Glacier prepares for summer crowds

The National Park Service is celebrating its centennial this year, but visitors to Glacier National Park should expect the party to be a low-key affair.

Speaking to the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Glacier Superintendent Jeff Mow said his staff is focused on preparing for a third straight year of record-breaking crowds and being better stewards of the Park.

“We’re not just going to have a big party about all the achievements the National Park Service has had over the past 100 years,” he said. “We want to be focused on what it means to be better prepared for the next 100 years.”

During his talk, Mow said his staff spent the winter preparing for the coming summer season and taking lessons learned from last August when wildfires and smoke kept visitors from the park.

He said Glacier was essentially “saved by the bell” when the park visitor count in August dropped 14 percent from the previous year, while 2016 still set a new annual visitor record.

“We want to look at how to make the staff better adaptable to fire and big events,” he said. “We want to be responsive and prepare for a variety of events in the future. Visitation is great, but with it comes impact to resources and staff.”

Glacier has increased the number of seasonal staff and is hoping to create a “mobile strike force” of cross-trained staff that can quickly respond to crisis, but also congestion. Glacier is also working on a management plan for the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor looking at how to deal with the large amount of traffic and visitors that frequent those areas of the park surrounding the road.

“We want to be more thoughtful about how we might deal with 20 percent visitor increases in July and August,” he said.

Dealing with a high volume of visitors isn’t a problem unique to Glacier. Mow said superintendents in Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Zion and Arches national parks also are struggling to deal with growing crowds.

The problem, he said, has left the superintendents scratching their heads and asking, “‘How can we not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs here?’”

One of the ways Glacier is dealing with an influx of visitors is pursuing a stronger relationships with its gateway communities and surrounding national forests, to encourage visitors to explore beyond park borders. That includes ensuring that park employees have recommendations for places to go and events happening outside the park, along with directing them to the new summer visitor center at Belton Depot, a collaboration among local chambers of commerce.

“Glacier National Park is part of the Crown of Continent, which is 18 million acres and just 1 million of that is Glacier,” Mow said. “There’s lots to do in and around Glacier — we want to figure out the best way to communicate what is great outside the park.”

Glacier, however, won’t be devoid of any celebration this year for the centennial. A celebration is expected of the park’s efforts to become the first-ever international “Dark Sky Protected Area” and reduce light pollution. A founders day celebration on Aug. 25 will mark the day that one century ago Congress established the federal agency to oversee its parks.

“I imagine we will serve a lot of cake that day,” he said.

During the meeting, Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau Executive Director Dylan Boyle said national and statewide trends are predicting tourism will stay steady and possibly grow slightly over the summer season.

He pointed out that the Canadian dollar hit a nine-month high of 79 cents per U.S. dollar last week, noting that above 80 cents on the dollar is when there is the potential for an increase in visitation and an increase in spending.

“We’re expecting a good summer season,” he said. “In the tourism and travel industry steady is a good thing.”