Timed entry passes have helped with overcrowding, but the new system has created winners and losers.
At 7:59 a.m. Mountain Time on the first day of March, people across the world hovered over keyboards and smartphones, ticking away the seconds until Glacier National Park released its block of coveted reservations for entering the park during July. The clock hit 8 a.m., setting off a mad race to click “Book Now” on Recreation.gov’s vehicle reservations page. The quickest fingers would score a pass to explore the Montana park’s pristine lakes, sheer peaks, and beargrass-dotted meadows in the high summer season.
Those spots went fast. The remote North Fork area, in the park’s northwestern corner, sold out within 10 minutes. Glacier’s stunning main thoroughfare, Going-to-the-Sun Road, filled completely in half an hour. Some people got lucky that day, but many more came away disappointed, including Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, who tweeted about his failure to land a reservation.
While backcountry hikers and river runners have long dealt with the difficulty of nabbing permits for high-demand destinations, casual travelers haven’t had to wrestle for reservations simply to enter a national park—until recently.
After years of struggling with record-breaking visitation and crowding, three parks rolled out pilots of so-called managed access systems to stem the tide. California’s Yosemite National Park instituted a day-use reservation system for 2020 through 2022 (it’s now on hold while the park works on long-term planning); Glacier and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park introduced theirs in 2021. A handful of other parks require reservations to visit specific locations, like Cadillac Summit at Acadia and Angel’s Landing at Zion.
Each parks’ rules are different, and for many, confusing. Pass requirements vary by date and location within a park, and are valid in some places for one day and in others for three days. Parks release a percentage of passes months in advance but reserve a portion for the day before (see box below). Successfully planning a summer trip is an experience Alex Kim, founder of an outdoor group for people of color called Here Montana, likens to “cracking the code.”
But few dispute that these parks had to do something. Starting with the National Park Service’s Centennial in 2016 and skyrocketing with the COVID pandemic, park visitation numbers have increased to record numbers. “We’re seeing unprecedented levels of sustained demand in a lot of these parks,” says Will Rice, an assistant professor of parks, tourism, and recreation management at the University of Montana who studies reservation systems.
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“The parks belong to the American people, and there’s no substitute for being in a national park,” says Scott Gediman, public affairs officer for Yosemite. But “when you’ve got two-and-a-half hours waiting in line to get in, then you get there and shuttle buses are packed and there are long lines for food, it’s just not a good experience.” Add environmental damage caused by trampling feet and illegal parking, and the problem compounds. Enter what Rice calls the “rationing of recreation.”
For those who do get a reservation, most say managed access leads to a much better trip. Park representatives are quick to note that they’re not trying to reduce visitation, just spread it out throughout the day and the season. All three parks succeeded in that: Since implementing their systems, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, and Yosemite have seen lines at entrance stations and shuttle buses dwindle, parking cease to be a competitive sport, traffic gridlock ease, and people enjoying their experience more.
“We have done a survey of people who got reservations,” says John Hannon, Rocky Mountain’s management specialist. “They’re very supportive of timed entry once they’ve experienced it.” Yosemite visitors reported similar sentiments. “And anecdotally, a lot of people were seeing more wildlife,” notes Gediman.
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But limiting access, even if only during peak hours, necessarily leaves some people out. Under these systems, a certain type of visitor is more likely to snag the golden ticket. At the very least, it’s someone who plans well in advance. But also it’s someone with high-speed internet and a credit card, a job that allows for vacation planning months ahead, and familiarity both with Recreation.gov’s reservation platform and the English language. (Recreation.gov is only available in English, though it does provide a how-to on using Google Translate.)
Advocates worry that means historically marginalized communities—who may already face challenges in accessing public lands, from lack of resources for leisure travel to fear for their physical safety outdoors—are left out. For some, reservation systems are “a deterrent on top of deterrents when it comes to our national parks,” says Teresa Baker, co-founder of the Outdoorist Oath diversity initiative and advocate for inclusion in the outdoors.
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Part of the solution might lie in creating more ways to nab a reservation. “We need to expand the idea of how we ration these things,” says the University of Montana’s Rice. “People have different preferences and needs when it comes to how they want to gain access to these highly demanded recreational resources.”
Park officials say they’re well aware of these issues, and continually tweak their systems to help all potential visitors get a fair shake. For this year, Rocky upped the number of reservations that go live 24 hours ahead of time—rather than months ahead—to better accommodate spur-of-the-moment travelers. And all three parks required reservations only during the busiest hours, so anyone can come in without an advance booking before, say, 9 a.m. or after 3 p.m.
There are more strategy ideas on the table, too. Hannon says Rocky Mountain is considering setting aside some tickets for local retailers to sell in person, reducing the system’s reliance on Recreation.gov; hotel operators near Yosemite have requested a similar setup for their guests.
Rice suggests the parks also look into implementing a lottery or even using license plates to determine who can enter on a given day, as Yellowstone did in 2022 after flooding shut down portions of the park.
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And both Kim and Baker stress the importance of outreach to groups that might struggle with reservation systems. “Just putting in some effort to help people know how to apply” would be huge, Kim says. Baker adds: “It would be great to have a national park ranger walking around a city park. It’s an opportunity for me to ask some of the questions I’ve always had about visiting a national park.”
Visitors can be grateful that at least one other crowd-control tactic won’t be considered: raising entry fees. Unlike amusement parks and ski resorts that use demand-based systems to jack up prices during particularly popular times, national parks belong to everybody.
Like it or not, the days of spontaneously driving up to one of these national parks on a summer Saturday morning are probably over. “We wish we had this magic utopia that had lakes and an empty parking lot,” says Patterson, “but we don’t.”