Logan Pass: The Continental Divide at Six Thousand Six Hundred Forty-Six Feet

Every raindrop that falls on Logan Pass is making a choice it has no awareness of making. If it lands on the west slope, it will eventually reach the Pacific Ocean by way of the Flathead River, the Clark Fork, and the Columbia. If it lands a few feet east, it joins the drainage toward the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Saint Mary River and the Saskatchewan River system, four thousand miles away. The Continental Divide runs directly through the parking lot. This is, technically speaking, the roof of the continent.

Logan Pass sits at six thousand six hundred forty-six feet, the highest point on Going-to-the-Sun Road and one of only a few places where a paved road crosses the Continental Divide within a national park in the contiguous United States. The alpine meadows on both sides of the parking lot bloom in beargrass from late June through mid-July; in a good snow year, the snowpack that fills the meadows doesn't fully melt until early August, and wildflowers bloom at the edges of the retreating snow as the season advances.

Mountain goats treat the parking lot as their territory and the tourists as a mild obstacle course. They have been doing this for as long as the parking lot has existed, apparently unbothered by the vehicles and the cameras and the people who stop in the middle of the road to photograph them. The Highline Trail begins here, running seven and a half miles along the Garden Wall toward Granite Park Chalet, the wire cable on the first exposed section ready for anyone who looks down at the drop and decides they would like something to hold.

At this altitude, in July, the sky is very close and very blue and the wind is cold even when the sun is full.