Interview with a Ranger

By Melissa Sladek

Chuck Cameron with pack horse Siyeh.

NPS/Melissa Sladek

Experienced, knowledgeable, dedicated—seasoned. These words float through my head as I spend the day with long-time resource protection ranger Chuck Cameron. I often wonder what it is about Glacier that keeps folks coming back year after year. What is it about this place that creates such dynamic employees dedicated to protecting this landscape and all that lies within? For Cameron, as it is for many long-time Glacier National Park employees, it seems that working here means something more. Glacier’s beauty draws people in, but its essence seems to keep them here.

Glacier does have extraordinary qualities that make it special, but for folks like Cameron, those features are just a piece of the story. Chatting with him, I find that part of what makes this place special to Cameron are the memories—his memories. Memories of youth, memories of special bonds, memories of first-time experiences. This place allows for those memories to happen. For those memories to stand out. For those memories to last a life time. And they provide the fuel for creating the dedicated stewards that Glacier is known for.

Cameron begins his career in Glacier on the park’s trail crew.

Photo courtesy of Chuck Cameron

Undoubtedly, Cameron is one of those stewards. Arriving in 1982, Cameron began his thirty-eight year career in Glacier on the park’s trail crew. For six years, he served the park and its visitors by clearing and maintaining trails, creating new ones, and even clearing the forty-mile boundary swath that separates the United States and Canada along the Waterton-Glacier border. After attending law enforcement academy, he switched gears and began a nine-year stint patrolling Glacier’s majestic Belly River area as a commissioned backcountry ranger.

He then moved to the Lake McDonald area, patrolling its backcountry for a season before being hired in 1998 to Glacier’s Bear Team—a team of law enforcement officers who dealt with wildlife issues, particularly bear-related incidents. The Bear Team also took care of routine law enforcement work—conducting traffic stops, enforcing rules, writing tickets—but they were given additional training in wildlife management, allowing them to work with bear biologists to move, capture, drug, and collar bears.

In 1998, Cameron joined Glacier’s Bear Team.

Photo courtesy of Chuck Cameron

For twenty years, Cameron came back season after season, balancing his work in the winter on ski patrol, with his work protecting Glacier’s resources and visitors in the summer. Through the years, Cameron accrued unique skillsets, making him invaluable as a protection ranger. One of those skillsets includes search and rescue—one of the more challenging tasks rangers face. Cameron has been involved in most of the significant search and rescue incidents over the past four decades. He explains that these incidents become a mind game of sorts, piecing together where the lost individual may have gone and why…looking for clues as to their whereabouts. Cameron goes on to state that search and rescues are challenging, not just physically, but mentally—especially when the incident is a body recovery. Often, body recoveries mean family or friends are on scene, and seeing the impact on those who survive a tragic loss is one of the more difficult parts of the search.

I ask Cameron if there is a particular search and rescue that stands out in his memory. He reflects for a moment and begins to tell me a remarkable story. In 2008, a hiker on a solo, ten-day backcountry trip went missing. Once the hiker’s family reported him missing, park personnel and other search and rescue professionals began a search for him. It was quickly determined that the hiker never made it to his first campsite at Sperry Campground. Roughly 50 search and rescue personnel were sent to explore all trails on the hiker’s itinerary, but soon, an area of Glacier known as Floral Park became the primary focus of the search. After weeks of looking, the search was scaled back. And, although for most, the search seemed dead, Cameron informs me that for him, no missing person case is over until solved.

Cameron searches for the missing hiker in the Sperry Glacier Basin.

Photo courtesy of Chuck Cameron

It is this attitude that allowed Cameron and fellow rangers to finally find closure to this case three years later. Cameron’s excitement level rises as he tells me of the remarkable series of events that occurred during the spring of 2011. Pulled over at Moose Country, an area along the Going-to-the-Sun Road west of Avalanche Campground, Cameron sat conversing with another protection ranger. A visitor who had just been exploring above Avalanche Lake saw the two rangers and pulled over. During his explorations, the hiker found a pair of long underwear along with a piece of blue nylon fabric buried in the gravel of a dry creek bed. Uncertain if these items were of any importance, the visitor asked Cameron if he wanted to see them. Instantly, a light flickered in Cameron’s brain. The location of the items and their description set off alarm bells of the missing hiker of three years back. Cameron took the evidence, and the next day went into the area described by the visitor.

