National Park Visitors Spark Outrage After Climbing Risky Snow Bridge: ‘How Reckless Can You Be?’
As ancient sages have often said, strong winds have a way of diverting even the most dedicated warrior. In the case of Montana’s Glacier National Park, however, the winds perform this task by crafting a stunning deception known as “snow bridges.” Spread like thick veils of white, sugary snow, these bridges form when snowflakes plummeting from the sky are caught by gusts of wind and settle into the voids left by crevasses, fissures, ditches, and cracks. Over time, the accumulation of these flakes creates a fragile blanket over the gaps, leading hikers and climbers to mistake them for sturdy crossings, though in truth, they are like a house of cards that can collapse at any moment.
In a post resurfacing on the internet, Reddit user u/EfficiencyExpress428 called out certain visitors for recklessly allowing their children to jump onto a snow bridge, knowing well enough that it could crumble down beneath their feet, and send them tumbling dozens of feet deep into a slush of ice.
The user shared two pictures of these careless hikers, most likely the children’s parents, who didn’t seem to be cautious of their children’s safety. The pictures shared are from the summer months, which is typically a season when the park is crowded with hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors. Undulating alpine valleys become dotted with excited faces posing in front of their selfie sticks. Cooler mornings trigger giant bears into hyperphagic mode, and they feel the need to eat continuously. Sunsets paint the mountainsides in a palette of oranges, golds, and pinks
The rugged carpets of snow dusted away by winter’s last breaths turn weak and vulnerable, burdened by the stress of heat and summer sunlight. Plants start shooting from the crevasses that were left barren by winter, with just clumps of mosses, lichens, heathers, and sedges clinging to the rocks. In such a scenario, when a visitor mistakes a snow bridge for an actual bridge, they put their life at the mercy of the weather conditions. They may be midway across the bridge when it collapses into the glacier below, causing them to topple down and probably lose their life.
The photos display a snow bridge flanked by a green mountainous meadow on one side and a soil-covered valley on the other. The soil-covered valley is slathered with a smattering of pebbles, loose fragments of broken rocks, little clusters of plants, and abandoned leaves. At the edge of this valley is a woman in a red dress. Alongside her, two boys dressed in blue and green jackets, likely her children, are about to leap from the valley and step onto the snow bridge, which is already showing a spider-web-like pattern, indicating that the snow could crack at any time.
While the family seems to be trying their best to make the best of their time in the park, they appear to be ignoring the screaming signboards behind them. Mounted in the valley behind them are red signposts, with boards that read messages like “Danger Hazard Snow Keep Off,” “Do not climb,” and “Area closed.” No one knows whether they failed to notice these signs or deliberately ignored them, but this onlooker couldn’t hold back their frustration when they saw them trespassing on the basic caution. “How ignorant do you have to be to let your kids climb under something that could so seriously harm them?” The Reddit user wrote in the caption. The user added that they yelled “at the parents videoing their kids,” telling them that they are irresponsible.
In the comments section, viewers added that they had witnessed snow bridges like this collapse just a few days ago. u/HalfMoonHero, who visited the park two days before the date of this post, grunted at these people, saying, “Don’t you have a prefrontal cortex?” u/Warm_Suggestion_959 felt that people like these need to learn their lesson the hard way.
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