Glacier Park gearing up for expected crowds; boosts staff

Glacier National Park will have a few more employees to help handle the record crowds expected this summer. Deputy Superintendent Eric Smith said the Park will have 13 more seasonal employees. Instead of being assigned to a specific region of the 1-million plus acre park, they’ll go where they’re most needed over the summer, he said.

“We want to remain flexible so we can respond to the greatest needs in the park,” he said.

Last year Glacier had 332 seasonal employees, this year it hopes to have 345 in the height of the season.

The Park Service celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. With low gasoline prices and national ad campaigns promoting the parks, it’s expected to be another record year in Glacier. Last year Glacier saw 2,366,056 recreational visitors — the most ever.

The visitors are welcome, but the park would like to spread the crowds out a bit, Smith said during an interview last week. The park is still working on its Sun Road Corridor Management Plan, a plan that will look to manage crowds, wildlife and natural resources along the heavily traveled corridor.

He said he anticipates the park will have to make future changes in how people access the road corridor, which is, by far, the most popular feature of park. That could be the shuttle system playing a greater role, a reservation system for private vehicles or some other control. The park hasn’t made a final determination. But the park needs to do something, he noted.

“You can love a park to death,” he noted.

Smith comes from Denali National Park, where most visitors are required to take a bus to see the bulk of the park’s 92-mile long Denali Road, though it does have a lottery where people can drive it by private vehicle for four days a year. Under Smith, a fifth day was recently added for veterans. 

While Glacier isn’t to the lottery point, the park would like to see crowds thinner along the corridor in the critical 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. time period, he noted, perhaps by promoting other regions of the park or other federal lands nearby.

There won’t be much construction on the road this summer. The park purposely will kept construction to a minimum. There will be work on the Sun Road around the St. Mary entrance, but not much elsewhere. Next year, work will start on the west side, from Apgar to Avalanche. That’s the last section of road in a multi-year reconstruction project.

Lodging-wise, there will be some limitations. The Many Glacier Hotel will see work this summer on the South Annex, and as such, some rooms will not be available. Smith said he expects a contract for that work to be let any day now, and crews will start work as soon as they can get into the valley.

Sun Road aside, the Park is becoming a busier place, even in the winter months, he noted. One problem is when to staff the park. Last summer, for example, the Sun Road opened in early June and visitors arrived in droves as temperatures reached 100. The summer before saw record snowpack and the road didn’t open until the first week of July. More people are also vacationing in the fall, so the park is staying busier, longer, even when most hotels, motels and restaurants close to the park are closed for the season.

Staffing-wise, Smith said he wants to see employees become a bit more generalized, so, for example, if a visitor asks a maintenance worker a simple question, like the name of a peak, they can tell them.

“We need our staff to be generalized,” he said.