What Are The Bighorn Bandits And Where Was This Taken?
The Bighorn Bandits are a group of Bighorn Rams that hang out in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. They roam around Glacier National Park and often hang out in the parking lot of Logan Pass along the Going To The Sun Road. The most common time to see them is at sunrise but they may be in the area or visit the parking area any time of day.
If you go to Glacier National Park and plan to hike the Highline Trail or hike out to the Hidden Lake area, chances are you will park at Logan Pass to do either of those popular hikes at Glacier National Park.
In this photo, the Bighorn Bandits stormed the Logan Pass Parking area just after sunrise. The often like to lick the salt off the parking lot. In this case, they viciously liked and them rammed and smashed up the front end of my Subaru Outback.
What Is It Like To Travel To Glacier And Photograph The Bighorn Bandits?
If you want to photograph the Bighorn Bandits, you’ll need to get out to glacier National Park. Glacier is located up in northern Montana near the town of Kalispell and Whitefish. If you want to head to Glacier and it won’t be a road trip, you’ll probably want to fly into the Kalispell airport and get a rental car from there to explore the park. Alternatively, Amtrak goes have a couple train stations near glacier. There is one Amtrak station in East Glacier and another Amtrak station in West Glacier. It may be a bit more difficult to get a rental car in either of those locations.
Once you get there, you’ll want to find a place to stay in either West Glacier or on the east side of Glacier National Park. If Logan Pass and the hiking trails along the Going To The Sun Road will be your primary destination staying anywhere between West Glacier and the St. Mary section of Glacier National Park would be a good base location for exploring the area.
Once you’ve got all that lined up, you’ll want to plan to get up to Logan Pass at around sunrise. That will be your best chance to encounter the Bighorn Bandits. Ultimately your goal will probably be to get photos of the Bighorn Bandits that are more scenic and natural looking than this photo. If possible, it can be a good idea to go up to Logan Pass with a clean car so the Bighorn Bandits are less likely to be attracted to it to lick and in some cases ram it. These guys did a few thousand dollars worth of damage to this Subaru Outback!
What Does It Take To Get A Wall Art Quality Sunset Photo Of The Glacier National Park Bighorn Bandits?
Whether you are hoping to photograph some carnage of the Bighorn Bandits attacking a car or you are hoping to get some more scenic photos, you’ll want to get up well before sunrise so you can get to Logan Pass before sunrise. It is this time when the Bighorn Bandits tend to gather in and around the parking lot at Logan Pass.
Once you get to the parking lot, just hop out of your car and start scanning the landscape. Of course you can sit in your car and sip some coffee it you are still trying to wake up but your visibility will be better if you are out of your car walking around.
If you will get into the park and on the Going To The Sun Road before 6am you’ll be able to drive right up without the need for anything other than a standard pass for Glacier National Park. Alternatively you can get the America The Beautiful Pass that will give you access to almost all federal public lands across the United States.
If you will enter Glacier National Park and the Going To The Sun Road you’ll need to get a pass to access the Going To The Sun Road. You can get the Going To The Sun Road pass from he Recreation.gov website.
When you go up to photograph the Bighorn Bandits, you’ll want to have a long camera lens so you can keep your distance while photographing these powerful wild animals.
What Is The Best Gear For Photographing The Glacier National Park Bighorn Bandits?
If you want to photograph the Bighorn Bandits at Glacier National Park you’ll want to have a decent DLSR or mirrorless camera. You’ll also want to have a long lens for the camera. Since the Bighorn Bandits can be pretty far off in the distance, a lens that can reach at least 400mm is ideal and 600 is even better.
Bighorn Rams are generally large animals. If they are roaming around the parking lot they may come close to you no matter how hard you try to keep your distance from them. While you are in the parking lot, there are some nice green natural areas close to the parking lot where they may gather or stand. In these cases a long lens may not be the best to have but you will certainly want something more powerful than a cel phone camera.
Your best bet overall for maximum flexibility when photographing the Bighorn Bandits is a telephoto zoom lens. Something like a Canon 100-400mm zoom would be a good choice. Something like a Tamron or Sigma 150-600mm lens would give you the most flexibility. Something along these lines will provide the flexibility to get great photos of the Bighorn Bandits whether they are off in the distance of they get close to your in the parking lot.
Though you could use one, there is really no need for a tripod here. There is no need for any kind of a filter or polarized on the lens either.
What Is The Story Behind This Subaru Bighorn Bandits Photo Print?
Back in the summer of 2015 I was on another extended national park road trip through the western United States. I’d seen some bighorn sheep in Zion, a few in Glacier on previous trips and in Yellowstone/Teton but never gotten any really good photos of the bighorn rams. After taking to other park visitors, it seemed like the best place to go to photograph the bighorn rams of Glacier National Park was up at Logan Pass at Glacier National Park.
