Glacier Park sees busiest September on record
Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park.
Glacier National Park shattered visitation records for September, according to statistics released by the Park last week.
September saw 710,661 visitors. The next busiest September in its history was in 2016, when the Park recorded about 482,000 visitors.
Most of September did not require a ticket to enter drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor. Tickets were only required over the Labor Day weekend.
The park did, however, close the road on a few occasions due to parking lots and trailheads being full.
Total visitation to Glacier this year topped 3 million, with 3.065 million. With better than average weather in October, Glacier could top the record visitation year of 2017, when 3.305 million people visited Glacier.
This year, Glacier required a ticket for motorists to enter the Sun Road corridor from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Memorial Day weekend through Labor day weekend.
The tickets did seem to work, up to a point.
While about 14% to 20% of visitors, depending on the time of year, were turned away because they didn’t have a ticket, they ended up going to other areas, like Two Medicine or Polebridge, which also saw closures due to the lack of parking and capacity.
Even without October numbers, 2021 is already the second busiest season ever for the Park.
September visitation was up across the board for all park entrances over last year.
The West Entrance, as usual, was up the most, 53.5% over last year.
Camping and lodging in Glacier, even with several campgrounds closed, was also robust. The park recorded 255,220 overnight stays.
That’s down over 2019, however, when all the campgrounds were open. In 2019 through September, there were about 398,000 overnight stays.
Backcountry camping, however, was 6,658 in 2019, while this year saw 8,200 overnight stays in September. Overall, Glacier saw 32,911 backcountry overnights through September; in 2019, there were 34,615.
In 2020, stays in the backcountry were much lower — an anomaly — because the east side of the park was closed due to the pandemic closing the Blackfeet Reservation to outside visitation.
Complete park statistics are available at: https://irma.nps.gov/STATS/Reports/Park/GLAC