Click here for videoFor the uninitiated, which Judy definitely was, it's a narrow, cliff-hugging drive over 6,646-foot-high Logan Pass that gains almost 3,500 feet in elevation in just a handful of miles.
"I've read that it's a real white-knuckle drive," said the 56-year-old from the cornfield country of Mallard, Iowa, where the elevation is all of 1,224 feet and you can drive the entire state without ever going much more than 400 feet higher than that.
You go. I'll be fine. Just leave me here, at the bottom.
She's certainly not the first person to have that reaction.
Since it opened in 1933, Going-to-the-Sun has thrilled many a visitor to Glacier, and scared the bejesus out of many more. Those traveling west-to-east and who sit on the passenger side of a vehicle feel like they're in an airplane climbing toward the heavens - with one notable exception.
The tires on the "airplane" never leave the pavement, and are always just a few inches from the side of a cliff that's always visible to passenger-side riders. It can seem ready to suck a car over its side, down onto its rocks and, thousands of feet below that, into its forests.
Judy, Neil and their 32-year-old son Zachary have come West to visit Judy and Neil's daughter and Zach's sister, Elizabeth, the guest services manager at Camp Lutherhaven in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The trip to Glacier was her idea.
"I thought about taking them to Oregon," Elizabeth said, "but the coast is too far."
And so, on a Thursday morning last month at the Visitor Center in Apgar,
28-year-old Elizabeth tried to calm her mother's fears prior to the ascent of Going-to-the-Sun. It wasn't easy.
"She was nervous on the two passes between Coeur d'Alene and Missoula," Elizabeth said, referring to Fourth of July and Lookout, tame by Logan Pass standards.
Judy may not take kindly to mountain passes, but she likes people, which is why - unbeknownst to her family - she agreed to let a reporter and photographer tag along behind the Hayens' Oldsmobile last month as they began a daylong exploration of Glacier on their first-ever trip to the national park.
The agreement brought its minuses - the reporter and photographer - but also its pluses. Worried that we would somehow sully the Hayens' Glacier experience, park officials assigned Ranger Megan Chaisson to watch over us as we watched the Hayens.
Just like that, the family from Iowa had their own personal and knowledgeable tour guide for their day in Glacier.
But Chaisson's mission was not to tell the Hayens where to go or what to see, only to make sure that wherever they went and whatever they saw wasn't overly disrupted by the paparazzi tailing them.
And so it was that, introductions out of the way, the Hayens climbed into their car, the reporter and photographer into Chaisson's park-issued pickup, and we all departed Apgar.
A quarter-mile later Neil, the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Mallard and also at Zion Lutheran in nearby Ayrshire, pulled up to a stop sign. Across the road, another sign indicated a left turn to head for Logan Pass.
Neil, in search of Going-to-the-Sun Road and unaware that Logan Pass sat at the top of it, took a right.
"Maybe there's something up here they want to see," said Chaisson, deciding not to flash her lights as the Hayens drove away from Going-to-the-Sun and toward Polebridge.
It was looking like Judy might never see the bottom of the pass, much less the top of it, but after a few miles Neil decided he might be lost and stopped.
Once turned around, the family began their trip through the heart of Glacier, starting with the shoreline around 10-mile-long Lake McDonald, created by a glacier that was 2,200 feet thick.
"It's interesting to see how other people tour the park," Chaisson decided as the Hayens drove past Lake McDonald Lodge, a popular stopping point, without turning in. Instead, a few miles later they exited the highway past the north end of Lake McDonald on an unmarked gravel road that accesses some of the handful of private land holdings on the lake, and drove into the forest.
"This actually comes to a bridge over McDonald Creek with a good view of McDonald Falls," Chaisson said, and that's where the Hayens made their first stop of the day.
Nearly 2 million people a year visit Glacier, but not many get a park ranger trailing along who can answer all their questions.
The green color of the water in McDonald Creek? Judy wondered.
"That's from a glacial powder, a fine sediment that has the consistency of baking powder," Chaisson told her. "It doesn't float at the top and it doesn't sink all the way to the bottom, either. It gives the water its color by acting as a prism."
"We don't have green creeks like this in Iowa," Judy said.
"They might be green, but they're a much different shade," Neil added.
"From pollution, not glaciers," Elizabeth explained.
How many bears does she encounter in her job?
"I probably average a black bear a week, and see a grizzly every other week," Chaisson said.
Back on Going-to-the-Sun, the Hayens looked like they wanted to pull off at McDonald Falls, but there were no open parking spaces in the cramped turnoff. Instead, they continued on to Avalanche Creek and the Trail of the Cedars, a short and level hike of 7/10 of a mile.
"The map says it's a moderate hike, or we wouldn't be taking it," Neil said, but at the back end of the path, the 3-mile and mostly uphill trailhead for Avalanche Lake lured Judy.
Could it be she was trying to postpone that trip up Logan Pass?
"I don't see too many casualties," Judy said as hikers who had already been to the lake came down the path. "Come on, let's go."
Deer just a few yards off the path caught the attention of Judy and Neil, who scrambled around trying to get pictures, but Elizabeth was nonplussed.
