Our Advice for Visiting Glacier National Park

Every summer we host people who spent six months planning a Glacier trip and still got a few things wrong. Not because they didn’t do their homework, but because the rules keep changing and most of what’s online is a year or two stale.

So here’s the guide we’d give you if you were sitting on our deck with a cup of coffee, asking how to actually do this.

What changed at Glacier in 2026

The big one: vehicle reservations are gone. For the first time in five years, you don’t need a timed-entry ticket to drive into the park. Not for Going-to-the-Sun Road, not for Many Glacier, not for Two Medicine, not for the North Fork. Just drive in.

You do still need an entrance pass. Buy it at the gate or online ahead of time. An America the Beautiful annual pass works too.

Two things that catch people off guard:

Logan Pass now has a three-hour parking limit.

As of July 1, you can’t park up there and disappear onto the Highline Trail for eight hours. Rangers enforce it.

There’s a new ticketed shuttle to Logan Pass, with early-morning express routes.

Everyone age two and up needs a ticket. The only cost is a $1 processing fee, and tickets are booked through Recreation.gov (opens in a new tab), not sold in the park. If you’re doing a long alpine hike, this is now the way, and it’s the piece most visitors don’t know about until they’re standing in a full parking lot.

Park rules shift. Before you leave home, check the NPS Glacier page (opens in a new tab) for current conditions. And if you’re joining us from outside the U.S., know that visitors who aren’t U.S. residents now pay a $100 per person surcharge at Glacier and several other major parks, so it’s worth budgeting for.

Why some guests base their Glacier trip in Somers

There are good places to stay right at West Glacier, and if you want to be first through the gate every morning, that’s a real advantage. Staying with us is a different kind of trip, and here’s why some guests prefer it.

From our ridge in Somers, you’re about 40 minutes from the West Entrance. You drive up in the morning with the lake beside you and spend the day in some of the most beautiful country in North America. Then you come back down the valley and up our hill to a quiet deck, a private hot tub and an evening that’s entirely your own.

Keep in mind that the entrance is where the park begins. Lake McDonald is just inside, and Logan Pass is about 32 miles up Going-to-the-Sun Road, an hour or more in summer traffic, so plan your day from the entrance on.

We’ve hosted Glacier travelers for more than ten years, and for many of them, the quiet evenings on the bluff became part of the trip they remember.

You’re also close to Whitefish and Bigfork, and just above one of our favorite sunset views over Flathead Lake. On a day you’d rather not drive to the park, there’s plenty to enjoy close by.

How we’d actually plan your days

Go early or go late.

With reservations gone, the crowd shifted rather than disappeared. Leave Somers by six and you’ll be on the Sun Road before the rush. Or leave at three in the afternoon and drive it in evening light with half the traffic. Midday is the worst of it.

Give the Sun Road its own day.

West Glacier to Logan Pass to St. Mary and back is not a side trip. It’s the day. Plan around it and don’t stack anything after it.

Many Glacier deserves a separate day.

It’s roughly two and a half hours from us, around the south end of the park and over Marias Pass on Highway 2. Long drive, absolutely worth it. Grinnell Glacier and Iceberg Lake are why people come back. Make it a full day or skip it.

Book the Logan Pass shuttle before you need it.

If Highline or Hidden Lake is on your list, sort the ticket out in advance. The three-hour parking limit makes this the difference between doing the hike and turning around.

Consider September.

July is beautiful and July is busy. The first three weeks of September give you the same road, thinner crowds, better light, and cool nights. It’s our favorite time in the valley and it isn’t close.

A few practical things

Carry bear spray and know how to use it. This is not a formality, it’s grizzly country. Fill your tank in Kalispell or Columbia Falls before you head up; gas gets scarce and expensive near the park. Pack layers even in August, because Logan Pass can be thirty degrees colder than our driveway. And bring more water and food than you think you need. Rita restocks your room daily with snacks and drinks for exactly this reason, so take some with you.

Cell service in the park is unreliable to nonexistent. Download your maps before you go.

Come home to the ridge

Here’s the part we care about most.

A day in Glacier will take something out of you, in the best possible way. Twelve miles, six thousand feet of sky, and more beauty than a person can really hold. What we hope you come back to is a hot tub on a private deck, a glass of wine, a fire pit already lit, and the whole valley going gold below you.

We built our days around that moment. We keep the fire going in the evenings. We stock the whiskey and scotch bar and don’t charge you for it. We’re usually around if you want to talk about your day, and gone if you don’t.

We’ve come to believe that hospitality is a stewardship, that when someone drives up this hill tired and full of what they’ve seen, our job is to give them a place to set it down. All these years in, that still feels like good work.

Bring your questions when you book. We’ve hiked most of it, and we’d rather help you plan than have you guess.