Glacier Park fee increases detailed

At a public meeting in Columbia Falls Wednesday night, Glacier National Park officials addressed a range of issues including future entrance fee increases, the still-evolving plan for the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor and east-side road rehabilitation.

Acknowledging the controversy surrounding higher fees, Chief Ranger Paul Austin tried a bit of sugar-coating, handing out bite-sized candy bars to the three dozen people at the meeting before outlining the park’s plans to raise some entrance fees.

Austin said the park was working to keep prices low for locals, who buy the majority of year-round passes, currently priced at $35.

“Where this comes from is [that] this is part of a national push toward consistency” across the National Park System, he explained. “But if we start pricing our local communities out of our parks, we’ve got to start scratching our heads a little.”

Prices for park entrance will remain the same through the summer, with the first rate increase Nov. 1 when winter passes will rise from $15 to $20. Beginning next year, year-round entry to the park will cost $40, up from $35. In 2017, a yearly pass will increase to $60.

Starting May 1, 2016, summer rates for seven-day passes will increase to $30 from their current price of $25.

Austin noted that annual passes for entrance to all federal park system lands, as well as senior passes, are set by the park service headquarters in D.C. But he assured those senior citizens already with passes — which are good for life — that they will not have to pay again if the pricing changes.

One type of entrance fee will decrease. Currently, a single person on a motorcycle pays $10 for a seven-day pass, while two people on a motorcycle pay $20. To encourage carpooling, Austin said that next year the park will lower the cost to $15 for a shared motorcycle.

One attendee asked Superintendent Jeff Mow what the park was doing about passholders in Glacier National Park getting hit with a “double-whammy” when they try to enter Waterton Lakes National Park, which sits directly north of Glacier in Canada. Mow responded that he was working with local partners, including the Glacier National Park Conservancy, to develop an International Peace Park Pass to address that issue.

Austin added that 80 percent of revenue collected from entrance fees stays in Glacier National Park, funding park projects and payrolls for park staff.

Kym Hall, the park’s deputy superintendent, has been leading the Sun Road corridor planning effort and said the main difficulty lies in finding the balance between welcoming visitors into the park and minimizing impacts of increased visitation.

One recurring possibility, both from Hall and the audience members, is to direct more visitors off the well-beaten Sun Road corridor and into less heavily trafficked portions of the park.

Two people at the meeting suggested that traffic be dispersed via a second major road that could connect to the border. One suggested extending the Inside North Fork Road, while the other wanted to connect Going-to-the-Sun Road with Waterton Park by building an entirely new road through the middle of the park.

He acknowledged the controversy inherent in the idea of a massive project cutting through the Glacier, but added, “It’s just something that I think, as another option, needs to be discussed.”

Hall stressed that the preliminary Sun Road alternatives, released by the park May 1, were based on public comments and social science survey data that the park has been collecting since launching the planning initiative in 2013.

“We have a huge amount of data that really helps us understand what are the use patterns in the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor,” she said, adding that the park is also working on determining a rough carrying capacity, at which point too many people begins negatively impacting visitor experience.

Today is the last day for the public to submit public comments on the plan, which can be viewed and commented on at parkplanning.nps.gov/glac.

Glacier has seen increasing visitation in recent years (last year was the busiest year ever) and the park soon is expected to welcome the 100 millionth visitor in its 105-year history.

The threat of invasive species getting into Lake McDonald drew strong opinions from the citizens gathered at the Columbia Falls community hall. Several told park officials that more must be done to ensure that boats launching into the lake are clean.

Phil Wilson, the park’s chief of resource management, acknowledged the relative ease of keeping species such as quagga and zebra mussels out of the waterways (there is only one public boat launch), but said more can be done to keep the lake safe.

“The threat is creeping ever-increasingly toward Montana,” Wilson said. “Each year we’re re-evaluating our response plan.”

Whenever an invasive species is detected at a checkpoint in Montana, park officials meet to review and discuss how they would respond to a soiled boat hitting the waters of the lake. Hall said that a compromised waterway in Eastern Montana could potentially lead to a shutdown of the lake to the public.

Two mussel-fouled boats were intercepted at a checkpoint in Browning about a month ago.

“That detection in Montana, I think, really highlighted everyone’s awareness that we really need to pay attention,” Mow told the group.

Still, the park’s resources for taking precautions are limited, and Mow said he hopes that other partners such as the state will contribute financial resources to step up security. The park already works with the Flathead Basin Commission, which protects the water resources of Flathead Lake downstream from Lake McDonald.

“We’re making progress,” Mow said. “The state of Montana is being supportive, but not with money yet.”

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.