Zinke on the warpath against Glacier Park reservations

Mark Howser had a family friend that got a coveted ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.

The friend, however, didn’t have any success getting another coveted ticket: This one into Glacier National Park.

Howser, who owns several businesses in East Glacier Park was one of several business owners who expressed frustration at the Park’s reservation system during an invitation-only meeting with Congressman Ryan Zinke at Columbia Falls City Hall last week.

During the meeting the Republican Congressman reiterated earlier criticisms of the reservation system that was expanded this year to include Two Medicine and Many Glacier beginning July 1 and lasting through the second weekend in September.

Zinke said he would like the Park Service to suspend the east side reservation system and rollback the Going-to-the-Sun Road reservation requirement to 1 p.m. This summer visitors will have to have a reservation from Memorial Day weekend through the second weekend of September from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Zinke would eventually like to see the reservation system done away with entirely — replacing it with a shuttle system, and some sort of system that would let visitors know when popular trails were full.

But there were plenty of other ideas suggested by the business leaders who were invited to the discussion.

Perhaps first and foremost was simply getting the Going-to-the-Sun Road fully open up and over Logan Pass earlier.

Last year the Road didn’t open until July 13 — tying it for one of the latest openings ever. But even that aside, the road is opening later than ever, noted former state Representative Dee Brown, who also owned a campground in the Canyon for years.

Brown has a point. Looking at past opening dates, from 1980 to 1990, Logan Pass was open by late May four times, and the latest opening was June 18 in that 10-year period. From 1990 to 2000 it opened three times in late May and the latest opening for that decade was June 23.

From 2000 to 2010, it opened four times in May and the latest opening was June 28.

From 2010 to the present, Logan Pass didn’t open until July four times. It never opened in May and the earlier opening was June 16 in 2016.

With the road opening later, it compresses the visitor season, Brown claimed, making congestion all the worse.

Others had issues with the block release system for reservations. Whitefish businessowner Chris Schustrom said it simply didn’t work for people trying to plan a vacation.

Under the block system, reservations sold in in a matter of minutes.

Rhonda Fitzgerald, Schustrom’s business partner, suggested a timed entry system, where people would be allowed in the park based on the reservation time.

Right now, everyone is rushing to get into the park early in the mornings before they need a reservation, or rushing in the afternoon to get in line.

“It isn’t less congested at all,” she claimed.

There were other concerns as well. Howser noted that recreational boating hasn’t been possible on lakes like Two Medicine for the past few years, because there hasn’t been staff to man aquatic invasive species inspection stations that are mandated by the Park Service.

Howser said he loves the park and enjoys going there, but his 7-year-old daughter has never boated on Two Medicine.

“I think that’s a crime,” he said.

One thing members of the panel didn’t talk about was the sheer numbers of people visiting the park, which has hovered around 3 million for the past several years, save for 2020, when the entire east side was closed due to the pandemic.

With that many people, the park had to close both Two Medicine and Many Glacier often during peak hours last summer — there was no place for people to park.

Many Glacier closed almost everyday during the peak season.

None of the solutions to Glacier’s problems will come cheaply, or easily. Shuttle systems are expensive to operate and maintain. Getting Logan Pass open sooner will also require more manpower — one thing crews have to do now that they didn’t in years prior to the reconstruction of the road was put up removable guardrails. The rails are taken off each fall and have to be hand bolted back on each spring as the road is plowed.

Zinke said he could play hardball. He sits on the House Appropriations Committee and said he could restrict how Glacier uses future funds if need be — keeping the park from using funds for a reservation system.

The wheels are already turning to that end.

Last week he called on the Park Service to open an investigation into the details of the Booz Allen contract managing recreation.gov after a Wall Street Journal report found that the company was reaping millions from the site, which is the only way to get a reservation at parks like Glacier. When people make a reservation, they pay a $2 fee, a cut of which goes to the company for running the website.

It’s added up to millions.

The company has a five-year contract that is up for renewal this year. In its bid for the work, Booz Allen used data provided by the government to estimate that over the first five years of the contract, it would receive $87 million, and a total of about $182 million over 10 years, the Journal reported. 

Booz Allen gets paid every time a user makes a reservation on Recreation.gov, per its government contract. That has earned the company money far beyond the projections in its bid, the Journal said. 

Booz Allen invoiced the government for more than $140 million from October 2018 to November 2022, the most recent date available, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in a public-records request. Ten months remain to be counted for that initial five-year period.

“In light of the recent WSJ report, and the fact that the Glacier National Park reservation system is housed on recreation.gov, I am calling for a full investigation of both the Booz-Allen contract (dating back to the original contract and subsequent renewals), and the decision-making process to implement the Glacier Park reservation system,” Zinke wrote in a letter April 11 to Cahrles Sams III, the director of the National Park Service.