WEST GLACIER – Glacier National Park Ranger Micah Alley has to be ready for just about anything. That is clear when riding along with him on a recent Wednesday afternoon and surveying the back of his sports utility vehicle, which appears as packed as Inspector Gadget’s overcoat.
Between the two front seats is a gun rack with a shotgun and a rifle. Across the backseat is a pair of skies and hanging above that is Nomex firefighting gear. Alley said there is also a pair of snowshoes and some climbing gear buried under there as well.
“I don’t have the luxury of running back to the office,” Alley said.
Alley is a member of an elite group of law enforcement officers tasked with keeping one of America’s most celebrated parks, and the people who visit it, safe. While law enforcement rangers like Alley have served the park for more than a century, their work is especially noticeable during the summer when millions of people visit the park; especially this summer.
On July 12, a Washington woman slipped and drowned in McDonald Creek on the west side of the park. Three days later, rangers responded to two more water-related accidents; one where a young boy fell into the same creek in which the Washington woman died and another where a California family flipped their raft on the North Fork Flathead River. No one was injured in either incident.
Then, last week, rangers responded to two visitor deaths from cardiac arrest within 24 hours, all while keeping an eye out for a bear that a visitor had pepper sprayed and shot on the Mount Brown Trail.
“We have to have so many different skills because whenever there is a call, it’s a ranger who shows up, it doesn’t matter what it is,” Alley said, adding that rangers respond to a variety of emergencies, from whitewater rescues to wildfires. “What I enjoy most about this job is that there is no such thing as a normal day here.”
Today’s rangers receive a wide range of medical, rescue and law enforcement training, but that wasn’t always the case.
In 1910, the first rangers hired by the park’s superintendent, Maj. William R. Logan, were a rough-and-tumble group of poachers, whose primary goal was to protect the park’s wildlife. In the words of Logan, “it takes a poacher to find a poacher.” Among those first recruits was the legendary Joe Cosley who according to legend once ran from Polebridge to Waterton Lake just to attend a dance and was called a “panther on snowshoes” by local Blackfeet Nation members.
Today, rangers receive more formal training and spend 18 weeks at a federal law enforcement school in Georgia run by the Department of Homeland Security. While their territory often includes majestic mountains and lush landscapes, National Park Service rangers are still officers of the law, a fact that surprises some people.
“Bad people go on vacation too,” Alley said.
Alley has worked for National Park Service for 14 years and began as an interpretive ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Since then he has bounced around the West, with stops at Death Valley and Yellowstone before coming to Glacier last year.
As the Lake McDonald district ranger, Alley helps manage the seasonal rangers who work during the summers. Although park officials do not disclose the number of rangers in the park, they say it nearly doubles in the summer. Because park rangers need to be on call at any time, they are required to live in or near the park. Alley and his wife live near headquarters in West Glacier.
Rangers like Alley work five days a week, spending some time in the backcountry and some time in the front-country. Alley prefers those days spent hiking trails.
“If all you do is talk to hikers, share some information with them or tell them where to go, then I consider that day to be a win,” he said.
Alley said the most important aspect of his job is helping people and that it’s especially true when meeting children. He remembered an experience he had as a kid when he was at a park. As he complained about the bugs, a ranger wandered over and offered some insect repellent.
“The ranger probably doesn’t remember me or that exchange, but it stayed with me,” he said.