Driving Glacier National Park’s Going to the Sun Road

I have wanted to visit Glacier National Park for some time now, but there always seemed a reason why it wouldn’t work out. Finally this September seemed the perfect opportunity to check out this northern national park.

Probably the main attraction for anyone visiting Glacier National Park is driving across the park on the Going to the Sun Road. This is a 50 mile trip which goes in an east/west direction. Drivers can start at either end of the road. The road crosses over the Continental Divide and, as one would image, has great scenic mountain views.

Moat people probably start this well-know trip from the western side of the park. As a result in 2025 for the busy times of the year the park developed a reservation system to try to minimize the amount of traffic on the road. There are two hour time slots available, and one has to reserve a time or be turned back. While reservations should be made well ahead of time, don’t despair if you don’t. Next day reservations are available the night before beginning at 7:00 pm. We needed to do this, and in September there seemed to be quite a few spots available. Summer may be a different story.

To receive your reservation go to recreation.gov. The tricky part is one needs to have an account to be able to access the reservations. If you are going to try to get a day before ticket, I would advise you to get yourself registered at recreation.gov ahead of time. This way you are ready to go when the time comes to book your reservation. While technically the reservation is free, there is a $2 service fee. Those who prefer not to hassle with the reservation system can enter before 6:00 am or after 3:00 pm without a reservation.

Our reservation was from 9:00-11:00. It took us longer to get ourselves together in the morning than we anticipated, and we arrived with only about 5 minutes to spare. Once our reservation was checked, we were on our way. There are a number of locations along Going to the Sun Road where visitors can pull over to take photos, go for a hike or just relax and enjoy the scenery. I had decided that we would drive straight through to the other side and then stop and take in the activities we wanted on the way back.

That plan lasted until we began to climb up over the mountains. The road here is very narrow with solid rock walls on one side and steep cliffs on the other. About half way up we began to drive on the cliff side. Here and there were pull outs. Some would hold only a few cars, others would have parking for 10 to 20. I decided to use the pull outs to take photos. My reasoning was that I didn’t want to try to cross busy traffic on the way down as it seemed too precarious.

The day was a sunny day. Not the best day for taking photos. I would have preferred clouds, but that’s not what we were given. It also seemed a bit hazy. There may have been some smoke in the air from wild fires. Distant mountains had little detail particularly if the sun was in that direction. Fall colors were out in the area. Some trees were turning yellow. It was not brilliant colors, but it did add a touch of fall to the photos.

At one stop a man engaged me in conversation. He told me that at the summit, Logan Pass, the traffic was crazy busy. One couldn’t even find a parking spot. People were parking along the road even half a mile from the summit. Some hikes start from the summit, and there is a gift shop, but otherwise I’m not sure why everyone felt the need to stop there. We drove on by and stopped a distance away on the other side of the summit for photos.

After coming down on the east side of the pass we came to St. Mary Lake. This is a large lake towards the eastern end of the Going to the Sun Road. I did stop and take some pictures of the lake. As I noted there are sometimes small pull outs. At one of these there was a small view point from which to take photos. I was quite annoyed to discover that a man and his wife had set up chairs in the space and were reading. This left very little space for others to take photos. It seemed very selfish.

We arrived at the St. Mary Visitor Center at the end of the Going to the Sun Road. One of the interesting features was the three flags flying above the center. The wind was blowing so the flags stood out. The American and Canadian flags were at each end. This is because Canada has a national park that connects with Glacier. The center flag turned out to be the flag for the Blackfeet Native American nation. Much of the land on which Glacier National Park sits was once the land of the Blackfeet nation. The flag recognizes that relationship.

Now that we were ready to return to the other side, we were ready to get more active and see more sights. I stopped at a couple of places to take some more photos of St. Mary Lake.

We wanted to get out of the car and move so we decided to hike down to a waterfall just past the end of St. Mary Lake. The problem was parking. Despite it being September, the park seemed very busy, and parking could be scarce at popular locations. There was no parking at the trailhead where we wanted to hike. We turned around and drove back to some roadside parking and managed to squeeze into a spot then walk back up to the trailhead.

The hike was only a little over a mile. The initial part from the road was a fairly steep decline, but then it leveled off. It still descended in places, but it was more gradual. At the beginning of the hike we had some nice views of the end of St. Mary Lake. The colors in the lake were really interesting, and the mountains behind the lake were showing a little more clearly. We didn’t lack for company along the trail. It seemed to be a popular and well traveled hike.

Farther along in the hike, the lake disappeared, but we saw the river that flowed into the lake which was coming partly from the waterfall we were heading to see. We finally arrived at the St. Mary Waterfall. It was a unique falls in that it was crashing through a hole and crevices in the rock. A bridge allowed us to cross over to the other side. One added benefit was the water offered a misty cooling effect. It felt good as we were hot from our hike which offered little shade.

There was a second waterfall which I was told was more interesting than the St. Mary Waterfall. It was another eight tenths of a mile away. We considered hiking to it, but in the end decided against it. It was probably a good thing as I have to admit I was really tired once we had climbed back up to the road. I think a major reason was the high altitude. We were not used to the thin air since we live pretty much at sea level..

Continuing on the Going to the Sun Road we drove to Logan Pass, the location of the Continental Divide. We decided to stop and surprisingly found a parking spot pretty easily. After we checked out the gift shop, we looked at some of the hikes, but felt we were running out of time. However we did make time to take a selfie by the Continental Divide sign to show that we had been there. The sign indicates how high up the divide is.

Leaving the summit we got back on the Going to the Sun Road and pretty much drove straight back to the entrance with just a few more stops along the road for pictures. I had hoped that the haze would diminish, and in a few places the mountains did seem a little sharper.

One place we did stop was at a tunnel. Tunnels usually aren’t that interesting, but inside this tunnel were two cutouts that created a place to view the nearby landscape. I had never seen a tunnel with cutouts like this before so I had to stop and check it out.

I had hoped to do another hike, but it was getting late. It’s about 40 minutes from the park to Kalispell so we needed to leave before it started to get dark. From the tunnel we still had a bit of a drive on the Going to the Sun Road to reach the entrance. Tomorrow we will come back and experience more of the park on the western side. Be sure to check back next week to read about day two.

Has anyone else had the opportunity to visit Glacier National Park? There is a lot to see, and we only saw a few highlights so I’d love to hear about any other options that people have enjoyed over the years. You can share your thoughts in the comment box below.