Ranger hopes Sun Road opening eases North Fork traffic

With Going-to-the-Sun Road opening this week in Glacier National Park, park employees at the North Fork entrance are hoping for some relief.

Jim Dahlstrom, North Fork District Ranger, said the northern parts of the park have been feeling the pressure early in the summer, with visitors spilling into Polebridge as the more popular areas like Apgar and Avalanche Lake fill up early.

Dahlstrom spoke to a room of about 50 North Fork residents and various members of local and regional agencies during last week’s summer Interlocal meeting at Sondreson Hall.

“There’s a lot of people crammed into only the west side of the park. What we’ve got is people that are getting shut out at their location - they woke up this morning and wanted to go to Avalanche, and it was full. Then Apgar got full, and they found Polebridge,” Dahlstrom told those at the meeting.

That information was not news to them, however.

Bill Walker, president of the North Fork Landowners Association and North Fork Trail Association, presented vehicle counts from a four hour period that morning at the Camas Road and North Fork Road intersection.

According to Walker, 394 vehicles were heading north that morning, with 256 of those coming from West Glacier and another 138 of them coming from Columbia Falls.

Dahlstrom said as of last week, daily visitor numbers were double the average.

“On a busy summer day in an average year, we’re getting 250-300 cars that come to the gate at Polebridge. In the last three days, it’s been around 500 a day,” he said. “What we found this morning, entrance staff starts at 8 a.m., and they got there and were already getting calls from Bowman Lake saying they were full. We had the road closed from the moment we opened this morning.”

To help alleviate the traffic, he added the entrance has been trying to implement a one-in-one-out strategy, where those hoping to get in will be put on a wait list like at a restaurant, and once someone leaves they’ll be called to head in to Bowman or Kintla Lake.

Others have taken to walking in to areas just past the entrance or along the roads to those lakes, Dahlstrom said, leading to more pressure on parking.

The boat launch for the river, found opposite the entrance and across the bridge, is made for a couple to several vehicles, but that too has started to overflow.

“We’re not limiting the entry for people who want to walk in. The unintended consequence we found this morning, and I was shocked when I came out this morning, there’s 50 cars in that lot across the street. That’s definitely something we need to address,” he said.

As for boating on the northern lakes, Dahlstrom didn’t sound very optimistic.

Staffing is the biggest factor leading to boating restrictions, as the park can’t handle the number of boats and subsequent aquatic invasive species inspections necessary.

“The employee staffing is tied to the housing crunch that we have, with our decision to not stack two or three people in a bedroom. The housing dictates how many people we can bring on. So the backcountry office, they run the AIS inspection station and they do the backcountry permits - their staff is cut in half to begin with, so their capacity is reduced. And now because the backcountry is open, there’s a line every morning out there and all the staff is dealing with the permit situation. It’s all they can do to keep up with Lake McDonald at the moment,” he said.

Dahlstrom added he thinks things will get better for the North Fork now that the Sun Road is opening and visitors have more than a handful of places to explore.

Regardless of what is or isn’t open, though, he said he expects a trying summer for the park.

“It’s going to be a rough year with visitation,” he said. “You’ve got 3 million people, let’s say, but they’re all arriving by car from every corner of the country and they’ve only got a limited number of places they can go.”