Glacier Park visitors took advantage of no reservation requirements at St. Mary

Glacier National Park’s July visitation was up almost 10% over last year, according to figures recently  provided by the Park Service. In addition, it does appear that people took advantage of being able to use the St. Mary Entrance to the Going-to-the-Sun Road without a vehicle reservation, as visitation to St. Mary was up 20% over last season.

This year, for the first time since Glacier instituted a reservation system for the Going-to-the-Sun Road four years ago, it allowed people without a reservation to enter the road from St. Mary.

In July, the St. Mary entrance saw about 200,840 visitors pass through the gates. Last year it saw 165,706 visitors.

But the west side was busier, too. The West Entrance was up 8.3% over last year, with 366,366 visitors compared to 338,439 the year before. People need a reservation from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. to enter the west side of the Sun Road during the summer months.

Glacier did, however, allow people to go into the west entrance and to Lake McDonald and up the Camas Road without a reservation.

The weather likely helped visitation. Glacier saw sunny, but very hot weather in July, but had no significant wildfires. Northwest Montana in general had no large wildfires, which typically impact park numbers.

While it was hot, it was still cooler than a lot of areas in the country, which were suffering through an oppressive heat wave in July. 

All told, Glacier saw 791,717 visitors in July, up from 722,535 last year.

Still, it wasn’t the busiest July ever. That was in 2017, when more than 1 million visited.

Park officials noted earlier this summer that the St. Mary option worked reasonably well. They never had to close the Sun Road corridor due to congestion. But they did close the Two Medicine Valley a few times due to congestion. But the closures lasted just a few hours.

Visitors did not need a reservation to get into Two Medicine, but they did at Many Glacier and the North Fork.

The reservation system ends after this Sunday (Sept. 8) for the season. After that, there are no reservation requirements, but some areas could close due to congestion. The weather, which has been more summer than fall like over the past week, should take a turn by week’s end, with cooler and wetter weather.

The past week it’s been in the mid to upper 80s with ample sunshine.