Winter on Marias Pass
Take a break from the summer heat with a look back to a cold January weekend
It’s a brisk 77 degrees here in Columbia Falls, Montana, which actually feels quite nice compared to what it has been in recent days. But the heat is expected to return next week so to escape that I’ve found myself thinking back to a winter weekend back in January.
My wife Ashley and I spent a few nights at the Izaak Walton Inn in Essex, on the west slope of Marias Pass. Essex and the surrounding area is a great place for railroad photography all year long, but in winter it’s downright spectacular, providing you with a front-row seat to BNSF Railway’s herculean effort to move freight over this snowy mountain pass.
On a Friday night, we made the snowy drive up to Essex in the middle of a storm, getting to the Inn just as the worst of it was starting. Ashley and I had dinner with some friends and then they decided to go do some cross-country skiing on the Izaak Walton’s well-kept and well-lit trails. I opted to do something else: Photography. I set up on the pedestrian overpass just east of the Inn and waited for the “Mountain Work Train,” a plow train that is dispatched into the cold whenever there’s a storm. The train usually consists of two locomotives sandwiching two former Great Northern “Dozers,” which plow snow from between the rails. While I waited, a small maintenance of way machine tried to clear the tracks in front of the Inn. After getting a token shot of the work train — or at least as good as one can do when shooting a moving train in the dark — I headed back into the Inn for a drink with friends before heading to bed. We wanted to rest up before hitting the cross-country trails the next day.
It was still snowing when I looked out the window the next morning and found, to my surprise, that BNSF was reorganizing its Mountain Work Train. Instead of the dozers, crews were digging out two spreaders, which can work in much deeper snow. It turns out an avalanche had fallen overnight blocking the main line east of Essex. Suddenly, my plans for a day of cross-country skiing changed and I headed out into the cold for one of the best days of railroad photography I’ve ever had. It was challenging (U.S. Highway 2 was barely open and the shoulders weren’t plowed, so I often had to park in the middle of the road and hope no one else came before I got my shot) but in the end, it was worth it.
In my decade of living in Northwest Montana, I had only shot the Mountain Work Train twice before, and never in conditions like this. Often if BNSF needs to run the plow, it means you probably don’t want to be on the highway yourself. But being in Essex that weekend put me in the perfect position to capture these images. I’m already plotting another winter weekend at the Izaak Walton Inn in hopes that Old Man Winter cooperates again.
What else I’m working on…
Like I said earlier, it has been hot here in Northwest Montana and unfortunately, that means fire season is kicking off. This week, I wrote a piece for the Montana Free Press about how fire is impacting one of the fastest-growing parts of the state. As part of that reporting, I spent some time in Dayton along the shores of Flathead Lake where I saw two CL-415 scooper planes working the Elmo Fire. While the circumstances are unfortunate, it was fun to see these amazing aircraft work.
Meanwhile, things have been busy at Railfan & Railroad Magazine. In July, we published an entire issue dedicated to interlocking towers and I think it might be one of the best we have ever done. Marshall Beecher wrote about the three surviving railroad interlocking towers on Metra in Chicago. Arthur Erdman recalled his days working on the Erie Lackawanna (as the son and nephew of diehard EL fans, I loved this one). And then two of my favorite railroad photographers, Ted Benson and George Hiotis, took us to California in the 1970s and West Virginia in the 1990s with two incredible photo essays. If you haven’t seen this issue, I hope you check it out (You can buy it directly from White River Productions here or you can subscribe and see what we’re up to every month).
Until next time, stay cool…
Justin