Yellowstone National Park has numerous entry points and a figure-8 road network. But will that be enough to avoid a timed visitor-entry program? Photo by Jim Peaco/NPS
by
Robert Chaney
While Glacier National Park tweaks
its fifth iteration of reserved-entry tickets for summer 2025, Yellowstone and
Grand Teton national parks remain old-fashioned general admission.
That is, every major national park
still requires visitors to pay an entry fee, but Yellowstone and Grand Teton
won’t require the extra $2 reservation permit that Glacier does. And in 2025,
Glacier will further limit some travelers to a specific time block for entry—not
just a reserved day.
That can be a logistics challenge
for summer tourists hoping to hit multiple parks in a tight timeframe.
“A lot of people are last-minute
planners and want to know if they can visit Glacier, even if they don’t have
that reservation secured,” said Jacquelyn O’Rielly at Yellowstone Country
Tourism. “People are definitely more
accepting for it now that it's a few years old.”
Glacier National Park reservations
get taken through the Recreation.gov website. They come available 120 days or approximately
four months in advance, this year starting on February 12 at 8 a.m. MST on a
daily rolling basis. Limited numbers of next-day vehicle reservations will be
available at 7 p.m. MDT the day before, starting on June 12, 2025 on a daily
rolling basis.
Just over 3 million visitors came to Glacier Park in 2024, a
9.5 percent jump from 2023 and the fourth time in a decade its welcomed three
times as many people as inhabit all of Montana year-round. Yellowstone logged
about 4.9 million visitors while Grand Teton had its second-busiest year on record with more than 3.5 million people
passing through its gates.
The latest version of timed entry
at Glacier National Park affects eastbound travelers passing through the West
Glacier gate on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, but not westbound motorists coming
through the St. Mary gate on the east side. It also requires timed entry
permits for its North Fork gate at Polebridge. Both gates require the extra $2
permits from June 13 to September 28, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Glacier’s evolution of timed-entry
policy has changed every year since it was started in 2021. For 2025, visitors
can come through the West Glacier Entrance as far as the Apgar Visitor Center
without a permit, but will get checked at a new gate as they start the
Going-to-the-Sun Road’s Lake McDonald shoreline.
In past years, Glacier required
permits at other entrances as well as West Glacier and North Fork. This year,
no extra permits are needed for the Two Medicine or Many Glacier roads.
However, access there may be closed as the parking lots fill up daily,
especially between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., according
to the National Park Service. Also, construction at Many Glacier’s
Swiftcurrent area will significantly reduce parking in that valley.
Other national parks requiring
timed-entry reservations are Arches National Park in Utah and Rocky Mountain
National Park in Colorado. Zion National Park doesn’t have a timed-entry policy,
but does restrict visitors to a public shuttle on its popular Zion Canyon
Scenic Drive between March and November.
Unlike many other national parks,
Yellowstone has both numerous entry points and a figure-8 internal road
network. That makes almost every popular attraction accessible from at least
two directions. In comparison, Glacier Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road is the only
inside route—block it anywhere and you have to leave the park to get to the
other side.
About Robert Chaney
Robert Chaney grew up in western Montana and has spent most of his journalism career writing about the Rocky Mountain West, its people, and their environment. His reporting has also taken him from Jamaica and Brazil to Japan and Nepal. He studied political science at Macalester College and has won numerous awards for his writing and photography, including fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the National Evolutionary Science Center at Duke University. In Montana, Chaney wrote for the Hungry Horse News, Bozeman Daily Chronicle and Missoulian, including stints as photographer, managing editor and book author (The Grizzly in the Driveway). He lives in Missoula.
