Exploring Glacier National Park from Somers: The Sophisticated Gateway

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 — 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 express shuttle to Logan Pass. A dollar per person, ages two and up, booked through Recreation.gov. 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 for current conditions. And if you're joining us from outside the U.S., know that there's a new surcharge for international visitors at the major parks this year — worth budgeting for.

Why we'd base you in Somers, not at the park gate

I'll give you the honest version, because you can find the sales pitch anywhere.

Staying right at West Glacier buys you fifteen or twenty minutes in the morning. That's real. What it costs you is everything else — you're in the traffic, you're in the crowd, and you're eating dinner in a room next to the same four hundred people you just spent the day with on the trail.

From our ridge in Somers, you're roughly an hour from the West Entrance. What that hour gets you is a separation. You drive up in the morning with the lake on your right. You spend the day in the most beautiful country in North America. And then you come back down — out of the park, out of the crowd, up our hill — to a quiet deck, a private hot tub, and nobody asking you anything.

After ten years of hosting Glacier travelers, I can tell you which group is happier on day three. It isn't the one that saved twenty minutes.

The other thing nobody mentions: you're also thirty minutes from Whitefish, ten from Bigfork, and about two hundred feet from one of the best sunset views over Flathead Lake in the state. On the day you don't want to drive to the park — and there will be one — you'll be glad you're here instead of at a gate.

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 lake and over Marias Pass. 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 — 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 you want at the end of it isn't a parking lot and a vending machine. It's a hot tub on a private deck, a glass of wine, a fire pit already lit, and the whole valley going gold below you.
Rita and I 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. Ten 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.

— Eric and Rita Bahme Your hosts, Coyote Bluff Estate 457 Coyote Ridge · Somers, Montana · 1-406-287-0009