Having visited there early this summer, my wife and I have been following the news of the current fires with dismay and a little hearbreak, too. By far the worst of the three is the Howe Ridge Fire, which was started by lightning on Saturday night and was for 24 hours merely a smoulder. On Sunday, west winds kicked up and the thing exploded. It's now up to about 2,500 acres and though it isn't quite as bad now as it was on Sunday, it's still a bad one.
Howe Ridge is on the western side of beautiful Lake McDonald, a highlight of the park, and it burned in similar fashion in 2003. That side of the lake is mostly forest, but there are several homes, campsites, and a ranger station on the northwest side. A bunch of these burned, including eight of the twelve old log cabins in Kelly's Camp, a National Register of Historic Places site of vacation homes originally built in the early 1900s before the park was designated. It's tragic, and fortunately, no lives have been lost to the fire.
We stayed a night in the area of Lake McDonald Lodge on the east side of the lake, at a motel near the lodge and private homes on the waterfront, all of which have been evacuated since the fire threatened. The photographs taken of the fire from across the lake have been astonishing.
I hope these are under control now and perhaps won't impact your trip too much. Right now, the entire Going-to-the-Sun road on the west side leading from Lake McDonald to Logan Pass is closed due to heavy smoke, and several back-country campgrounds and trails are not accessible. Having a season of two major fires impacting the park so much in successive years has been eye-opening to this Easterner.
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Ukraine -- now more than ever
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