Glacier Park adds more clarity to Sun Road ticket system

Glacier National Park has added greater clarity to its upcoming ticketed entry system for the Going-to-the-Sun Road this summer.

The Park first proposed requiring that a person with a seven-day ticket to enter the Sun Road corridor would have to validate it on the first day of the reservation. That requirement has since been struck, though the park encourages people to validate their tickets on the first day if possible.

However, now a person can validate the ticket on any day of the seven day reservation, the Park notes.

The Park expects about 4,600 tickets will be available each day when the Going-to-the-Sun Road is fully open. That still doesn’t guarantee a parking spot along the road — the corridor has about 2,100 parking spots.

The number of tickets will decrease when the road isn’t open, such as the early season. The ticketed entry system goes into effect Memorial Day weekend.

The park also clarified that if a person has a reservation for a vacation rental in the park, they will also be allowed in without a ticket, though they have to show proof of the reservation, spokeswoman Gina Kerzman said.

The road typically isn’t open up and over Logan Pass until mid-to-late June and in some heavy snow years, it hasn’t opened until early July, though this year the snowpack has been a little bit below average.

Folks who get to the entrance and don’t have a ticket can still try to get a same-day ticket, if they’re available.

The available tickets will be posted on the recreation.gov website. The site is building the ticketed entry system and currently beta testing it. A ticket will cost $2 in addition to a park pass. The ticketed system goes live April 29 at 6 a.m, Mountain Standard Time. Tickets will be available online only, not in person.

Folks can still drive the Sun Road without a ticket after 5 p.m. and before 6 a.m. You can also hike or bicycle in without a ticket, though cyclists aren’t allowed on the west side of the Sun Road in summer months between 11 a.m. at 4 p.m. once the road is completely open to through traffic.

Glacier will not run the spring hiker-biker shuttle this year to Avalanche.

The Park is still working on plans to run the shuttle this summer, Kerzman said.

The ticketed entry system is in response to expected crowds this summer. The Park plans on comparing the ticket data to actual counters on the Sun Road, so it can adjust the system as the summer progresses, Kerzman noted.

Kerzman said the Park still expects to be very busy and the idea is to keep it that way through the summer, without having traffic jams at the west entrance as it had last year.

They’ll also post updates on the Highway 2 signs so folks can have an idea if tickets are available before they get to the entrances. The Park is also planning on an information station in Hungry Horse.

Glacier isn’t the only national park using a ticketed entry or other form of crowd control this summer. Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, Acadia and Zion are as well, though Zion has had a system in place for a few seasons now.

This story has been updated to clarify the shuttle situation to date.