Plowing the Sun Road, Many Glacier 'slow going'

It's been a slow go plowing the Sun Road and Many Glacier over the past week as the weather went from bad, to great, to lousy again in the past few days in Glacier National Park.

Crews on the east side are still working in Many Glacier and the road is not expected to open to vehicle traffic this weekend, according to Park Spokeswoman Melissa Wilson. On the west side, crews are at Swede Point and are pushing to Granite Creek and beyond ?about a mile further than they were last week at this time. The road is closed to cars at Lake McDonald Lodge on the west side and Rising Sun on the east side.

In addition, construction crews looking to get to work on the road were also removing snow at higher elevations near the Loop and Crystal Point.

As such, hikers and bikers can use the road as far they want on the west side on the weekends, but on Mondays it is now closed at Packer's Roost. Tuesday through Friday the closure for hikers and bikers is at Avalanche Creek.

There are no current hiker-biker closures on the east side of the Sun Road any day of the week. One lane is plowed to Sun Point. The word of caution on the east side is that melting snow runs across the road surface as water, then freezes at night, making the road icy in spots.

Late last week saw snow and rain, but the weather was good Friday through Monday. Crews, however, work a Tuesday-through-Friday shift.

This week is supposed to dish up more bad weather, with rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains with highs in the 50s during the day and lows in the 20s and 30s at night.

The snowpack in the Flathead River Basin is now 122 percent of average snow water equivalent for this time of year and 97 percent of average for precipitation.

In short, there's still an awful lot of unmelted snow in the higher terrain. The Flattop Mountain Snotel in the Park currently lists the snow depth at 132 inches ?or 11 feet. In Many Glacier, there is still 29.2 inches of snow at the Snotel site, which is on a level surface in the trees out of the wind. The snow drifts in some places are much, much higher.