At the time I was staying in the town of East Glacier, staying at Brownies over in East Glacier and sleeping in my car in random places in between the two. The night prior to this photo adventure I slept in the car around the St. Mary section on the east side of Glacier so I could be up early. Before the sun came up over the horizon, I was up at the Logan Pass parking lot with a Canon 7D and a 100-400mm lens, the longest zoom lens I had at the time.
Earlier in the trip I’d been over on the west side of the park in the Polebridge Mercantile area and spent some time at Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake. The roads in the Polebridge area were mostly unpaved, dry and dusty. My car was covered with all the dirt and dust from those roads and there was just too much to see and do to think about cleaning it off.
When I got up to the Logan Pass parking lot, I parked close to the road near a wooden fence of sorts made of huge, heavy wooden logs. For a while I stood near the car waiting for the Bighorn Bandits to make their anticipated morning jaunt over to the parking lot to lick the salt off the pavement. Shortly after sunrise they appeared way off in the distance in the direction of the Highline Trail.
They grazed and ran around in the lush green wooded area in he distance and slowly made their way over to the Logan Pass parking lot. On their way over they stopped and posed a few times. I was able to get some nice bighorn ram photos as they made their way over.
Soon a group of the bighorn rams jumped the heavy duty wooden log fence bordering the road and took at interest in my Subaru. They started viciously licking the car all over. The licked the sides, the wheels, the tires and sampled just about every other spot they could reach on the Subaru Outback. That all seemed pretty harmless. Mildly alarmed, I stood back and watched at they licked the tasty dirt off the car.
Soon one of the rams, lowered it’s horns and rammed the sheet metal over the wheel on the passenger side of the car. When I realized what was happening I yelled, I screamed, I waved my arms and jumped up and down. When none of that seemed to disturb the bandits, I pulled out the key FOB and set the car alarm off. That was all to no avail. The Polebridge road dirt covering the car must have been really tasty or really nourishing or both. The bighorn bandits were not to be deterred from viciously licking and then smashing up my car. When it was clear there was no safe way to get them to move on, I stood around, laughed and started shooting photos with a few other people who gathered to watch these vandals.
After about 15-20 minutes the Bighorn Bandits moved on to lick other parts of the parking lot before heading in the direction of the Hidden Lake Overlook.
Once the Bighorn Bandits vanished off into the wilderness I was able to go over and inspect the damage to the car. It wasn’t horrible but it would have required a bit of work and some new sheet metal parts to get the car fixed up. There wasn’t enough damage to affect the safety or prevent driving the car in a normal fashion. Since I was in the middle of a months long road trip and still had many months to go, I just left the damage there. The bighorn battle scar give the car some character and makes for a good story when anyone asks about it.
Soon the Glacier Park parking lot coordinator arrived to help direct the morning traffic about to come pouring into the Logan Pass parking lot. I struck up a conversation with him and explained what the vandals did to my car. Apparently two of the bighorn bandits had a reputation for such things. Earlier in the summer they’d chased some park visitors across the parking lot. One of the bandits, “Bruno” had gotten a running start and charged a big white van in the not too distant past. It seemed these incidents were kept quite so as not to alarm visitors but the did provide some good laughs as we discussed the incident and he radioed the park staff in charge of taking reports of vandalism at the hands of the park residents.
After the crazy morning came to a close, I headed back down toward the St. Mary entrance to the park and stopped at the Wild Goose Island overlook to relax, enjoy some peace and quiet and look for some mid morning photo opportunities.
What Formats Is This Glacier Bighorn Bandits Wall Art Print Available?
This Bighorn Bandits wall art print is available in sizes up to 40×60 inches on metal, acrylic, wood, canvas and a variety of papers. A print on any material will look great in an area with diffused lighting. The prints with more shiny surfaces including metal, acrylic, and glossy paper or canvas will be brighter and more vibrant than matte prints in areas with diffused lighting. If you’ll be hanging the print in any area with bright direct lighting or exposed light bulbs, a matte print that doesn’t reflect the bright light would be a better choice.
The image can be printed on shower curtains and Sherpa fleece blankets. Either of those quality items offer a great way to display the image in a large size in a unique way with your home decor.
A variety of apparel including t-shirts and sweatshirts are available as well as heavy duty canvas tote bags and cel phone cases. If you’d prefer to show off this image on something you can use on a daily basis, those three items make great choices.
For the puzzle fanatic, there are 500 and 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles available as well. They are nice quality and make great gifts for the fan of Glacier National Park or the Bighorn Bandits.
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