Scenery Surrounds Glacier’s Glory

Dark night skies are environments undisturbed by light and air pollution. Dark night skies have natural, cultural, and scenic importance. Wildlife is impacted by light pollution because animals often depend on darkness in order to hunt, conceal their location, navigate, or reproduce. For nocturnal animals, light pollution also means habitat disruption. Additionally, many species have far more sensitive vision than humans. Plants are affected by artificial light because it disrupts their natural cycles.

Dark night skies are also culturally important because they are a resource common to all cultures on Earth. For millennia, Montana tribes have observed the sky to inform their seasonal rounds, or the way tribes used the landscape for subsistence during each season. The night sky is a treasure trove in terms of Indigenous knowledge.
Natural lightscapes, including dark night skies, are a scenic resource integral to many people’s Waterton-Glacier experience. Currently, 80 percent of Americans cannot see the Milky Way from their backyard, and if current light pollution trends continue, there will be almost skies left untouched by light pollution in the contiguous United States by 2025. Many people visit national parks to experience this vanishing resource. Waterton-Glacier hopes to provide and preserve this important opportunity by meeting the requirements and objectives of Dark Sky Parks.

Glacier National Park and its sister park, Waterton Lakes National Park of Canada, have been certified as an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA). The certification requires a long-term commitment to preserving dark skies and requires the parks to meet specific objectives. These include preservation or restoration of outstanding night skies, protection of nocturnal habitat, public enjoyment of the night sky and its heritage, and demonstrating environmental leadership on dark sky issues by communicating the importance of dark skies to the general public and surrounding communities, and by providing an example of what is possible.

Glacier Point Road will be closed in 2022 and may have reduced access in 2023. This road construction project could be construed as a challenge for travelers to Yosemite National Park, but it was our second president John Adams who famously declared “every problem is an opportunity in disguise.” Yosemite Mariposa County holds this lemons-to-lemonade truth to be self-evident. What some might call workarounds, around here we call them “playarounds.”

Despite the Glacier Point Road status, there are countless nature-lined avenues leading to outdoor fun in Yosemite Mariposa County. From discovering the hidden gems of the Park’s nearly 1,200 square miles to exploring the historic Gold Rush mecca of downtown Mariposa, from Sequoia grove-hopping to hiking (with grand effort) up to the temporarily car-less south rim of Yosemite Valley, the possibilities are as endless as the blue Sierra sky.