For Many Glacier caretakers, blog helps with sanity

When Ron Hoppner goes to work, he bundles up and heads out into the chill, passing by the dozen or so bighorn sheep that hang out near his door everyday.

That’s right, a dozen or so bighorn sheep. Every morning. Not far from the door. Chewing their cud. This is their home, too.

Ron and his girlfriend Jessie Scipkovsky are the winter caretakers at the Many Glacier Hotel.

They’re all alone here. The gate to Many Glacier is closed and locked at the Swiftcurrent Dam each fall. The only way out is to walk, snowshoe or ski — or a combination of all three. It’s a seven mile-plus trek, usually in a howling wind.

In other words, Many Glacier is a lonely, lonely place in the winter. To keep their sanity, the two have started a blog that is catching on with fans of Glacier National Park.

 It’s called “Snowed in at Many Glacier, a Sipner Production.” The Web address is mghinwinter.blogspot.com.

Either Ron or Jessie update the blog each day. Sometimes it’s tough to tell who did what. But the blog has helped keep the couple in touch with the outside world and more importantly perhaps, the outside world is in touch with them.

Why just the other day a mountain lion apparently took down one of the sheep and had dinner not too far from their cabin.

You can see the pictures on their blog.

The couple also take a daily, or at least semi-daily picture of the lake. They call it the “faux webcam.”

Ron is actually the only one on the payroll. Glacier Park Inc. pays for him to be here. His contract has him at the hotel through May 1. In other words, there’s an awful lot of winter to go.

Both, however, are Glacier Park Inc. employees. Jessie was the head housekeeper for GPI last summer and has been with the company for four years. Ron was the assistant rooms division manager.

Out here, they’re simply a team. Ron works at the hotel during the day and sometimes Jessie helps. But she also does the cooking. She said she likes to bake breads and cook the meals.

IN ORDER to avoid the monotony of food, she said she’s been going to a Web site where you enter your ingredients and it shoots you out a recipe for a meal. But still, she says she would like to have some fresh fruit and Ron is running a bit low on beer. They made seven trips to Costco to stock their freezers.

Both say keeping up the blog has been therapeutic.

“We’ve met so many great people,” Ron said in a recent telephone interview. The two have also worked at Beaver Creek Lodge in Colorado, and the blog has been a nice way to keep in touch with them as well.

“We’re amazed at how many people have logged into the site,” Jessie said.

As this story is written the couple is on day 89, with many more days to go. Ron is painting rooms in the hotel.

They stay in a small cabin next to the road and Ron walks the 150 yards or so to the hotel everyday. The cabin has cable TV and high-speed Internet. Ron says he rarely watches TV, but the Internet has been a blessing.

“GPI has been great about making sure we’re provided for,” he said.

THERE ARE plenty of maintenance jobs around the old hotel to keep him busy. One day recently the wind blew tons of snow through cracks in the doors and windows. Ron and Jessie shoveled and swept it up into garbage cans and hauled it out.

If it had melted, it could have damaged the floors — or at least made them wet.

The Many Glacier Hotel is like watching a big 200-plus room baby. It always needs attending to.

But it never gets boring.

“It’s amazing,” Ron said. “Something so familiar is new every day.”