Yesterday, Glacier National Park closed Going-to-the-Sun Road for the season. Sadly I didn’t visit the park much this year. I was able to spend a week there for my Master Naturalist course, and that was about it.
Glacier National Park instituted a “ticketed-entry” method to get into the park this year. My feeling was that it was disastrous on many levels. The pressure was taken off the GTTSR, but just refocused elsewhere. The areas outside the park had to absorb all the people that didn’t get a ticket. The west side of the park, a part rarely known, was unusually busy as well. Traffic outside the main gate would extend for miles after 5pm when tickets were no longer needed for the day.
I only made one trip up to Logan Pass, the summit of the GTTSR. It was opening day. There have only been two opening days I have missed since moving here in 2009; 2019 and 2020. One I was away on TDY and the other was when COVID made it unpredictable when it would open.
I used to enjoy taking visitors up the road showing how pretty my home was. Social media has started to choke all the national parks. I do not have any pictures from 2009, but traffic was not nearly as much as it is now. In 2009 there was roughly 2 million visitors, 2021 doesn’t have any numbers yet, and 2020 would be inaccurate because of Covid restrictions. By 2019, over 3 million people passed through the gate. Will this year be 3 million? I imagine it will come up a bit under that with fewer foreign visitors.
If you live in a hidden spot full of beauty and a lot of wild. My biggest piece of advice is to share responsibly and don’t lets others know about these secret places.