"They eat the flowers in my backyard in Coeur d'Alene all the time," she said, "so they're not as novel to me. Actually, I'm pretty frustrated by deer."
Chaisson, who graduated from Tufts University in Massachusetts before moving out West, again gave the Hayens the inside scoop on where they were. Glaciers receded before the creek cut the gorge they were hiking in 10,000 years ago, the ranger explained. Up ahead, Avalanche Lake is the home to genetically pure westslope cutthroat trout. No other species of fish has been able to jump the many waterfalls on Avalanche Creek and infiltrate the lake.
The hike gave us time to learn more about the Hayens and their home in Iowa, too.
Like many eastern Montana communities, Mallard has suffered as small family farms have turned into large corporate ones, they said. The town has dwindled to 300 or so people, but you'll find most of them at Friday night football games in the fall. Mallard, whose high school is consolidated with nearby West Bend, is home to a powerhouse high school football team.
The town is also known for the 20-foot-high wooden mallard that greets visitors out on Highway 4.
"Welcome to Mallard," it says. "We're friendly ducks."
Glacier is the fourth national park Neil and Judy have visited - they've also seen Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain and Badlands.
And, while Judy may be acrophobic, neither she nor Neil is claustrophobic. Unlike many flatlanders who grow up feeling a certain security in being able to see for miles and miles, the Hayens don't feel trapped by Glacier's towering peaks at all.
"When we were in the Black Hills once we visited a cave that took us into many narrow spots," Neil said, "and if either of us were claustrophobic, we never could have done that."
The hike to Avalanche Lake turns out to be a bit more demanding than the Hayens expected - "If this is moderate, I don't think I want to take a serious one," Neil said - but, once they're there, every bit worth the effort, they say - even though we miss a black bear that had been poking around along the shoreline just minutes earlier.
Five waterfalls tumble 3,000 or more feet off the mountains at the rear of the lake, including Monument Falls, which feeds off Sperry Glacier and originates in Floral Park, and the lake affords a beautiful view of Little Matterhorn.
"We have friends who've never been in the mountains," Judy said. "When we left home at the end of June the corn was knee-high. I'd love to see their reaction to this."
The trip down from Avalanche Lake was swifter, and when we reached the waterfalls near the trailhead, Neil noted, "It's like stepping into a cooler."
We all separated briefly, some heading for restrooms, some completing the short Trail of the Cedars hike, and in that time Judy again balked at continuing over Going-to-the-Sun. She loves standing here looking up at the mountains, she says.
She dreads the thought of looking down from them.
Back seat of the car. Driver's side, away from the ever-present ledge that leads to the forested abyss. That's the ticket, Judy was assured by those of us who don't have, and therefore don't understand, her fear of heights.
Gamely, maybe even bravely, she agreed to ride on.
As soon as the car began the climb - even before the switchback that turns motorists east and up the face of the mountain where men died building this marvel of a highway - Judy buried her nose in a book.
"Hallam's War," a novel by Elisabeth Payne Rosen, will keep Judy's mind occupied. While the rest of us take in the magnificent scenery under a late afternoon July sun, Judy will keep her mind otherwise occupied with the story of a Tennessee plantation owner struggling to come to grips with slavery and the approaching Civil War.
She'll look up long enough to ask one question.
"Why are there no guard rails?" she asked incredulously.
Actually, she saw more than that - the Weeping Wall covering the road in its wet tears. The view from a pullout where, after remaining in the car for a few minutes, she put down "Hallam's War" and exited to join her family. She noticed the construction workers busy re-doing Going-to-the-Sun, and marveled that they could work so high on the mountainside.
"What a job, to have to deal with that every day," she said.
Son Zach, who works at Wal-Mart in Fort Dodge, the nearest town to Mallard with much of a population base, has always had a fascination with Death Valley National Park in California, his parents said, and wants very much to visit some day.
But he's enthralled with Glacier too, first out of the car and leading the way on every walk, be it short or long.
"This is a very different type of beauty," Zach said.
Near the top of the pass, with the parking lot and Visitor Center just a short distance away, Neil pulled over at the lookout at Mount Oberlin.
Two mountain goats played right below us, then one got itself onto and caught between the handrails on the metal walkway, dodging the Hayens and a handful of other tourists who couldn't believe it when they came face-to-face with the animal.
"This doesn't bother me," Judy said after the mountain goat escaped the human bottleneck and joined its playmate. "The road seemed steep and windy and treacherous, but it was worth it. So worth it. I'm glad I came.
"A lot of people in our congregation back home have been to Glacier," she went on. "Some of them know my fear of heights, and will never believe I did this. Now I don't have to go home and pretend I did it, because I'm here."
"A tremendous day," Neil added. "One I'll marvel at again and again."
There is beauty in all God's creation, the pastor told us. Look long enough, he said, and you'll find it in the green of an Iowa cornfield.
On Going-to-the-Sun Road, you just don't have to look quite as hard.
Reach reporter Vince Devlin at 1-800-366-7186 or by e-mail at vdevlin@missoulian.com. Photographer Tom Bauer can be reached at (406) 523-5270 or at tbauer@missoulian.com.
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