Visitors grapple with new Glacier National Park shuttle reservations

Ben Stamper and his wife were relentless. Each morning for several days, they logged in to Recreation.gov and practiced trying to secure tickets for Glacier National Park’s new Logan Pass shuttle. They tried starting the shuttle at different locations, refreshing the page (or not), fiddling with dates and following a global clock. Nothing worked, until it did.

“We failed every day except the real run, but it enabled us to perfect our strategy,” Stamper said, adding that tickets were gone “in virtually 30 seconds from opening.”

Recreation.gov, the platform for booking public land camp sites, river rafting permits and more, is notoriously hard to use. That problem extends past the new Glacier shuttle to public lands across the country. Recent reporting by Re:Public found that bots are grabbing permits away from real people. The platform is run by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that makes millions of dollars a year in booking fees.

By Kylie Mohr, Big Sky Country Contributing Parks Editor