At the base of a couloir, lying 3,000 feet below the top, Cameron and his co-worker found more evidence. More blue fabric (matching the description of the hiker’s windbreaker), cooking gear, sleeping pad—all items matching the contents of the hiker’s gear list. As the snow continued to melt that spring, additional pieces of evidence were found, including some of the hiker’s bones. Cameron surmises that the hiker either fell and died or got hurt and could not be seen by search personnel. But, he adds, “Without a doubt, if the visitor had not picked up the items or stopped to show them to him, this story may not have had an end.” An ending that is invaluable to not just the missing hiker’s family members, but also for those who, like Cameron, never truly stop a search until it is solved.

Listening to the many stories Cameron shares with me, I am transfixed by the breadth of experience and the interesting things Cameron has done throughout his career. But it’s his memories of the place, the wildlife, and the people that stir me. The early adventures of working and exploring in Glacier’s backcountry; the stories of bear captures—when everything went right, and when it did not; the feeling of a grizzly bear underneath his hands; the excitement and relief of finding missing hikers; and the life-long bonds Cameron established with fellow trail crew members during his first years in the park. These memories stand out. They are a part of Cameron, of who he is and why he is still here.

Duration:

3 minutes, 7 seconds

This video is about a backcountry ranger named Chuck Cameron who has worked in Glacier National Park for 38 seasons. An audio described version of this video is also available. https://www.nps.gov/rlc/crown/media.htm

These days, he is doing what he enjoys most—protecting Glacier’s wilderness. In 2018, Cameron gave up his law enforcement commission and became the Lake McDonald backcountry ranger once again. Instead of traffic tickets and road patrols, his days are now filled with hiking the majestic terrain that caught his attention all those years ago. But the job is more than patrolling the trails. Cameron also maintains backcountry campgrounds, clears trails, pulls weeds, and educates backcountry users on rules, regulations, and leave no trace policies. Each day is filled with a feeling of satisfaction, knowing that his work protects the resources of this incredible place.

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The last breath of morning falls away to the heat of day as Cameron and I step out from his truck and head toward the horse corral. Here the horses are enjoying their time off, and except for the occasional flutter in activity from those stating their place in the pecking order, they seem relaxed and perhaps hopeful for another duty-free day. Unfortunately for a horse called Siyeh, his number is up.

Tomorrow, Cameron will need him. He’s taking Siyeh and a couple of mules to haul out old campground materials from the park’s backcountry site at Fifty Mountain. Today’s preparation includes loading the manties (big pieces of canvas used by horse packers to wrap supplies in) for tomorrow’s adventure. Not surprisingly, Cameron harbors another skillset—the art of packing. He learned how to care for and use stock in the wilderness while working as the Belly River ranger.

Cameron loads up a mantie with supplies for his backcountry trip.

NPS/Melissa Sladek

I watch as he quickly, but carefully wraps the rectangle piece of canvas around odd-shaped boxes and equipment, packaging it perfectly to keep the rain out. Cameron informs me that this skill is a bit of dying art for rangers in the field. With higher visitation, more time is put into managing traffic incidents and problems in the park’s front country, making it less likely for rangers to learn skills such as these. He feels lucky that he has had such a diverse career filled with unique opportunities to help manage the park’s wilderness as he explains, “I’m always amazed that I have this job. I’ve never lost sight of how lucky I am. I’ve gotten paid to do a lot of really cool things in this park.”

After the manties are packed and ready for the next day’s journey, we head into the field. As we drive along the sparsely traveled, dusty Inside North Fork Road, Cameron reflects on his time in Glacier. In a way, his career has almost come full circle. He may not be forging new trails with his crew high up on a mountain pass, but he is still taking care of the park’s backcountry…trails, people, wildlife, and all. And, he is still making memories, not to mention revisiting old ones—of special times he has had with special people in a special place.