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Chasing ice

by Chris Peterson Hungry Horse News
| June 3, 2015 7:02 AM

Two western Montana men will be chasing ice in the coming months, hoping to capture glaciers before they melt away for good.

Kalispell photographer Seth Eagleton is working on a book chronicling the last of Glacier National Park’s 25 remaining glaciers. Missoula artist Jonathan Marquis is working on a project to draw all 60 or so of Montana’s remaining glaciers, including those in Glacier Park.

Both men have already hiked hundreds of miles in pursuit of their melting subjects. Eagleton, 38, began his “Glacier Preservation Project” in 2013.

“I came up with the idea the year before, when I was working for Glacier Park Inc. as its social media coordinator,” Eagleton said last week.

He tried to get to a glacier a month during the summer and fall excursions. So far he’s been to 18 of the Park’s glaciers. He hopes to wrap up the project by the end of the summer and produce a coffee-table book by the summer of 2016.

Save for the more popular glaciers like Grinnell and Sperry, he said there were few, if any, historical images of some of the more obscure glaciers in the Park simply because they’re difficult to get to.

Eagleton and his daughter did a 28-mile trip in two days to capture Ahern Glacier at sunrise. Eagleton credits his love for glaciers from a geology class he took in high school.

“It’s always stuck with me,” he said.

Many of the glaciers he’s visited involved long hikes and plenty of bushwhacking. The journeys are often family affairs. Eagleton and his wife Jill have six children, Emma, 15, Cecily, 11, Nathan, 13, Connor, 9, Tayte, 6, and Clark, 4.

“They’re my mountain goats in training,” he said.

Cecily is the true mountaineer. She’s been to nearly all the glaciers the Eagletons have photographed so far. To date, they’ve covered about 350 miles on foot and have another 350 to go, Eagleton surmised.

But Eagleton knows he’s racing against the clock. There are a few small glaciers near Mount Cleveland that could wink out soon.

“That one is pretty darn small and melting fast,” he said.

Marquis photographs and draws the glaciers he visits. In his “Glacier Drawing Project,” he plans to create an original 18-by-24-inch piece of artwork done in graphite and pencil. The 33-year-old has completed eight pieces so far and has been to nine glaciers. He suspects it will take five or six years to complete his work.

Marquis grew up in Indiana and moved to Missoula several years ago. A graphic artist, he has since returned to the University of Montana to pursue a master’s of fine arts degree as he works on this project.

There have been plenty of adventures along the way and some humor as well.

“I had a packrat steal a sock and chew a shoe in the Missions,” Marquis said. “I also had some mountain goats stalk my camp. I suppose they were looking for salt.”

Both artists have Kickstarter campaigns to raise money for their projects. Marquis’ is www.kickstarter.com/projects/1074152013/glacier-drawing-project-season-two. Eagleton’s is www.kickstarter.com/projects/766235690/glacier-preservation-project-bidding-a-final-farew?ref=nav_search.