, driving a Red Bull Truck with a giant fake can of the energy drink in the bed of the pickup while the fire burned behind them.

Nichols recalled the sound of the fire, at first the dull roar of a jet engine — in the distance, then much, much closer.

“I remember seeing the fire way out there,” she recalled in an interview on Monday.

And then it seemed like it was on top of us.

“It was so fast. Five minutes,” she said.

The roar of the fire intensified.

“And then you’re standing next to that jet,” she said.

There were no rangers around until later and Nichols recalled shouting at people to get out of there. They just stood at the guardwall and watched the flames.

It was a circus atmosphere. Until it wasn’t.

Then a ranger arrived and the flames were right on the edge of the road and everyone ran.

A 300-foot wall of flame roared along side the road and then up and over it. People ran for their cars, myself and Nichols included.

“I remember running to my car and my hands were shaking,” Nichols said, “I’d never seen a fire move that quickly.”

Up at Granite Park Chalet maintenance workers Chris Burke and Mike Sanger were doing heroic work. The two men kept 39 hikers and guests from going down the Loop trail where they surely would have been caught in the fire and perished as the Trapper Fire burned around the chalet.

They would later receive valor awards for their efforts from the National Park Service.

“It was very cool heads on their part,” Mick Holm, who was superintendent of Glacier at the time recalled.

Without their quick actions, “We would have been to a lot of funerals,” Holm added.

So no one was injured or killed in the Trapper Fire.

All that was lost was a portable toilet and a vehicle that couldn’t be moved in time.

But the story of the fires of 2003 was just beginning — as I drove down the Sun Road and out of the park that evening, I turned up Highway 2 in West Glacier.

A massive black cloud of smoke was in the sky to the west — it was the Robert Fire, racing into the park.

The Robert Fire started in the hills above Blankenship at a campfire site, crossed the North Fork and raced into Glacier in a few hours.

The next morning I found myself with Columbia Falls firefighters Karl Weeks, Ty Shanks and Ron Ross doing fire protection on a home just above Glacier Rim. They were the experts, I was just along for the ride. The idea was to wait until the fire came to the home, then spray a home with a sticky fire retardant.

A host of other firemen from other departments were doing the same thing on other homes as well. The fire burned all around the home and then suddenly, it was in the front yard, torching a stand of lodgepole pine as they sprayed the home with the retardant.

The air was choked with smoke and my eyes watered to slits as I took photos. We raced out of there just as the flames crossed over the driveway toward the home.

Later, once the fire front had passed we went back. The home was still standing and they went to work hitting hots spots in the driveway.

“It was definitely my first big fire I was on,” Weeks, who is the Columbia Falls fire chief today, said.

He noted that the retardant is no longer used today and tactics have evolved since then. Now, firefighters will do what structure protection they can, then they leave and come back to put out hot spots.

This particular home had a large front yard and little vegetation near the home itself. If it hadn’t, it likely would have been a different story, Weeks noted.

Firefighters didn’t just save homes that day — they also saved a pony, leading it down the North Fork Road as the fire burned on both sides of the road.

A day so later Glacier National Park Superintendent Mick Holm recalled that he had a big decision to make. A firefighting team from Alaska wanted to set out a burnout on Apgar Mountain.

The idea of burnouts is fairly simply — firefighters start a fire in front of the main fire to form a burned area that will stop the progression of the main fire.

Back then the technique wasn’t used as frequently as it is today, and Holm was admittedly wary, he recalled.

“Alaska had done this before,” he recalled.

Park and firefighters had a own hall meeting in West Glacier. It was packed to the rafters and tension was high.

But Holm explained to the crowd there weren’t a lot of options.

If the wind picked up, the fire would do what it wanted to do, likely burning into Apgar Village, park headquarters and West Glacier. With the burnout, firefighters at least had some measure of control.

“I think folks thought we had our backs to the wall,” he said.,

So he made the decision, and literally signed the documents to go ahead with the burnout.

It worked as designed.

For almost two weeks the Robert Fire stayed, but did not move out of the Apgar Hills.

On Aug. 12, the wind picked up and Robert sent embers across the Camas Road, but to the north of Apgar and homes along Lake McDonald.

It was a spectacular blaze that would eventually burn all the way to Mount Stanton.

But Apgar Village and West Glacier went unscathed and Kelly Camp was saved as well by another burnout that sent flames up and over the homes along Lake McDonald’s shoreline.

(Many homes were later lost in the Howe Ridge Fire of 2018, which re-burned the woods 15 years after Robert).

Up the North Fork, The Wedge Canyon Fire also went on massive runs as well. It burned down seven residences and 29 outbuildings. It would eventually burn all the way to Upper Kintla Lake in Glacier.

Other fires burned across the region, including big fires in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and in the Middle Fork of the Flathead in Glacier.

On Sept. 8, 2003 it rained about an inch over most the fires and then it rained and snowed a week later.

The fires were out, but when all was said and done, about 310,000 acres in the region had burned, including six major fires in Glacier. Inside the park, Robert alone burned just under 40,000 acres; Wedge Canyon 30,300.

Holm recalled that it was the most expensive Park Service firefighting effort in history, save for the blazes in 1988 in Yellowstone.

“When all was said and done, one injury, no loss of life,” he said.

But coming down from the daily grind of fire was exhausting. Holm recalled it was 65 straight days of fire.

“There was a lot of feeling of helplessness,” he recalled. “You give it you best and hope it works out for the best.”

For Nichols, that day at the Loop will never be forgotten.

“It kind of lives in my body a little bit,” she said.