Tester wary of defunding Glacier's entry system
A hiker walks a ridge in the high country of Glacier National Park. (Hungry Horse News FILE)
Montana Sen. Jon Tester said last week that he didn’t think defunding Glacier National Park’s reservation system was a good idea.
“I’m not sure defunding the system is the right way to go,” Tester, a Democrat, said in a conference call with reporters last week.
He said he was all for improving the system, but simply defunding it could result in chaos.
Before the reservation system, Glacier had moments of that, with lines reaching up U.S. 2 for miles to get into the park in West Glacier.
Tester also noted that when he and staffers were in the valley in June, the staffers were able to get a reservation 24 hours in advance without a problem.
“That was pretty impressive to me,” he said.
Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, a Republican, recently added an amendment to a House Department of Interior spending bill that would defund the park’s reservation system. It passed through committee.
Zinke has been a critic of the system, noting that advance reservations for the Going-to-the-Sun Road sold out quickly, often within minutes.
Zinke has been an advocate for a system without reservations, but one that uses shuttles to ferry people around the park. In the event a trailhead is full, the shuttle wouldn’t make a stop there.
In theory, at least, it would curb overcrowding.
In June, reservations that were released 24 hours in advance were rather easy to get for the Sun Road. That tightened up considerably in July.
But that doesn’t mean one can’t get into other regions of the park. The Hungry Horse News checked for a 24-hour reservation for Aug. 1 at 10:44 a.m. for the Two Medicine entrance and about 135 reservations were still available. Reservations for Many Glacier, the North Fork and the Sun Road were taken, however.
The National Park Service began requiring reservations for Two Medicine and Many Glacier for the first time this summer, after they had to close the entrances almost daily last summer in the middle of the day due to the lack of parking and gridlock in the east side valleys.