Logan Pass — Local services in West Glacier

This is another review that's hard to write. On the one hand, Logan Pass is STUNNING. On the other hand, the parking situation is the worst I've encountered in my life ANYWHERE. Glacier NP needs to make larger parking lots on both ends of the going-to-sun road (St. Mary and Apgar visitor's centers), give out fewer permits to drive the road (and enforce them on both the west and east sides), put time limits on parking lots along that road, and require people to ride the shuttle if they don't have permits to drive the road or if they'll be hiking longer than the parking time limit. And they need to run more shuttles. That's it. That would fix the issues. Unfortunately, because they haven't done that, the road can be EXTREMELY full of traffic, with every legal (and some illegal) parking spot taken. You have to be an a-hole and stop in the middle of the road (stopping everyone behind you) when you see people near their car in order to take their parking spot when they leave. Otherwise, the chances of getting a parking spot are about 1 in 100. Also, you typically have to park about 1/2 a mile and walk from there to the actual trailhead you wanted to hike.

Logan Pass is beautiful. We drove through it many times on our trip, and it looked different based on weather every time. It was amazing. We eventually figured out the shuttle system (and we did get lucky once out of the whole weekend and get a parking spot with a 1/2 mile walk), so we were able to hike the very beginning of Hiline trail and also hike to the Hidden Lake Overlook. Both were beautiful experiences with surprisingly close encounters to wildlife. If the NPS would adjust their system to better accommodate all the people, this could be an amazing experience for nearly every visitor. As it currently is, we drove this section of road 5+ times in our weekend there and found a parking spot once. It started to feel like buying permits didn't matter because we couldn't find parking spots to use them, and that sucks. Definitely park lower down and use the shuttle if you want to hike there---or get up at 4 am to get a parking spot (jk, don't do that. Save parking spots for people doing...

Went today [July 21st 2024] when most of the snow is gone. Left from St Mary at around 7 and got the logan pass at around 8. Parking was already full, so you spend 30-1 hour going in circles just to try to park your vehicle.

Once you park its nice, but the parking situation is terribly undersized. It's on a mountain so I don't know what else they can do, but as we were coming back the circling by other people was even worse then when we started and you start to see people become very desperate. We had 3 people approach us as we were heading to our car if they could have our spot... the first person who asked us we said sure but I followed up with " I don't know how your gonna manage that." Suddenly, , the passenger hops out her car and follows us to our spot (it's far) and holds it, then there's a big commotion about how she's being a (capital B-bad word) infront of my 3 and 5 year old girls. Meanwhile all this was going on my girls really had to pee. We unfortunately noticed the the women's washroom was out of order as we decided to leave earlier, but it wasn't such a big deal for us because we travel with a travel potty for our young ones in the back of our small SUV. Both girls had to use the potty, but we felt like we had to get out of there as soon as we could to avoid the confrontation. I'll never forget my daughter turning to be concerned and asked "why is he so mad, dad?" and that was because there was a guy who got out his car to yell at the woman pessanger who was holding our spot. Unfortunately, The 3 year old ended up peeing her pants.

If anyone asks you for your spot, just avoid the mess and say no, then when you leave someone who was playing fairly will get the spot. Lesson learned on my behalf. I didn't think people went that low for a parking spot.

Edit... I just read the another negative review written by Bryan and I agree. I could never be that person to pester people for their spot or send kids out to hold spots, not only are my kids to young go do this, but I'd never ever stoop that low to tell them or let them do that either.

The trail is 5/5, especially for young kids but the parking makes me lose faith...

Logan Pass (elevation 6,646 ft (2,026 m)) is located along the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park, in the U.S. state of Montana . It is the highest point on the Going-to-the-Sun Road . The pass is named after Major Willian R. Logan, the first superintendent of the park. The Logan Pass Visitor Center is open during the summer season just east of the pass. The pass is a popular starting point for hiking and backpacking trips. The most popular trail is the Highline Trail which heads north along the west side of the continental divide, through an area known as the Garden Wall , due to the proliferation of wildflowers which grow there during the summer. Just east of the pass, an area known as Big Drift often records over 100 feet (30 m) of snowfall, much of which has been pushed over the continental divide by the prevailing westerly winds during the winter. The pass is closed during the winter due to avalanche hazards and the virtual impossibility of keeping the Going-to-the-Sun Road open, yet is generally open from mid-to-late June until mid October. A record wind gust was recorded at Logan Pass on April 9, 2014, of 139 miles per hour. The pass was closed at that time. "The previous record gust recorded at Logan Pass was 133 mph, on Dec. 13, 2006. The average wind speed during the hour the record gust was recorded...