Despite growing crowds, don’t expect reservations for Sun Road

Last summer if Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road saw 1,800 cars by 11 a.m. “we knew we were in for some closures,” superintendent Jeff Mow told a group of local business interests via videoconference last week.

Despite coronavirus and having the east side of the Park closed all summer due to Blackfeet Tribe restrictions, Glacier slowly saw visitation rise as the summer went on and in October, the Park saw a whopping 60 percent increase over the previous year, with more than 125,000 visitors turning the gates. Over the past few years, October has averaged about 85,000 visitors. Last year it saw 78,408 visitors, but early October in 2019 was very cold.

Over Labor Day weekend, vehicles backed up for miles at the west entrance as they tried to get in. Mow said there’s been preliminary discussions with state and the county on how to control traffic in the future. One idea is a bypass lane or simply getting the word out to people that the Sun Road and its parking areas are full.

“We need to reach out to people someway, somehow,” Mow said.

But Glacier likely won’t implement a reservation or “ticketed entry” type system next year. For one, the system was allowed at national parks last year as part of an emergency strategy to limit crowds in national parks. It was allowed as a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act, Mow noted.

Glacier considered a reservation system, but after consulting with the business community, decided against it. Businesses were worried it would mean a plummet in visitation and as a result, a plummet in their business.

The hope is that by summer 2021, the coronavirus restrictions being seen today will ease as vaccines are rolled out.

As such, the park would have to go through a formal environmental review to implement a reservation system and the Park Service “can’t be the instigator of it,” Mow said.

It would take a move by an outside group.

Having said that, the park has already started looking at ways to better handle crowds in 2021, Mow said.

“We’ll be working on a number of scenarios,” he said and the plan is to have further discussions with the business community as the season approaches.

The park may already have a challenge on its hands come next spring. Park crews weren’t able to get all of the removable rail off the Going-to-the-Sun Road before snow made travel in the alpine section impossible.

October weather went from summer-like to a snowstorm in mid-October and snow has been fairly relentless since at higher elevations.

“Climate change has turned the volume up on the weather,” Mow noted. When it’s hot and dry, it’s extremely hot and dry. When it’s cold and wet, it’s very cold and wet.

As such, the Park hopes the rails survive the coming avalanche season in the high country.

On the plus side, the Park saw no staff contract coronavirus from Park visitation. No infections were related to visitation.

People are still visiting the Park in high numbers, particularly on the weekends, where if the weather is nice, the Avalanche Creek Parking lot will fill.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is currently open to Avalanche and the Camas Road remains open.

In mid-December, the Camas Road is typically gated and the Sun Road sees a winter closure down to Lake McDonald Lodge.

This winter, the Apgar Visitor Center will not be staffed, though the bathrooms will be open and will have potable water.

All told, Glacier has seen about 1.641 million visitors, quite busy considering the east side is closed and the Park was closed in its entirety for two months.