Save Glacier's 'Reds'

Every few years plans are announced that a portion of Glacier Park’s vintage red buses will be restored and/or updated. The announcements usually include the warning that eventually the 1936 buses will have to be replaced. Restoration is expensive. Most recent updating was paid for by the Ford Motor Company.

I imagine that someday, the vehicles will be taken out of service and replaced by conventional and unglamorous vans. But I hope that day won’t come soon.

For motorists who are uncomfortable with driving on Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, there’s still an adventurous opportunity to ride the “Reds,” that have been updated for safety. Skilled bus drivers stop often for photo-ops and tell passengers about park highlights – and then some.

The late Bob Steel, former manager of the Glacier Park Transport Company’s fleet of the red bodied, canvas-roofed, 14-18 passenger tour buses, told me a few of the yarns several years ago.

He said “No ride would be complete without a few tall tales and each driver has his favorites. The basic stories are as old as the hills – with new directions, new words, new places. They’ve kicked around the park for years. You’ll hear the same things with slight variations in Yellowstone, Yosemite or Mount McKinley in Alaska because some of the people who work here have worked there.”

One tale involved a woman passenger who knew her weakness but wanted to see as much as she dared. As the 18-passenger “Red” started to climb Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass, she calmly removed a brown paper bag and put it over her head. There it stayed until the bus had safely descended the other side of the mountain. In the meantime, people on both sides of her described the scenery.

Some of the stories of the past sound like tall tales but they’re not – authentic photographs in old drivers’ manuals prove the existence of conditions described in early day jammer lore.

The first motorized buses – ten 11-passenger buses and four seven-passenger touring cars – were unloaded at Glacier Park Station in 1914. Earlier touring coaches were 11-passenger horse-drawn tallyhos.

There weren’t many places for the new buses to go. When the park was established four years earlier there were no roads inside the park and no north-south highway on the Blackfeet Reservation. Early bridges were crude pole and plank structures.

While the summer of 1914 was a dry one and good for road and bridge building, the following summer was extremely wet. It rained nearly every day. New roads turned into quagmires.     

On Milk River Flats, Jack Galbreath, a former teamster, put his talents to work to help out the buses. Drivers would go as far as they could in the slop. Then Galbreath would hitch his team to a bus and take a position on a bus fender. With reins to an eight-horse hitch in hand and a few appropriate words on his lips, he’d start the horses pulling. The combination of natural and gasoline horsepower usually enabled the vehicles to reach firmer ground.

Similar scenes were repeated in 1927 when the “Reds” went into the Waterton Lakes area of Canada for the first time. The road from Babb to Cardston was graded, but from Cardston to Waterton Lakes, it was little more than a trail and “dug aways.” When it rained, the gumbo base was so soapy the buses were unable to stay on the road and drivers took to the fields.

Sometimes the fields became marshes, though, and buses bogged down. Many an Albertan farmer and his team came to the rescue until the road was graded. The more direct Chief Mountain Highway was completed in 1935.

Those harrowing days are history but it’s still an adventure to ride the Reds. Most popular trip is the Going to the Sun Road.

A variety of “Red Bus Tours” are available leaving from the east, northeast and west sides of the park. For schedules, prices and reservations, watch for announcements in the park’s opening plans for the 2013 tourist season.         

While not as historically glamorous as riding the reds, motorists may park their cars and ride on shuttle vans, which run from 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. daily, between the Apgar transit center and St. Mary visitor center.  Shuttles run every 15 or 30 minutes depending on location and time of day. Reservations or tickets are not required. Transit stops are marked along the GTS route.