Glacier National Park super said he thought routing traffic through Apgar would be a ‘disaster.' He was wrong
A hiker looks over Lake McDonald last week. (Chris Peterson photo)
By CHRIS PETERSON
Hungry Horse News
A mild fall and eased reservation requirements saw September visitation in Glacier National Park eclipse 602,000 visitors for the month, the busiest September ever.
Visitation for the year to date also topped 3 million by about 1,000 visitors.
September visitation was up 8.8% over last year.
The weather was unusually nice, too, with plenty of sunny, warm days. That was reflected in backcountry use, which was up 31.7% over the previous year at 8,190 overnight stays. Some of those September days saw temperatures in the 80s and even close to 90 early in the month.
“All September long I was thinking this is just like August,” Glacier National Park superintendent David Roemer remarked during a conference on tourism in Whitefish last week.
He said the no reservations for visitors entering the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the east side this summer was a success. Glacier paired it with no reservations at Two Medicine as well.
“Operationally it worked for us. We weren’t overwhelmed at St. Mary,” he said.
Having said that, reservations were available for people willing to go through the process of getting them.
“People who wanted to get them could get them,” he said.
He noted that about 17% of visitors to Glacier do no pre-planning and St. Mary and Two Medicine were good options.
On the west side, where reservations were still required on the Sun Road from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Glacier moved the check area to the foot of Lake McDonald and those without reservations were routed into Apgar Village.
“I thought it was going to be a disaster,” Roemer said. “It wasn’t.”
October saw similar pleasant weather as September and the park will likely come close to the all-time visitation record of 3.305 million set in 2017.
Reservation requirements of Glacier’s roads were lifted after the second weekend in September.
The alpine section of the Going-to-the-Sun Road is now closed for the year. The road is open to hikers and bikers, with some restrictions when crews are working to winterize the road.
Each fall they unbolt and store a multitude of removable guardrails from the west side of the highway so they don’t get damaged by avalanches in the winter.
The Sun Road is closed at Avalanche Creek on the west side and currently Rising Sun on the east side, due to poor weather east of the divide.
All other secondary roads are open except for Cut Bank, which is closed at the park boundary, which adds just a nominal half-mile or so hike to folk looking to access trailheads in that area.