Glacier Park to boost its staff this summer

Glacier National Park will have a few more employees to help handle the record crowds expected this summer.

Deputy Superintendent Eric Smith said Glacier will have 13 more seasonal employees. Instead of being assigned to a specific region of the 1-million-plus-acre park, they will go where they’re most needed over the summer, he said.

“We want to remain flexible so we can respond to the greatest needs in the park,” he said.

Last year Glacier had 332 seasonal employees, this year it hopes to have 345 during the height of the season.

The National Park Service celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. With low gasoline prices and national ad campaigns promoting the parks, it’s expected to be another record year in Glacier. Last year Glacier had 2,366,056 recreational visitors — the most ever.

The visitors are welcome, but the park would like to spread the crowds out a bit, Smith said during a recent interview. The park is still working on its Sun Road Corridor Management Plan to manage crowds, wildlife and natural resources along the heavily traveled corridor.

Smith said he anticipates the park will have to make future changes in how people access the road corridor, which is by far the most popular feature of park. That could be the shuttle system playing a greater role, a reservation system for private vehicles or some other controls. The park hasn’t made a final determination.

But Glacier needs to do something, he noted.

“You can love a park to death,” he noted.

Smith comes from Denali National Park, where most visitors are required to take a bus to see the bulk of the park’s 92-mile long Denali Road, though it does have a lottery where people can drive it by private vehicle for four days a year. Under Smith, a fifth day recently was added for veterans.

While Glacier isn’t to the lottery point, the park would like to see crowds thinner along the corridor in the critical 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. time period, he noted, perhaps by promoting other regions of the park or other federal lands nearby.

There won’t be much construction on Sun Road this summer since the park purposely will kept construction to a minimum.

There will be work on Sun Road around the St. Mary entrance, but not much elsewhere. Next year, work will start on the west side from Apgar to Avalanche. That’s the last section of road in a multi-year reconstruction project.

For lodging in Glacier, there will be some limitations. The Many Glacier Hotel will undergo work this summer on the South Annex so some rooms will not be available.

Sun Road aside, Glacier is becoming a busier place, even in the winter, Smith noted. That creates challenges in determining when to staff the park.

Last summer, for example, Sun Road opened in early June and visitors arrived in droves as temperatures reached 100. The summer before, there was record snowpack and the road didn’t open until the first week of July.

More people also are vacationing in the fall, so the park is staying busier later in the year at a time when most hotels, motels and restaurants close to the park are closed for the season.

Smith said he wants to see employees become a bit more generalized. For example, if a visitor asks a maintenance worker a simple question such as the name of a peak, the worker can tell them.