Park gets $1 million for trail work this year

Glacier National Park will have about a $1 million in their budget for trail clearing and trail work this coming season, Park officials said last week. The Park annually spends between $675,000 and $1 million on its 730-plus miles of trails.

Chief ranger Mark Foust said trail work so far this spring has fared much better than last year, when record snowpack remained on the mountains and an extended period of wet, cold weather lasted into early July.

Many trails in the West Glacier area have been initially cleared, including the Apgar Lookout, Avalanche Lake and South Boundary trails. The suspension bridge over Lincoln Creek has also been installed.

The Inside North Fork Road, which accesses several popular trailheads, hasn’t fully opened yet because of flooding by small streams going over the road. Flooding is a perennial problem on the Park’s oldest road.

In higher elevations, trail work hasn’t started because of snow. On the east side of the Park, the Belly River Trail has been cleared down to the Belly River Ranger Station, and suspension bridges have been installed across the rivers, but higher elevation areas are still under snow, including the Elizabeth Lake Campground.

At St. Mary, suspension bridges on the Red Eagle Lake Trail have been installed. At Two Medicine, many trails are still under snow. Work will probably start next month as snow recedes. The same is true for the Cut Bank Creek drainage.